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/>*
> American Scientist Open Access
> Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access
> -Forum.html>
>
> Harnad, S. (2001) Research access, impact and
> assessment<http://cogprints.org/1683/>
> . *Times Higher Education Supplement* 1487: p. 16.
>
> Brody, T., Kampa, S., Harnad, S., Carr, L. and
> Hitchcock, S. (2003)
> Digitometric
> Services for Open Archives
> Environments<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7503/>.
> In *Proceedings of European Conference on Digital
> Libraries*, Trondheim,
> Norway.
>
> Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003)
> Mandated online RAE
> CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives: Improving the
> UK Research
> Assessment Exercise whilst making it cheaper and
> easier<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/>
> . *Ariadne* 35.
>
> Harnad, S. (2006) Online, Continuous, Metrics-Based
> Research
> Assessment<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12130/>
> . *Technical Report, ECS, University of Southampton*.
>
> Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Oppenheim, C., McDonald, J. W.,
> Champion, T. and
> Harnad, S. (2006) Extending journal-based research
> impact assessment to
> book-based disciplines
> <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12725/>.*Technical
> Report, ECS, University of Southampton*.
>
> Harnad, S. (2007) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK
> Research Assessment
> Exercise <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13804/>. In
> *Proceedings of 11th
> Annual Meeting of the International Society for
> Scientometrics and
> Informetrics* 11(1), pp. 27-33, Madrid, Spain.
> Torres-Salinas, D. and Moed,
> H. F., Eds.
>
> Brody, T., Carr, L., Harnad, S. and Swan, A. (2007) Time
> to Convert to
> Metrics
> <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14329/>.*Research
> Fortnight* 17-18.
>
> Brody, T., Carr, L., Gingras, Y., Hajjem, C., Harnad, S.
> and Swan, A.
> (2007)Incentivizing
> the Open Access Research Web: Publication-Archiving,
> Data-Archiving and
> Scientometrics <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14418/>.
> *CTWatch Quarterly*
> 3(3).
>
> Harnad, S. (2008) Self-Archiving, Metrics and
> Mandates<http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/members/secureDocument.cfm?d
> ocID=1916>
> . *Science Editor* 31(2) 57-59
>
> Harnad, S. (2008) Validating Research Performance
> Metrics Against Peer
> Rankings <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15619/>.*Ethics
> in Science and
> Environmental Politics* 8 (11) doi:10.3354/esep00088
> (Special issue: *The
> Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating
> Scholarly Performance*)
>
> Harnad, S., Carr, L. and Gingras, Y. (2008) Maximizing
> Research Progress
> Through Open Access Mandates and
> Metrics<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16617/>
> . *Liinc em Revista* 4(2).
Received on Sun Feb 15 2009 - 21:06:16 GMT