Rewards and incentives based on conventional research metrics minimise opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds and with interrupted careers, and they restrict innovation and cooperation across universities, government and industry.
The limitations of the existing system, and what can be done about them, are set out in a major report commissioned by Chief Scientist Cathy Foley, from the Australian Council of Learned Academies, supported by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Key findings include:
- common cultures of research performance create conformity and can exclude long-term research;
- researchers specialise, which restricts mobility between industry, government and universities;
- hiring decisions can depend on metrics, regardless of “disciplinary and contextual differences;”
- there are opportunities for system-wide changes, such as, data to identify potential recruitment bias and researcher potential, but care is needed, lest they are “inappropriately developer or inappropriately applied.”
ACOLA proposes six pillars for research assessment
- transparency: a common language to, “underpin accurate judgements of fair, reasonable, reasonable and comparative assessment across disciplines, career stages and sectors.” Including, a standardised framework for competencies, indicators and metrics, aligned with “international good practice;”
- integrity, accountability, equity and diversity in assessment;
- collegiality: including metrics that recognise good leadership;
- collaboration: better value multi, inter and trans-disciplinary research;
- leadership: “new technologies and open science present opportunities to develop more efficient new tools and metrics, especially regarding leadership.”
A Key Take-out
“There are beneficiaries of the current system, however it also creates challenges and ingrains distortions and biases that in aggregate have a greater negative and impact than positive impact on the innovation and effectiveness of our research sector.”
