What would universities have to put up with in the absence of ARC performance measures?

“Unaccountable, commercially-motivated providers of league tables,” is what, Cameron Neylon (Curtin U) and James Wilsdon (University College London) suggest in CMM this morning, HERE.

For an idea of what this could mean they point to the idea of merging WA’s four public universities with the intent of creating a rankings winner, a proposal with a, “vanishingly small prospect of success.”

Rather than replace existing metrics with commercial products, they argue Australia should join the international discussion on how to move from “data driven” to “data informed,” “mixed method frameworks for research evaluation.”

Last year Professor Neylon and colleagues from the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative created a ranking pilot using public datasets to demonstrate, “it is feasible to implement an automated workflow for the production of ERA 2018 and ERA 2023-like benchmarks and indicators.” (CMM September 21 2022).