A group of research funders, sector bodies and infrastructure experts are working together in partnership to promote the responsible use of research metrics.
The 2015 independent report The Metric Tide highlighted growing pressure on higher education institutions, researchers, funders and policymakers to use metrics in managing and assessing research. Metrics form part of an evolving and increasingly digital research environment, where data and analysis are playing an ever greater role. However, the current description, production and use of these metrics are at best experimental and open to misunderstanding, and can lead to negative effects and behaviours as well as positive ones.
A new forum for responsible metrics is being set up as a partnership between Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Research Councils UK (RCUK), Wellcome, Universities UK and Jisc to advance the agenda set out in The Metric Tide.
The forum will develop a programme of activities to support the responsible use of research metrics in higher education institutions and across the research community in the UK. This will include advice on, and work to improve, the data infrastructure that underpins metric use. In this way, the whole research community can benefit from the more judicious use of metrics.
In addition, the forum will offer advice to the UK higher education funding bodies on how quantitative indicators might be used in assessing research outputs and environments, as part of the funding bodies' consultation on arrangements for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise.
Professor David Price, vice-provost (research) at University College London (UCL), will chair the forum.
The forum's membership draws on representatives and experts from university management, academic leadership, research administration and research metrics. The five partners recognise the wide interest in this work and expect to contact and involve other stakeholders in discussions over the coming months.
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