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But this avoids the central issue - how can we know if a paper helps people make progress on solving problems? Citation counts are just a proxy for exactly that
by czr80 13y ago
But this avoids the central issue - how can we know if a paper helps people make progress on solving problems? Citation counts are just a proxy for exactly that - to move away from them you have to come up with a better proxy or evaluation method.
- betterunix 13y agoConferences are a good starting point: researchers meet each other, share work, judge others' work, and discuss research. I am not saying it is a complete solution, just that citation counts are a terrible solution that encourage the wrong things (and that we need something better).
- testbro 13y agoIn the UK universities' research output are assessed by HEFCE using the "Research Excellence Framework" (which replaced the Research Assessment Exercise) [1]. Sadly, it suffers the same problem of being another metric [2]. It's a time sink for academics and it fosters a cutthroat atmosphere in the run-up. I heard some unconfirmed rumours that academics not submitting case studies to the REF will have their contracts re-assessed. I think this exposes the bigger problem of metrics in general. It's hard to determine how much impact research has, particularly in the short term. I'd be interested to see what the outcome of the REF is, but I remain sceptical and apathetic towards it, as does everyone else I've spoken to. [1] : http://www.ref.ac.uk/ http://www.ref.ac.uk/ [2] : I get the impression it does anyway - I'm not involved in it this round.