What can and can’t metrics tell us?

Tuesday 26th April sees the third of four interactive workshops on the role of metrics in academic life, run by the Academics Writing  project, alongside  Masud Khokhar and Tanya Williamson of Lancaster University library, called What can and can’t metrics tell us?

Higher education institutions in the UK have to justify how they spend their research funding and demonstrate that this spending resulted in high quality research outcomes. This is achieved mainly through the REF (research excellence framework) and bibliometric measures associated with it. The research activity of individual academics, departments and institutions is measured in various ways and the resulting data used for a range of purposes. But are we asking the right questions? And are we using the data in an appropriate way?

This interactive workshop is part of the Designing the Academic Self series, and explores the ways in which quantitative indicators of research output are used, by both institutions and individuals. We begin by exploring what exactly are we trying to measure, and consider how well are the metrics we generate can do this. We will talk about case studies of how metrics are currently being used in different UK institutions, and will consider the potential positive and negative effects of these on academics.

To book a place, visit Eventbrite