Look beyond publication records, urges report | Nature

A group of European funding agencies and research councils is calling for organizations to adopt new measures to evaluate researchers and grant proposals, expanding beyond conventional metrics such as publication records or previous grant success.

The suggested measures include assessing a researcher’s output or grant proposal for its potential for economic and societal impact or commercialization, and its contribution to knowledge or policy.

In a report, the Brussels-based consortium Science Europe also calls for the elimination of bias towards characteristics such as ethnicity and disability in peer review and researcher evaluations, increasing transparency around all assessment processes and standardizing grant-application procedures across the European Union.

In its study, the group examines how member organizations make decisions about grant awards, hiring, promotions and peer-review assignments. The report also includes recommendations that members can pass on to universities in their countries. “Before you can make any change, you have to understand how the system works or doesn’t work,” says study chair Bonnie Wolff-Boenisch . “It’s like a baseline for deciding the next steps.”