Researchers should be assessed on quality not quantity: here's how

By Lyn Horn, Director, Office of Research Integrity, University of Cape Town
Lex Bouter, Professor of Methodology and Integrity, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

How do you assess academic researchers for promotion or funding? This question has become ever more central in higher education settings since the 1980s saw substantial growth in investment in research. This significantly increased the number of researchers in the academic workforce and the need to assess their output for employment, promotion and other career advancements.

One response to the need to “scale up” researcher assessments was to introduce publication metrics. These are counts of publications and citations and more complex measures like the Hirsch…

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