Against the unanticipated consequences of quantitative research evaluation: the <em>Leiden Manifesto for research metrics</em>

Abstract

During the annual conference “STI-Science and technology indicators 2014”, one of the main opportunities for specialists of science and technology metrics to meet each other – organized by the prestigious Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at the University of Leiden – a group of researchers produced a document that clearly recognizes the unanticipated consequences resulting from the pervasive misapplication of indicators to the evaluation of scientific performance.
The article Bibliometrics: Leiden Manifesto for research metrics, published on April, 2015 on «Nature», establishes the 10 fundamental principles for anyone using quantitative metrics for evaluation purposes. Stressing the differences between the previous San Francisco Declaration of research assessment-DORA and the Manifesto, the paper emphasizes the strengths of the latter, that can be rightly considered a milestone on the road to evaluation research.