Sick of Impact Factors. I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for research libraries to judge the relative merits of journals when allocating their subscription budgets, the impact factor is calculated annually as the mean number of citations to articles published in any given journal in the two preceding years.
But the real problem started when impact factors began to be applied to papers and to people, a development that Garfield never anticipated. I can’t trace the precise origin of the growth but it has become a cancer that can no longer be ignored. The malady seems to particularly afflict researchers in science, technology and medicine who, astonishingly for a group that prizes its intelligence, have acquired a dependency on a valuation system that is grounded in falsity. The trick will be to crowd-source the task. It doesn’t have to be this way. The SLOW University –work, time and well-being. Maggie O’Neill, Durham University Dialogues within and outwith the Higher Education sector are converging around the need for a socio-cultural shift towards slowing down the pace of work, life and consumption, improving well-being and providing counter narratives to processes of globalisation and the ‘Gridlock’ that Hale, Held and Young (2013) write about.
In a seminar series initiated at Durham University and a series of Blogs, colleagues and I have addressed the potential of the concept of the SLOW University for our experiences of work, life, time, well-being and the very meaning of the University in current times. Fast Academia in the UK In Higher Education the impact of marketization and neo-liberalism as well as digital technology is central to the experience of academics across the career spectrum. Fast Academia in North America and Canada Beyond the UK North American and Canadian colleagues have been writing about fast academia for some time. Business, Economics and Corporations. The rejection of metrics for the REF does not take account of existing problems of determining research quality.
Amidst heavy scepticism over the role of metrics in research assessments, Martin Smith wonders whether the flaws of the current system have been fully recognised. There is no system of research assessment that is perfect and peer review may well be a better, although problematic, measure of quality than metrics. But the REF has become disproportionate. The question that arises is whether a system of metrics, whilst still imperfect, would enable less time spent on assessing research and more time doing it?
Before the results of the 2014 REF are even finalised, HEFCE is beginning the process of reviewing the assessment process and in doing so is again considering the role of metrics in assessing the quality of research. Nevertheless, the rejection of metrics does not take account of the problems of existing REF. Image credit: neil conway on Flickr (CC BY 2.0) So metrics could make the system much more cost effective and remove the biases of a peer review system. About the Author. Aktualności - BRIDGE Info - Eksperci transferu nowych technologii. FCT — R&D Units — 2013 Evaluation Results.
2013 Evaluation of R&D Units The Regulation guiding this evaluation was under public consultation, as a result of which FCT received around 150 individual contributions as well as institutional contributions from the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities, several universities and faculties, professional and scientific societies and labour unions. All contributions informed the final version that is now published. Overview Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) wishes to carry out an international evaluation of Portuguese scientific research and technological development units, including those R&D Units that benefit from the status of Associate Laboratory, with the aim of reinforcing the role of research units as a fundamental pillar in underpinning a modern and competitive scientific system.
FCT encourages diverse organisational models, as long as effective. Eligibility Funding Funding for R&D units consists of two parts: How to apply Evaluation Deadlines and key dates Contacts. Bad news for academia in Europe. A Portuguese colleague (who has good reasons to remain anonymous) has brought to our attention some very important and worrisome recent events/developments pertaining to research funding in Portugal and Europe, which are described below. Academics in Europe (and also outside Europe) wil do well to pay close attention to these developments. This post serves as a warning, and a plea for help, to academics around Europe. The Portuguese Science Foundation, FCT, i.e. the Portuguese governmental agency responsible for the funding and assessment of national research, has recently announced the results of the last evaluation of the national research units in all scientific areas.
Research funding in Portugal, even in the humanities, comes under the heading "science". In a shift from previous reviews, FCT appointed the European Science Foundation, ESF, for this review. The results of the review of Mathematics and Physics research units are prima facie absurd. 1. Measuring the impact of university-business cooperation. Whilst there is no single driver for university-business cooperation, businesses, universities and students all value the benefits to the student experience and its contribution to the employability of students. There are many ways in which cooperation activities take place. Most cooperation activities involve more than one form of cooperation and may also change over time as activities mature, evolve, or reach the end of their lifespan. Through this study , numerous benefits of university-business cooperation in the field of education have been identified. These effects range from the tangible to the intangible, the direct to the indirect, and the quantitative to the qualitative.
The benefits of collaboration can be broadly described as falling into four categories, namely: The report shows that established methodologies for measuring, or assessing, the outcomes and impact of business-university cooperation in the field of education are quite limited. Nowe-perspektywy. Komercjalizacja_nauki_spol_INTERNET1.