On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 3:01 PM, <C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
the deal for the evaluation for the REF Pilot was ALWAYS
only to use Web of Knwledge as the database
That is bad enough news in itself. REF should be test piloting a rich
battery of multiple references, from multiple sources, not just one
minimal proprietary subset.
Stevan Harnad
------
Having worked for Thomson companies in the past I can
confirm that Thomson leaves them very much to their own
devices and makes no effort to get them to follow a party
line. In any case, all Evidence is doing is an analysis
of the REF Pilot, not the main REF itself. contracts for
running the main REF have not yet been signed. What's
more the deal for the evaluation for the REF Pilot was
ALWAYS only to use Web of Knwledge as the database,
whereas all the indications for the full REF are that it
will use both Web of Science and Scopus. So I think
Stevan can sleep easy on this one.
Charles
On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:02:21 -0500
Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM> wrote:
*Re:
Corbyn, Zoë (2009) "Conflict of interest
warning over Evidence
sale<
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=405093>"
[to Thompson Reuters]. Times Higher Education
Supplement. 22 January 2009*
There is indeed not only a potential but an
actual conflict of interest when
the party that is comparing and assessing the
different candidate data and
databases that can be used in UK national
research assessment is the
commercial producer of one of the candidate
databases.
HEFCE is sleep-walking in letting this
happen, and in several other
decisions it is making without thinking them
through properly, including the
failure to test and validate a rich variety
of other potential
research-assessment metrics, over and above
the few that either
Reuters-Thompson ISI or its (now
disadvantaged) rival SCOPUS can offer,
especially the ones provided by the growing
worldwide network of Open Access
Repositories.
HEFCE is well on the way to foolishly locking
itself into dependence on only
what is available from a single commercial
provider -- under the guise of an
objective assessment by an independent honest
broker.
*Stevan Harnad
<
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>*
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Received on Sun Feb 15 2009 - 21:06:01 GMT