University Senate Spring Plenary 2017: The Role of Research Metrics in Faculty Evaluation

March 29, 2017 - 12pm to 3 pm - Assembly Room, William Pitt Union

No faculty member can be reduced to a summary of statistics. Yet, metrics abound to measure the myriad of ways that research is constructed and disseminated and how the researcher impacts their field. How do metrics matter in the evaluation of a faculty member’s research? What are the best practices for using these metrics? What is the balance of data and peer judgment? The senate plenary will focus on responding to these questions and examining the responsible use of research metrics in faculty evaluation. Two highly distinguished academic experts will be joining us to inform and guide the conversation.

Please join us as our two speakers, Diana Hicks and Cassidy Sugimoto, and a local response panel discuss the changing ways that data influences evaluation.

Further reading and various perspectives

Video recording of the plenary

April 13 University Times write-up

As a lead-up event, the University Senate sponsored an open discussion on March 14, 2017 What bibliometrics tells us about the research enterprise with Dr Berenika M Webster, ULS and Ms. Andrea Ketchum, HSLS.

This talk gave an overview of bibliometrics, a field of study dedicated to uncovering organizational and social structures of scholarly disciplines, based on analyses of their literatures. Analyses of the formal aspects of scholarly literatures, including citations, can provide a wealth of information about scholarly processes and the growth of disciplines.  It focused on a few aspects of scholarly communications that need to be considered when designing evaluation framework based on citation data.  We hope you will view the video.