A generalised linear model approach to predict the result of research evaluation

Peer review is still used as the main tool for research evaluation, but its costly and time-consuming nature triggers a debate about the necessity to use, alternatively or jointly with it, bibliometric indicators. In this contribution we introduce an approach based on generalised linear models that jointly uses former peer-review and bibliometric indicators to predict the outcome of UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. We use the outcomes of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 as peer-review indicators and the departmental h-indices for the period 2008–2014 as bibliometric indicators. The results show that a joint use of bibliometric and peer-review indicators can be an effective tool to predict the research evaluation made by REF.