In July the UK’s four higher education funding bodies published the draft submission guidance and panel criteria for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, for consultation before finalising them. Each makes mention of the use of bibliometrics, so I’d recommend reading them to all those involved in the intersection of REF and bibliometrics. As well as these two consultations, there is also a guidance document on environmental indicators.

In light of rumours that only DORA signatories will have access to UKRI funding in future, Lizzie Gadd explains why Loughborough has chosen an alternative path up the ‘responsible metrics mountain’, and why she believes all ‘mountain-climbers’ should be equally supported and rewarded. As one of a small, but seemingly growing, group of UK universities who have given serious thought to signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research

On 26th March 2018, the Lis-Bibliometrics Forum launched a practical course: Statistics for Responsible Metrics aimed to offer a bespoke training that focused exclusively on statistics for bibliometrics.

In this post, Stacy Konkiel (Director of Research Relations at Altmetric, a Digital Science company) summaries feedback of a recently posed question in identifying authors’ genders based upon names listed on ~2,000 journal articles–too large a corpus for manual analysis. Recently on the LIS-Bibliometrics listserv, Ruth Harrison (Imperial College London) posed a question on behalf of a patron who

Lizzie Gadd spent some time with the Research Intelligence Network of the Netherlands, and explains why she’s a little bit in love with the Dutch… A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Amsterdam talking to research evaluation colleagues from across the Netherlands.

Introducing the recently launched The Metrics Toolkit – Stacy Konkiel outlines what it is, why it was created, and how it can be used by practitioners working in research impact management. In January, The Metrics Toolkit launched to much interest from academics in the US and UK. The Metrics Toolkit is an online resource aimed at helping researchers and evaluators understand and responsibly use research metrics like journal acceptance

Katie Evans looks at the wider context of responsible metrics and asks what the ingredients of a culture of responsibility might be. I talk to academics about bibliometrics on an almost daily basis.

Lizzie Gadd considers whether “responsible” is something we do or something we are. I’ve made the point a few times recently that responsible bibliometrics requires responsible bibliometricians.  It is not just our systems and processes that need to be responsible, but us.  We are the ones supporting these activities in our institutions.

Ian Rowlands hammers another nail into the h-index’s coffin by explaining how it actually brings nothing new to the table and by showing how chance determines its outcome. The poor old h-index has come in for a lot of criticism recently, with a flood of papers pointing to its conceptual and practical shortcomings.  Is it time to bury it?

Lizzie Gadd reviews a new introductory text, “Measuring Research: what everyone needs to know” by Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière. The research community has been crying out for a decent primer on all things bibliometrics.  And now we have one. And it’s a good one – no doubt about that.  It’s well-written by two people who know what they’re talking about.

Dr Quentin Pope, a Liaison Librarian and subject specialised librarian with specific responsibilities for the library and information requirements of QUT School of Law, outlines how you can track citations in Law. The primary purpose of bibliographic reference research is to link references in citations of scholarly publications.