About Open metrics lab

The acknowledged limitations of the commonly used metrics for scholarly outputs both constrain good effective research and research evaluation with inappropriate use. They hinder the adoption of indicators and metrics as enablers to ‘support the diverse qualities and impacts of UK research’ and ‘advance the open science agenda’. The Jisc Open Metrics Lab aims to support the development of new forms of research indicators to enable universities and funders to use a much wider range of data in a responsible way to inform research evaluation, planning and management.

In particular, the objectives are

  • To contribute to new forms of research indicators by facilitating experimentation with new and more open ways of creating them
  • To foster a community of researchers, domain experts and policy makers in the area of open metrics
  • To gather evidence from the experiments and community discussions to help inform emerging national actions around open metrics

Current work related to the project includes:

Previous work:

  • A briefing paper on the ‘complexities of citations’ by Cameron Neylon to support research funders and researchers in better understanding the assumptions and limits of existing citation-based metrics via a deeper understanding of citation (and associated scholarly practice), and to support the development of more reliable ways to assess the value of research for the purposes of evaluation, strategy and policy.

Contact information

We are interested in input and discussion with those interested in new and open metrics, you can contact us by following the links above.

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