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Measuring your Publications' Impact: Responsible use of metrics

Find out how you can measure and monitor the impact of your publications

CoARA

 

The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment

The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment sets a shared direction for changes in assessment practices for research, researchers and research performing organisations, with the overarching goal to maximise the quality and impact of research. The Agreement includes the principles, commitments and timeframe for reforms and lays out the principles for a Coalition of organisations willing to work together in implementing the changes.

Signatories commit to a common vision, which 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.

Irish signatories

Frameworks for responsible use of metrics in research evaluation

Bibliometrics provide useful quantitative measures of citation impact but do not on their own provide a complete picture of research impact. Because they reduce complex research outputs to a single number, they have often been misapplied and misunderstood, taken as a proxy for research impact. They report only on the impact of publications and do not capture to breadth of research activity across all disciplines. 
 
There is increasing recognition worldwide of the importance of responsible use of bibliometrics in research assessment. A number of frameworks have emerged to assist with the move to responsible use of research metrics, amongst them ‘The Metric Tide’, the ‘Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics’, and ‘The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment’ (DORA). 
 
Many research funders, including Science Foundation Ireland and the Health Research Board, have signed up to DORA. The Wellcome Trust will  require the organisations they fund to publicly commit to the DORA principles from January 2021. 

Responsible use of research metrics

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