A decade on since their inception, Andy Tattersall considers how academics can make use of altmetrics in ways that go beyond counts and metrics. When the term altmetrics first appeared in September 2010, originating in a Tweet by ImpactStory co-founde…
Category: metrics
When it comes to research culture, why do folktales carry more weight than evidence?
Academia is nominally an evidence-based profession, but when developing policy around academic careers and management, higher education institutions more often that not draw on individual experience and anecdote, rather than systematic knowledge. Discu…
University rankings and their critics – a symbiotic relationship?
Despite being the focus of sustained critique university rankings have proven a resilient feature of academic life. Considering the recent moves by U.S. institutions to remove themselves from rankings, Julian Hamann and Leopold Ringel explore this rela…
Can blogs change the world? Uncovering pathways to policy influence through LSE Blogs
For some academics being asked to write a research blogpost can feel like shouting into the void, another addition to a constantly expanding mass of online content. However, the network of connections that can spring out of these engagements and their …
Book Review: The Surprisingly Imprecise History of Measurement
In this cross-post, Christie Aschwanden reviews James Vincent’s Beyond Measure, The Hidden History of Measurement, finding a book which highlights the social complexity and limits to measurement, whilst at the same time opening up new ways of kno…
Reforming research assessment in Spain requires greater university autonomy
Following the publication of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment under the auspices of the European Commission, countries across Europe are reconsidering their research assessment systems and policies and how they might align more closely to…
The dream of ‘editormetrics’ – Why a FAIR dataset of journal editors would benefit all researchers
Book Review: A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making by Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel
In A Handbook for Wellbeing Policy-Making, Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel offer a new guide to wellbeing-driven public policy, focusing on the proposal to replace GDP with wellbeing as the key metric to assess societal progress. With the book compr…
Bibliometrics at large – The role of metrics beyond academia
The role of bibliometrics, such as impact factors and h-indices, in shaping research has been well documented. However, what function do these measures have beyond the institutional contexts in which, for better or worse, they were designed? Commenting…
Rankings affect the financial sustainability of English universities, just not for the elite
University rankings are often presumed to be value neutral, creating equal opportunities for the institutions they order to compete around fixed indicators of quality. However, highlighting new collaborative research, Roxana Baltaru shows how universit…