I gave a panel presentation “Metrics are rubbish, but …” at the Association of Research Managers and Administrators Annual Conference, Liverpool, 7th June 2017.

The panel, “Doing metrics responsibly: how far have we come and what are the next steps“,  was organised by the ARMA Metrics Special Interest Group, and brought together speakers from industry, government and academia, as part of a discussion on the appropriate use of metrics,

.. and, not surprisingly give this micro-site, although my talk started “metrics are rubbish, but …”, it finished, “… people are far worse”!

Although this mini-site mainly talks about the dangers of human processes, there are of course many dangers of using metrics as a form of research assessment.

An article in the Journal of Electronic Publishing, “Counting research ⇒ directing research. The hazard of using simple metrics to evaluate scientific contributions. An EU experience.” by Kai Olsen and Alessio Malizia looks at this with a pan-European perspective, in particular comping the very inconsistent ways different countries use metrics.

As well as different ways of using information, the authors show how different countries may regard the same venue very differently.  This is particularly significant in countries which use venue as the main criteria directly against the recommendations for good practice in The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).