Research Guides: Research Impact Guide: Responsible Use of Metrics

Librarian

she/her/hers

Contact:

936-294-4567
eowens@shsu.edu
NGL 223D
ORCID: 0000-0001-9520-9314

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Subjects: OER: Open (or Free) Educational Materials, Scholarly Communication

"Unfortunately, there isn't a simple formula to measure the reach, influence, mobilisation of knowledge and impact in society. The journey to impact is far more heterogeneous than something measured by an impact factor calculation.

"We need a far more nuanced and sophisticated approach using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. A combination of the classic quantitative measures, combined with storytelling, narratives around how research makes that journey to broader society. That can’t be done in a number."

- Tony Roche, CEO of Emerald Publishing (source)

Principles of Responsible Metrics Use

Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics Proposes 10 principles for the measurement of research performance; "distillation of best practice in metrics-based research assessment"
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) Excerpt: "The outputs from scientific research are many and varied, including: research articles reporting new knowledge, data, reagents, and software; intellectual property; and highly trained young scientists. Funding agencies, institutions that employ scientists, and scientists themselves, all have a desire, and need, to assess the quality and impact of scientific outputs. It is thus imperative that scientific output is measured accurately and evaluated wisely..."
Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Agreement "Our vision is that the assessment of research, researchers and research organisations recognises the diverse outputs, practices and activities that maximise the quality and impact of research. This requires basing assessment primarily on qualitative judgement, for which peer review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators."
Hong Kong Principles for Assessing Researchers "We have developed the Hong Kong Principles (HKPs)...with a specific focus on the need to drive research improvement through ensuring that researchers are explicitly recognized and rewarded for behaviors that strengthen research integrity. We present five principles: responsible research practices; transparent reporting; open science (open research); valuing a diversity of types of research; and recognizing all contributions to research and scholarly activity."
Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication Research is international. That's the way we like it! Multilingualism keeps locally relevant research alive. Protect it! Disseminating research results in your own language creates impact. Endorse it! It is vital to interact with society and share knowledge beyond academia. Promote it! Infrastructure of scholarly communication in national languages is fragile. Don't lose it!
Principles of Research Assessment and Management from the University of Bath "The principles that outline our approach to research assessment and management, including the responsible use of quantitative indicators." (University of Bath)
Research Evaluation Working Group of INORMS The aim of this working group is to develop a joint programme of work and share experiences and best practice with a view to ensuring research evaluation is meaningful, responsible and effective. The working group is a part of INORMS; INORMS was formed in 2001 to bring together research management societies and associations from across the globe...to enable interactions, sharing of good practice, and joint activities between the member societies.
SCOPE Process for Evaluating Responsibly "What practitioners really need is some solid step-by-step guidance as to how to test their existing evaluation procedures or go about establishing new ones... [R]esulted in a model we’ve called ‘SCOPE’ that we hope will help those seeking a process for doing research evaluation responsibly." Laura Himanen and Lizzie Gadd, INORMS Research Evaluation Working Group

Making FAIReR Assessments Possible

(click on graphic to enlarge)

Making FAIReR Assessments Possible
Final report of EOSC Co-Creation Projects European Overview of Career Merit Systems and Vision for Research Data in Research Careers

The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics: 10 principles to guide research evaluation

Slides: Research Impact

These are the slides from a presentation given by the Scholarly Communication Librarian at the SHSU ORSP Scholarly Innovation Summit (fall 2022).

Research Impact Slides (PDF)

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