2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Metrics for Science Policy and Policy for Metrics

Metrics are being increasingly used in science policy at many levels, from funding agencies to university departments. Such wide diffusion is producing behavioral changes in managers and researchers alike, with both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, there is more transparency about the outputs produced by publicly funded research, and the use of a wide variety of data -- including the extraction of information from social media -- is allowing evaluators to quantitatively grasp research dimensions previously hidden. On the negative side, potential biases in metrics may contort incentives to researchers, sometimes with undesirable consequences. Given the consequences of the use of metrics, a case can be made for the need to support the effective and responsible development and use of these metrics. This session will discuss what type of policy measures or initiatives might be useful to support appropriate usage of metrics, particularly in research assessment. Various initiatives, such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, have made clear that policy for metrics concerns not only the metrics developers but also metrics users often involved in assessment: How might they best interact? The session aims to explore these diverse areas with speakers from three constituencies: the director of a scientometrics institute, a university administrator, and the head of scientific publishing at a scientific nonprofit organization.