Vice-Provost (Research) to chair new Forum for Responsible Metrics

The forum is being set up as a partnership between HEFCE, Research Councils UK, Wellcome, Universities UK and Jisc to advance the agenda set out in the 2015 independent report 'The Metric Tide', which 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.

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 Price said: "From my work at UCL and as a REF sub-panel chair, I am keenly aware of both the utility and power of metrics used wisely, but also of the great hazards if they are abused or applied without the necessary understanding of their limitations. I know there is a great deal of insight across the sector on how we can make responsible use of metrics, sensitive to their sources and context, and I am determined that the forum will make a decisive contribution in accelerating the adoption of good practices in all UK research organisations."

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.

Links

• Forum for Responsible Metrics
• Professor David Price
• HEFCE press release
• 'The Metric Tide: Report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management'

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• Professor David Price

Source

• Office of the Vice-Provost (Research)