I spent all of today attending the “In metrics we trust?” workshop organised jointly by HEFCE and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at Sussex University. This was part of the information-gathering process of HEFCE’s independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment;

Science has been extraordinarily successful at taking the measure of the world, but paradoxically the world finds it extraordinarily difficult to take the measure of science — or any type of scholarship for that matter. That is not for want of trying, as any researcher who has submitted a PhD thesis for examination or a manuscript for publication or an application for funding will know.

I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago at a Biochemical Society meeting on the subject of the Research Excellence Framework, the process that will assess UK academic research quality for the purpose of determining how a large tranche of public funding will be distributed between universities. I dealt in particular with the impact component, which will count for 20% of the assessment and has caused a degree of consternation.