Why Metrics Cannot Measure Research Quality: A Response to the HEFCE Consultation

A thoughtful response to the HEFCE review on the use of research metrics.

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The Higher Education Funding Council for England are reviewing the idea of using metrics (or citation counts) in research assessment. We think using metrics to measure research quality is a terrible idea, and we’ll be sending the response to them below explaining why. The deadline for receiving responses is 12pm on Monday 30th June (to metrics@hefce.ac.uk). If you want to add an endorsement to this paper to be added to what we send to HEFCE, please write your name, role and institutional affiliation below in the comments, or email either ms140[at]soas.ac.uk or p.c.kirby[at]sussex.ac.uk before Saturday 28th June. If you want to write your own response, please feel free to borrow as you like from the ideas below, or append the PDF version of our paper available here.


Response to the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment
June 2014

Authored by:
Dr Meera Sabaratnam, Lecturer…

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Top posts on Progressive Geographies this week

The Political Geographies of FIFA and World Cup football

Ben Anderson, Encountering Affect: Capacities, Apparatuses, Conditions – first chapter online

Graham Harman’s Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political due out in October

Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds – new book series edited by Jason Dittmer and Ian Klinke

David Storey reviews The Birth of Territory in Journal of Historical Geography

Paul Rabinow on Foucault & the Contemporary

Authority and Political Technology workshop – keynote audio recordings

Archipelago/Funambulist Conversation between Léopold Lambert and Stuart Elden on Territory and Volume

The work of editing – adding references to translations

Intervention – ‘Merkel’s Geography: Maps and Territory in China’

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Laruelle Bibliography (English & French)

This looks a really helpful resource for anyone interested in Laruelle. Thanks to Michael O’Rourke for the alert.

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Atlas of Inuit Arctic Trails

An interesting new project on mapping the Arctic.

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To Pass On a Good Earth: The Life and Work of Carl O. Sauer

To Pass On a Good Earth: The Life and Work of Carl O. Sauer – Michael Williams with David Lowenthal and William M. Denevan, recently published by University of Virgina Press.

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To Pass On a Good Earth is the candid and compelling new biography of one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive and influential scholars. The legendary “Great God beyond the Sierras,” Carl Ortwin Sauer is America’s most famed geographer, an inspiration to both academics and poets, yet no book-length biography of him has existed until now.

This Missouri-born son of German immigrants contributed to many fields, with a versatility rare in his time and virtually unknown today. Sauer explored plant and animal domestication, the entry of Native Americans into the continent, their transformation of the land into prairies and cultivated fields, and subsequent European enterprise that fueled prosperity but also triggered environmental degradation and the loss of cultural diversity. Providing profound and invaluable insights into the human occupance, cultivation–and often ruination–of the earth, Sauer revolutionized our understanding of the impact of European conquest of the New World.

 

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The Accidental Playground reviewed

New review at the Society and Space open site

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Barry Stocker on Foucault’s Lectures on Subjectivity and Truth

The second part of lecture 2; the first part of lecture 3 and the second part.

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The Political Geographies of FIFA and World Cup football

FIFA_regional_confederations_mapInteresting piece at Political Geography Now on the political geographies of FIFA and World Cup football – who is allowed to compete, in which region, and how do these teams match-up with recognised states.

 

Posted in Football, Politics, Territory | 2 Comments

Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds – new book series edited by Jason Dittmer and Ian Klinke

Geopolitical Bodies, Material Worlds – Rowman International

 Series edited by Jason Dittmer and Ian Klinke

This series publishes studies that originate in a range of different fields that are nonetheless linked through their common foundation: a belief that the macro-scale of geopolitics is composed of trans-local relations between bodies and materials that are only understandable through empirical examination of those relations. It is the interaction of these elements that produces the forces that shape global politics, often with outcomes that differ from the predictions of macro-scaled theories. This world poses questions: how do materialities such as the built environment and the body reproduce global power structures, how are they caught up in violent transformations and how do they become sites of resistance? How do assemblages of human and non-human elements both fortify and transform political space? What possibilities for political change are latent within the present?

The series seeks proposals for monographs and carefully crafted edited collections that are ecumenical with regard to theory and approach but rigorous in their consideration of materiality and embodiment. Drawing on work from across international relations, political geography, science and technology studies, and political anthropology, the series will initially prioritise three strands of research: The first of these will attract work on global politics and the built environment, from hardened landscapes of warfare to more fluid and networked political spaces. The second strand will look beyond material landscapes, to the geopolitical entanglements of bodies, discourses, and technological networks. The final theme will target research on the earth as an active geopolitical agent, emphasizing the vertical dimensions of geopolitics and its relations with the environment.

For more information, see the Series Editors’ blog: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/news/geopolbodies

Posted in Books, Politics, Publishing, Territory | 2 Comments

Graham Harman’s Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political due out in October

LatourGraham Harman’s new book Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political is due out in October. Details in the Pluto catalogue (via his blog).

Posted in Bruno Latour, Graham Harman | 3 Comments