Natalia Zinovyeva, Warwick University

Top Researchers as Academic Evaluators

Abstract

Do better-published researchers provide higher quality scientific evaluations? Is their research output relatively more or less affected when they are assigned to evaluation tasks? Using data from a system where evaluators are randomly assigned to academic promotion committees, I find that better-published researchers do perform better evaluations. They attribute relatively more importance to the quality of candidates’ publications as opposed to publication count and, as a result, they promote candidates who produce as many but better publications in the future. However, better-published researchers have a relatively high opportunity cost of time: their (random) assignment to an evaluation committee implies a 20% of a standard deviation reduction in their own research productivity during the evaluation period. For researchers with below-average publication record, assignment to an evaluation task has no significant impact on publication outcomes.

Natalia Zinovyeva is Associate Professor at University of Warwick

She do research in the areas of gender economics, economics of education, and economics of science and innovation.

You can read more about Natalia Zinovyeva and her research here.

CEBI contact: Miriam Wust