Responsible research assessment

The University of Groningen has approved principles to promote the responsible assessment of research. This applies to evaluation of both individual researchers and of our major units of research assessment, our SEP institutes. The latter are evaluated once every six years following the national Dutch Strategy Evaluation Protocol (SEP), as part of our quality assurance cycle, described at our Quality Assurance Research pages. Evaluation of individual academic staff requires balanced assessment of one’s contributions to teaching, research, societal impact, open science, and team performance, as described at our Recognition & Reward web pages.

Below, we summarize evaluation practices to avoid and positive alternatives to adopt in research assessment, and in the recruitment, recognition and reward of individual researchers.

These principles are intended for all UG members who are involved in the assessment of researchers, research proposals or research teams, as well as for those who are the subject of such assessments.

Practices to avoid

• Avoid “quick and dirty” assessment of research based solely on narrow quantitative metrics such as journal name, JIF, h-index, or number of publications and raw citation counts taken in isolation.
• Do not use metrics designed to evaluate journals as a surrogate measure of article quality or in hiring and promotion decisions.
• Do not rank based on insignificant decimal places.
• Do not take a lack of available quantitative data as an indicator of performance.

Responsible practices

• When assessing researchers, consider individual differences and highlights from their entire portfolio of activities and contributions.
• When using metrics, make sure to:
  - balance quantitative assessment with expert peer-review,
  - use more than one metric to ensure robustness,
  - use normalized metrics to account for field, date and output type,
  - account for years active in academia when assessing ECRs.

• If research metrics are used in recruitment, promotion, nominations or other processes, clearly outline this in application documents.

When choosing to use research metrics, the selected metrics and their application should comply with the points above, and the principles they are based on. For further information, please consult the resources below.

Do you have a question or would like to give us your feedback? Contact dr. Jules van Rooij, Senior Advisor Research Policy, University Services, Research & Impact, Talent Funding & Quality.