Considering the relative size of the United States and its worldwide standing in academic research, there has been less public commitment to reforming research assessment from American research institutions than in similarly positioned countries. To help understand the attitudes towards research assessment in the United States, Rushforth and De Rijcke interviewed administrators and senior faculty from American universities. While all those interviewed were familiar with potential problems of using metrics for assessment, they were generally unfamiliar with principles of responsible research assessment. When those principles were described to those interviewed, their responses were variable. Some agreed with the concepts behind responsible research assessment, some partially agreed, and some rejected the concepts on pragmatic grounds (e.g., saying that changing these common practices would be too disruptive).
This paper is part of Project TARA.
Rushforth A, De Rijcke S. Practicing responsible research assessment: Qualitative study of faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure assessments in the United States. Research Evaluation: rvae007. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvae007