Overarching Considerations for Committees
- Each application will be considered and assessed on its own merit against the Assessment Criteria for the level in question, taking into equal account evidence of both inputs and outputs. The generic Indicators of Excellence as well as the respective School/Institution-specific Indicators of Excellence (where applicable) provide examples of evidence of fulfilment of these criteria. Assessment against the criteria requires the exercise of good judgement, balance and objective evidence.
- Each committee should be mindful of the existence of unconscious biases – both in themselves and others - and consider how these biases might affect how assessments are made and how they affect objective decision-making. Committee members should constructively challenge any potential implicit or explicit biases they observe in the assessment process, whether in themselves or others, to ensure fairness and promote inclusion.
Whilst it is important to ensure a fair and consistent approach is taken to evaluating excellence, the University recognises that certain metrics, such as student feedback and bibliometrics, have their limitations. Committees should, therefore, be mindful of the importance of judgement and be aware of the limitations of metrics when making their assessment. By signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) the University has acknowledged that intellectual content is more important than publication metrics, the identity of a journal, a book publisher, or other venue for sharing research outputs, and that quality is prioritised over quantity. While terms such as ‘high quality research’ or ‘influential research’ are acceptable, any reference to ‘impact’ or ‘impactful’ research should be explained in terms of scholarly impact upon the research field or societal/economics/other impact on research ‘users’ outside of it (e.g. practitioners, policymakers, industry, the public), to avoid any misinterpretation of ‘impact’ as denoting ‘journal impact factor’.
Assessments must not make any reference to “high impact”, “high quality”, “influential”, “high ranking”, “top tier” or “Q1 (1st quartile)” journals or use any other such language that suggests a journal, publisher or other dissemination outlet is superior. Assessment must be made on the quality and the impact of the research itself, and not on where it has been published or shared. It must be inclusive of different output types, to include publicly available outputs such as articles, books, book chapters, reports, exhibitions, datasets, software, artefacts, etc. Committees are directed to the University’s guidance on the Responsible Use of Metrics in Research Assessment, and are expected to follow these principles. See also the DORA guidelines and the University’s Open Research Position Statement.
- It is recognised that the lines between research leadership (or education or clinical leadership) and service are not always clear-cut and that there may be differences between disciplines. Assessments should, therefore, be made within the context of relevant disciplinary norms, taking care to avoid double-counting and ensuring that decisions are objective and clearly documented.