Metrics: how to handle them responsibly | Times Higher Education

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-07-10

Summary:

" ... Amid concerns about the growing use – and abuse – of quantitative measures in universities, a major new review examines the role of metrics in the assessment of research, from the REF to performance management ... If you have recently received an email from human resources announcing that you are expected to publish three papers over the next year in journals with an impact factor of at least 20, there is one crumb of comfort. You will at least be able to enter the misguided missive for a new, annual 'bad metrics' prize, modelled on the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award for cringeworthy descriptions of hanky-panky .. Metrics – numbers – give at least the impression of objectivity, and they have become increasingly important in the management and assessment of research ever since citation databases such as the Science Citation Index, Scopus and Google Scholar became available online in the early 2000s. Metrics are particularly popular in political circles. The government commissions a report on UK research strength every couple of years from Elsevier, owner of Scopus, and its most recent headline finding – that with just 3.2 per cent of global research spending and 4.1 per cent of the world’s researchers, the UK receives 11.6 per cent of all citations worldwide and produces 15.9 per cent of the most highly cited articles – is frequently trotted out as proof that the country punches above its weight.  Within universities, too, metrics have been widely adopted, not merely for institutional benchmarking but also, increasingly, for managing the performance of academics. A recent study byTimes Higher Education suggested that individual metrics-based targets of one form or another have been implemented at about one in six UK universities ..."

Link:

https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/metrics-how-to-handle-them-responsibly

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Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.ref oa.hefce oa.uk oa.funders oa.mandates oa.impact oa.quality oa.universities oa.jif ru.sparc15 oa.hei oa.policies oa.metrics

Date tagged:

07/10/2015, 08:30

Date published:

07/10/2015, 11:50