About me

Welcome to my website and blog. I am a scholarly communications and research evaluation specialist working at Loughborough University leading on research culture & quality.  

My background and research interests

I am a qualified Librarian with over twenty years’ experience working in the field of scholarly communication as researcher, librarian and research manager.  I am the Chair of the INORMS Research Evaluation Group and the Vice-Chair of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).  I have worked with Professor James Wilsdon and Professor Stephen Curry to ‘revisit’ the Metric Tide report with a view to advising on the use of metrics in the next UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) and on the roll-out of responsible research assessment more broadly.

I have a PhD in the copyright ownership issues of scholarly activities, and a background in action research including the Jisc RoMEO project which led to the SHERPA RoMEO service. I frequently write, train, and present on scholarly communication topics relating to open research,  research culture and research evaluation. 

Committees and professional involvement

I am enormously proud to have established and to oversee a number of thriving national and international community networks.

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INORMS Research Evaluation Group (Chair).  It has been a great privilege to Chair the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group, established in 2018 to consider how best to ensure that research evaluation is meaningful, responsible and effective. The group consists of members representing research management societies across all continents except Antarctica! The group has focused on two main areas:

  • Rethinking the University Rankings. This work seeks to draw attention to the burgeoning influence of World University Rankings on the behaviours of universities, and to consider how they might be made fairer and more responsible. A set of principles for responsible rankings have been developed, for assessing six ranking agencies. The final ratings were made available in October 2020 as described in this blog post. Our attention has now turned to a mechanism by which universities can declare the many and varied ways they serve the world that are not captured by the rankings called More Than Our Rank.  The rationale for this work is outlined in this article and blog post. 
  • SCOPE framework for responsible research evaluation. This work sought to develop some briefing materials aimed at senior university leaders, to appraise them of developments in the world of responsible research evaluation and how sensible evaluation approaches actually lead to better decisions.  This led to the development of the ‘SCOPE‘ model of responsible research evaluation and Five Arguments to persuade HE Leaders to evaluate responsibly. SCOPE is now in use by a range of funders, publishers, and universities.

This work led to me receiving the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management Leadership.

Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Vice-Chair. In December 2022 I was elected Vice-Chair of the EUA and Science Europe-led Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment along with Dr Karen Stroobants. We will have the privilege of working with Professor Rianne Letschert and a talented Steering Board to support signatories to the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment to deliver on their commitments.

LIS-Bibliometrics (Founding Chair). Founded in 2010 with Jenny Delasalle, this is now a 1,000-strong group of global practitioners that seek to support their institutions in providing responsible bibliometric and research evaluation services. The Forum is supported by a Committee which I chaired between 20016-2022.  LIS-Bibliometrics has been the birthplace of many initiatives, such as:

  • Bibliometric Competencies Model. In 2016, as Chair of LIS-Bibliometrics I led on the commissioning of a set of bibliometric competencies, sponsored by a small research grant from Elsevier Research Intelligence Division. The work was undertaken by Dr Andrew Cox at the University of Sheffield, and Dr Sabrina Petersohn of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. The aim of the competency statements is to ensure that bibliometric practitioners are equipped to do their work responsibly and well.  This work has recently been updated by Committee members Hannelore Vanhaverbeke, Silvia Dobre and Dr Barbara Lanchos Barrantes.
  • Bibliometric & altmetric vendor study. In 2018 I led on a piece of work to better understand bibliometric practitioners’ usage of existing tools and services and to invite them to suggest ways in which they would like to see these improve. 

The Bibliomagician Blog. Under the auspices of LIS-Bibliometrics, in 2016 I led on the establishment of The Bibliomagician, a practitioner-to-practitioner blog for sharing best practice, intelligence and opinions relating to the responsible delivery of research evaluation services.  This blog hosts the Bibliometric Competencies, lists of responsible metrics policies, and some practitioner guides to the responsible use of some key citation bench-marking tools. As such, it is now a go-to source of guidance and support for Librarians and Research Managers globally.

ARMA Research Evaluation Special Interest Group (Co-Champion).  In 2015 I was invited to take on the role of Champion of the Association of Research Managers & Administrators (ARMA) Metrics SIG. In 2018 the name was changed to reflect the broader remit of the group.  Under the umbrella of the SIG I have successfully lobbied for two changes to the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). One was the running of an Equality Impact Assessment on the scoring of research outputs to ensure those with protected characteristics are not being discriminated by peer review. The second was the sharing of an additional cut of Clarivate citation data close to submission to ensure fair treatment of those HEIs without a subscription to Clarivate’s Incites tool.

LIS-Copyseek (Co-founder). Founded in 1997 with Andrew Brown, this has grown into a supportive community of copyright managers and practitioners in universities. It is a closed list to provide a safe space for seeking and sharing copyright knowledge. This group supported the UUK Copyright Negotiating and Advisory Committees successful referral of the CLA Licence to the Copyright Tribunal in 2001.  The management of LIS-Copyseek was handed over to Dr Jane Secker and Chris Morrison in 2019. 

Memberships & Accreditations (current)

Former Memberships

  • Advisory board member for ON-MERRIT (Observing and Negating Matthew Effects in Responsible Research & Innovation Transformation)
  • Steering Group member for two European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Projects:
    • European overview of career merit systems (lead: Janne Pölönen) &
    • Vision for research data in research careers (lead: Henriikka Mustajoki)
  • Advisory Panel member for Lancaster University’s Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation‘s Research Management, Evaluation and Culture Programme.
  • Advisory Group member for Wellcome Trust COVID-19 data sharing statement study