  Purpose: Scholars often aim to conduct high quality research and their
success is judged primarily by peer reviewers. Research quality is difficult
for either group to identify, however, and misunderstandings can reduce the
efficiency of the scientific enterprise. In response, we use a novel term
association strategy to seek quantitative evidence of aspects of research that
associate with high or low quality. Design/methodology/approach: We extracted
the words and 2-5-word phrases most strongly associating with different quality
scores in each of 34 Units of Assessment (UoAs) in the Research Excellence
Framework (REF) 2021. We extracted the terms from 122,331 journal articles
2014-2020 with individual REF2021 quality scores. Findings: The terms
associating with high- or low-quality scores vary between fields but relate to
writing styles, methods, and topics. We show that the first-person writing
style strongly associates with higher quality research in many areas because it
is the norm for a set of large prestigious journals. We found methods and
topics that associate with both high- and low-quality scores. Worryingly, terms
associating with educational and qualitative research attract lower quality
scores in multiple areas. REF experts may rarely give high scores to
qualitative or educational research because the authors tend to be less
competent, because it is harder to make world leading research with these
themes, or because they do not value them. Originality: This is the first
investigation of journal article terms associating with research quality.
