Measuring and Maximising UK Research Impact

Harnad, S. (2003) Measuring and Maximising UK Research Impact. Times Higher Education Supplement .

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Abstract

It is for the sake of its impact that research is supported by tax-payers, for impact that researchers are salaried and promoted by their universities and funded to do their research, for impact that prizes and honours are awarded to scholars and scientists, for impact that their universities receive overhead funding and prestige. Citation counts of papers whose full texts are freely accessible on the web are over 300% higher than those of papers that are only accessible on paper, or on toll-access websites. So all of UK research stands to increase its impact dramatically by putting it all online. All that is needed is that every UK researcher have a standardised online CV, continuously updated with all the performance indicators the RAE wishes to count, with every journal paper listed in that CV linked to its full-text in that university's online "eprint" archive (front-matter and bibliography only for books). Webmetric assessment engines can do all the rest, harvesting and analyzing the data. At Southampton we have already designed (free) software for creating the RAE CVs and eprint archives, along with citebase, a webmetric engine that analyses citations and downloads. The only thing still needed is a UK university policy of self-archiving all research output to maximize its impact (we have a draft model for that too) encouraged by a UK national policy of self-archiving all research output to assess its impact.

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