by Beth Staats
Quick Summary
The primary selling point of metrics for the academic researcher was the promise that the proof provided by such metrics of the value of one’s work would be the increased and long-term funding needed to do such work.
The primary selling point of metrics for the academic researcher was the promise that the proof provided by such metrics of the value of one’s work would be the increased and long-term funding needed to do such work. Prestige, tenure, influence, even celebrity -- these have been stepping stones to securing significant (and much-needed) grants to educational institutions of all sizes and types. But have these incentives been subverted over time or in specific ways? Is the drive to publish-or-perish the best mechanism for encouraging substantive study? The integrity of the publishing process and perhaps the integrity of the funding model for higher education itself is at stake. This session will look at some of the troubling questions surrounding the incentives offered to the working scholar, researcher, and scientist.
Presenters in this virtual conference will consider the following questions:
· How might institutions and research facilities best weld available indicators of use or influence into a meaningful metric?
· If individual scholarship is best gauged by the value assigned to it by the larger community, then what collection of metrics should be gathered for purposes of determining appropriate rewards in the context of academia?
· How might institutions better address this challenge and reward faculty appropriately?
