About the INORMS Research Evaluation Group
The INORMS Research Evaluation Group (REG), previously known as REWG, was established in 2018 to consider how best to ensure that research evaluation is meaningful, responsible and effective. To this end, group members representing the research management societies that make up INORMS have focused their attention on two work-packages. The first seeks to guide senior university leaders and practitioners in the adoption and practice of responsible research evaluation. To this end it has designed the SCOPE framework for, and a series of ‘five arguments’ for engaging senior leaders with, responsible research evaluation. The second initiative focuses on emphasizing the increasing influence of Global University Rankings on university behavior, expressing reservations about the emphasis on scoring and competition. Discussions on the foundational data of these rankings are facilitated, and potential alternatives are explored by the group. Additionally, in response to specific problematic features and effects of global university rankings, the group has introduced the More Than Our Rank initiative, with the goal of reconsidering the utilization of rankings.
Group membership is via nomination from INORMS member organizations. Please contact your membership organization in the first instance. Anyone can join the wider INORMS REG community via the INORMS-RES-EVAL discussion list.
SCOPE Framework for Research Evaluation
The International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group (REG) brings together representatives from a range of global member research management societies to work towards better, fairer, and more meaningful research evaluation. The SCOPE framework for research evaluation is a five-stage model for evaluating responsibly. It is a practical step-by-step process designed to help research managers, or anyone involved in conducting research evaluations, in planning new evaluations as well as check existing evaluations.
Why SCOPE?
Research evaluation has historically been indicator- and data-driven and therefore limited to a small number of publication-based citation metrics or research income based measures. In response to sector concerns about poor research evaluation practices, the SCOPE Framework was developed by the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group (REG) as a practical way of implementing responsible research evaluation principles to design robust evaluations.
More Than Our Rank
The More Than Our Rank initiative has been developed in response to some of the problematic features and effects of the global university rankings. It provides an opportunity for academic institutions to highlight the many and various ways they serve the world that are not reflected in their ranking position. It is an initiative for institutions who are proud of their ranking position but also recognize the limitations of the indicators used, and for those who feel that the rankings do not reflect their strengths or institutional mission. Every institution in the world is much more than their rank. This initiative is simply an opportunity to publicly say so and explain why.
Rethinking Global University Ranking
The Rankings sub-group created a system for grading international university rankers in an effort to draw attention to the discrepancy between the methodologies used by some of the global university rankings and generally accepted best practices in responsible research evaluation. The method is based on a community-developed list of standards for impartial and responsible university evaluation, which was converted into a set of questions by which each standard may be assessed.
INORMS Research Evaluation Team
Chair:
Dr Elizabeth Gadd
Head of Research Culture & Assessment, Loughborough University, UK
Dr. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd chairs the INORMS Research Evaluation Group and is Vice Chair of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). In 2022, she co-authored ‘Harnessing the Metric Tide: Indicators, Infrastructures & Priorities for UK Research Assessment’. Lizzie is the Head of Research Culture & Assessment at Loughborough University, UK and champions the ARMA Research Evaluation SIG. She previously founded the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum and The Bibliomagician Blog and was the recipient of the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management and Leadership.
Deputy Chair:
Tanja Strøm
Senior Research Adviser at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
She has been working in research administration since 2015. Prior to that she spent close to 20 years in different libraries as Librarian, Project Manager, Service Development Coordinator and Manager of Digital Library Services.
Her main responsibilities entail Open Research (Open Science), scholarly communication, digital researcher profiles, and responsible evaluation of research. In addition, she advises on policy and program offerings, gives lectures, supervises, and provides research support on these topics.
She has held a number of projects in the areas of Open Access, service development, research assessment and research information, and has spoken on these and many other RMA related subjects, for various sector bodies and events. She has been actively involved in a range of training, talks and numerous conferences and workshops at local-, national- and international level.Tanja has served on several national committees, project boards and working groups.
She is a passionate advocate of transparency in science and responsible research evaluation.
Members:
Dr Baron Wolf
Assistant Vice President for Research Strategy & Data Analytics. Chief of Staff, Office of the Vice Present for Research, University of Kentucky, USA
Dr. Wolf has more than 15 years of experience working in institutional research, effectiveness, and strategic planning. He has served on state and national boards and has presented at national conferences across the country on topics related to strategic planning, use of metrics, and data analytics. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Berea College, a Master’s in Public Administration from Eastern Kentucky University, and a PhD in Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation from the University of Kentucky.
Baron provides data analysis, strategic planning, advises on policy and program offerings. Works collaboratively with other research administration units on campus to provide robust business intelligence tools to faculty, staff, and leadership to improve decision making. Additionally, he serves as Chief of Staff and manages the day-to-day operations of the office. Dr. Wolf currently serves on the national advisory board for the University Benchmarking Project, a new national data collection in the United States aimed at collecting administrative unit data including student affairs, research administration, information technology, financial services, dining services, and many others. The project is a new effort of the National Higher Education Benchmarking Institute.
Dr Erica Conte
Director of Funding Strategy and Stewardship, Unity Health Toronto, Canada
Dr. Erica Conte obtained her PhD in Physiology from Western University (Canada). She has been working in research administration and research leadership for 9 years within a hospital-based research institution. She supports the full breath of health research spanning fundamental science through to translational research, health services/policy and knowledge translation.
In her current role as Director of Funding Strategy and Stewardship, she is involved in the responsible research evaluation of both the institution and its individual scientist. She is also very interested to understand, or help further develop, best practices for incorporating aspects of equity, diversity and inclusion into responsible research evaluation. Erica’s work also involves all pre-award support for grants and awards, as well as working with local Foundations to raise research awareness in the public and increase philanthropy to support research priorities. Erica has been an active member of the Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA) since 2014, during which time she has held several volunteer positions to help advance the field of research administration in Canada.
Dr Fang Xu
Associate Professor, Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Dr. Fang Xu holds a PhD degree in Management Science at University of Kent. She is now an associate professor of the Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is also a member of Elsevier B.V. International Advisory Panel, the secretary general of Science and Technology Evaluation Special Committee of China Science and Technology Policy Studies, and the secretary general of Evaluation Method and Application Branch of Chinese Society of Optimization, Overall Planning and Economical Mathematics. Dr Xu’s research filed is S&T management and policy, and research evaluation. Dr. Xu has carried out long-term research on the theory and method of research evaluation, and has rich experience in organizing research institute evaluation , which has played a great role in supporting the macro management and decision-making of CASHQ.
Hirofumi Seike
Management Associate Professor, Tohoku University, Japan
After originally trained as an organic chemist at University of Tokyo and The Scripps Research Institute, I had two post – doctoral appointments at Harvard University and Kyoto University. Thereafter, taking advantage of a background of chemical research and international experience, I opened and managed the office of Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in Tokyo, Japan, for two years. The roles at RSC include promoting journals and building the network with the chemistry community in Japan. Since July, 2013, integrating all the experience and expertise in international, research, publishing and learned society experiences, I am contributing to the research support and promotion at Tohoku University, where 17,000 students are taught and instructed by 3,000 teaching faculty.
Justin Shearer
Manager, Research and Industry, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Justin Shearer is the Associate Director, Research Information and Engagement at the University of Melbourne, where he has portfolio responsibility for research digital scholarship, scholarly communications, and the University’s digitisation centre. Justin is also the Business Product Owner for the Find an Expert Refresh Project, which is tasked with developing a new researcher profile tool for the institution. He also is the leader of the Rankings Sub-Group of the INORMS-sponsored Responsible Evaluation Working Group where he represents the Australasian Research Management Society. Previously, he was Manager, Research and Industry in the Faculty of Business and Economics, where he had a focus on grant and industry funding. He has seven years’ experience in research management, with a particular interest in customer experience, business storytelling, industry engagement, researcher development and research evaluation.
Laura Himanen
Project Manger, CSC, Finland
Laura Himanen is a Project Manager working at CSC – IT Center for Science. She is a member of the Finnish expert panel in culture for open scholarship and actively involved in several national forums advocating responsible research assessment.
Marianne Gauffriau
Research Consultant, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Marianne is part of the pre-award team at IT University of Copenhagen. She is an advocate of open science, especially responsible metrics. Marianne is treasurer of Danish Association for Research Managers and Administrators (DARMA) and co-founder of the Danish Research Indicator Network (FIN). She holds a Master in Library and Information Science and a Master in Evaluation. Marianne’s research focuses on the construction of bibliometrics indicators and responsible research evaluation.
Dr Tee Boon Tuan
Associate Professor, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Malaysia
Tee Boon Tuan is an Associate Professor in Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM). He obtained his BSc (Hons.) Mechanical Engineering from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and MSc. Advanced Mechanical Engineering from University of Sussex, UK. He is also graduated from University of Cambridge with PhD Degree in Engineering. Boon Tuan’s research interests focus on building energy management and green technology. He is also a registered Professional Technologist under Malaysia Board of Technologists (MBOT) and one of the committee members for The Malaysia Association of Research Managers & Administrations (MYRMA). In his current role as the Deputy Director of Centre for Research & Innovation Management (CRIM), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, he has been involved in handling research grants management process and organizing workshops/seminars for research grant application.
Dr William Bramwell
Senior Research Officer at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), UK
Will leads the ACU’s data benchmarking service in key areas of university management and is currently designing new methods to capture the types of research activity and research support structures across ACU member institutions. Prior to this, he was responsible for evaluating the outcomes and development impacts of international postgraduate programmes across the Commonwealth. Will also holds a History PhD from the University of Warwick, specialising in processes of state-formation in southern Africa.
Prof Xiaoxuan Li
Researcher, Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Prof. Xiaoxuan Li is a researcher of the Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Dr. Li received his doctor’s degree from Peking University. He is now the director of the Management Innovation and Evaluation Research Center of the CAS; chairman of the S&T Management and Evaluation Professional Committee of China Science and Technology Policy Studies, chairman of the Evaluation Method and Application Branch of Chinese Society of Optimization, Overall Planning and Economical Mathematics; member of the advisory committee of DORA. Dr Li has rich experience in the field of science and technology policy, scientific research management, involving science and technology evaluation, human resource management, scientific research funds management, etc.
Email: xiaoxuan@casisd.cn
Ms Maryke Hunter-Husselmann
Director: Research Information and Strategy at the Division for Research Development (DRD), Stellenbosch University (SU)
Maryke is the Director: Research Information and Strategy at the Division for Research Development (DRD), Stellenbosch University (SU). She has been involved in research management for 17 years now and has made a considerable contribution to research management practices not only at SU, but also through her involvement in communities of practice and knowledge production in the field, nationally and internationally. She has a M Phil in Social Research Methodology, SU. In her current role, Maryke is responsible for the promotion of research partnerships with science councils and other strategic partners at a national level, the facilitation of activities that promote SU`s strategic research themes, research-related information and policy development, research audits and landscape analyses, and the development of science communication and other relevant research marketing material at SU. She also teaches in the Postgraduate Diploma in Research Management and the MPhil in Science and Technology Studies at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at SU. Maryke served on the executive committee of SARIMA as portfolio member since 2009, as Vice President: Capacity Building and Professionalisation between 2012-2013 and as Vice President: Research between 2014 – 2015. She is a member of the South African Academy for Science and Arts and an associate member of the Organisation of Women in Science in the Developing World (OWSD). In 2016, she received the DST-SARIMA Excellence Award in the category Distinguished Contribution to the Research Management profession and in 2019, the Stellenbosch University Chancellor`s Award for Research and Professional Services. She is passionate about the development of research management as a profession in Southern Africa and have been involved in various collaborative projects related to RM capacity building such as the EU funded RIMI4AC project, the StoRM project as well as more recently the TreMOR project, funded by the African Academy of Sciences.
Email: mh3@sun.ac.za
Dr Reingis Hauck
Director of the research and innovation services at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
Dr. Reingis Hauck is the director of the research and innovation services at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany.She has been very active in supporting the cultural change around Open Science, e.g. she initiated & organized the first German Open Science Festival in Hannover in 2022. Alongside the implementation of a CRIS at Hannover she also started to provide scientometric services with her team for the university. She designs & gives workshops with the goal of improving metrics literacy.
The group is currently being formed and representatives from all INORMS organisations are invited to join and help develop this important agenda. If you would be interested in participating, please contact Elizabeth directly at e.a.gadd@lboro.ac.uk.