University of Liverpool

• A signatory of DORA, the University of Liverpool established an institutional policy on the responsible use of metrics and an associated implementation plan in consultation with its research community.
• The document sets out a statement about the University’s approach to the use of metrics in research assessment spanning the whole institution.
• The Responsible Metrics at Liverpool webpage states that “staff involved in recruitment and assessment activities only to use metrics in conjunction with peer review and never in isolation, and to avoid the use of metrics related to venue of publication or individual metrics that are influenced by length of career.”
• The responsible metrics statement is seen as consistent with the recruitment of individuals from underrepresented groups whose contributions may not score well on quantitative metrics.
• The implementation plan includes investigating the needs for procedural changes where required and new or improved resources to train and support staff in responsible research assessment. The plan focused on awareness raising, and sought to support leadership, recruitment, internal staff recruitment (including promotions), and training.
• The results of the plan were released in 2021 but have only been published internally on the University’s Intranet. Further implementation of the plan into formal policy documents and procedures (e.g. advertising pro formas for external staff recruitment) is expected in April 2022.

The Project TARA team notes there was controversy in 2021 about alleged misuses of metrics in decisions over redundancies. See: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01991-z ; https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-views-of-the-uk-2021-9-how-should-dora-be-enforced/