The Australian Research Council is in the market for new research performance metrics, but hard numbers can’t account for the impact of life experience.
But as ARC Act Reviewer Margaret Sheil warns, “the more seemingly precise or informative a new indicator, especially if applied as a solution, the less scrutiny there is of the quality and opportunities for individuals to whom it is applied … talent is broadly distributed; opportunity is not.”
It’s a problem for people, as the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA) claims, “at an individual level, researchers everywhere who do not fit the expected norm of a scholar (white, able bodied, male) face multiple barriers such as conscious and unconscious bias, racism, misogyny, career breaks and societal expectations about caring responsibilities.”
But also nations, with CODATA data pointing to five interconnected inequities in the global science system,
- “identity-based inequities shaping individuals participation
- recognition of research systems
- access to infrastructure and funding
- “increasingly commercialised publishing”
- “data colonialism” where “big tech companies based in high-income countries gain control over digital infrastructure to dominate nations, politically, economically and socially.”
And CODATA dismisses as ‘insufficient’ UNESCO’s “open science” initiative (“academic freedom, gender-transformative approaches and the specific challenges of scientists …in developing countries”).
“There are significant power asymmetries involved and open science as a solution is not necessarily sufficient or even effective,” the Committee claims.
“The inequities in support, visibility and capacities generate a vicious cycle whereby researchers who are less able to participate in open science have less and less incentives.”
