The Metric Tide

Steering group | Review scope | Media coverage

Citations, journal impact factors, h-indices, even tweets and Facebook likes – there are no end of quantitative measures that can now be used to try to assess the quality and wider impacts of research. But how robust and reliable are such metrics, and what weight – if any – should we give them in the future management of research systems at the national or institutional level?

These questions were explored over the past year by the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management.

The review was announced by David Willetts, then Minister for Universities and Science, in April 2014, and has been supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). It was chaired by James Wilsdon, with a multidisciplinary steering group of experts in research funding, research policy, publishing, scientometrics, university management and administration.

Steering group | Review scope | Media coverage

The review’s final report is available to download free here:

The Metric Tide: Final Report with executive summary

The Metric Tide: Literature Review (Supplementary Report I)

The Metric Tide: Correlation analysis of REF2014 scores and metrics (Supplementary Report II)