Lizzie Gadd argues that any commitment to responsible research assessment as outlined in DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) and other such manifestos needs to include action on global university rankings. Highlighting four fundamental critiques …
Category: DORA
Open but Unfair- The role of social justice in Open Access publishing
Stage one of the Open Access (OA) movement promoted the democratization of scholarly knowledge, making work available so that anybody could read it. However, publication in highly ranked journals is becoming very costly, feeding the same vendor capitalists that OA was designed to sidestep. In this Q&A, Simon Batterbury argues that when prestige is valued … Continued
Is our current research culture on the brink of major change?
The culture of research often appears timeless and self-evident. Despite the current system of research being critiqued for its lack of openness, diversity and at times quality, it has remained largely unchanged for at least a generation. In this post, Liz Allen, highlights how contrary to this view, a growing number of developments are currently taking place across different countries […]
Academic review promotion and tenure documents promote a view of open access that is at odds with the wider academic community
A critical issue for advocates of Open Access (OA) has been the persistent lack of institutional incentives for academics to engage with Open Access publishing. Drawing on their research into Review, Promotion and Tenure documents, a team at the Scholarly Communications Lab, including Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales and Erin McKiernan argue that when these key documents for research assessment […]
The “impact” of the Journal Impact Factor in the review, tenure, and promotion process
The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) – a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in a journal – has been widely critiqued as a measure of individual academic performance. However, it is unclear whether these criticisms and high profile declarations, such as DORA, have led to significant cultural change. In this post, Erin McKiernan, Juan Pablo Alperin and […]
The evaluative inquiry: a new approach to research evaluation
Contemporary research evaluation systems are often criticised for negative effects they can have on academic environments and even on knowledge production itself. Established in response to many of these criticisms, the evaluative inquiry is a new, less standardised approach to research assessment. Tjitske Holtrop outlines the four principles that give shape to the evaluative inquiry’s method: employing versatile methods; shifting […]
Let’s focus on the research process, not the outputs
The outsized importance of publications has meant too many research students focus on featuring papers in prestigous journals, despite having success in doing so feeling like something of a lottery. To Mattias Björnmalm, a strong focus on the research output instead of the research process is detrimental to research itself. Research is about increasing our understanding of the world and […]
Better, fairer, more meaningful research evaluation – in seven hashtags
Considering the future of research assessment, Elizabeth Gadd outlines how she believes research evaluation could be made better, fairer, and more meaningful. The resulting seven guiding principles, neatly framed as hashtags, range from understanding our responsibilities to researchers as people, through to ensuring our evaluations are a more formative process, offering valuable, constructive feedback. Imperial College recently held an event […]
Six principles for assessing scientists for hiring, promotion, and tenure
The negative consequences of relying too heavily on metrics to assess research quality are well known, potentially fostering practices harmful to scientific research such as p-hacking, salami science, or selective reporting. The “flourish or perish” culture defined by these metrics in turn drives the system of career advancement in academia, a system that empirical evidence has shown to be problematic […]
Book Review: Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences by Imad A. Moosa
Academics today have to publish to succeed. In Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences, Imad A. Moosa assesses the disastrous consequences of this view for academics, both personally and academically. Review by James Hartley. This review originally appeared on LSE Review of Books and is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UK license. Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits Versus Unintended Consequences. Imad […]