Journal giant Elsevier is working on an interactive dashboard, “that has the potential to transform academic recruitment.” QUT VC Margaret Sheil was interested in it as an “academic exercise”  

The project is “designed to avoid gender bias in recruitment by expanding the definition of researcher success.” The basis is for researcher profiles, with 30 indicators in five areas, including “innovative” and “multi-dimensional.”.

As such it is intended to expand career records and reduce the selection-influence of factors such as publication-count and H-index, which favour male academics, who generally do not take family-required career-breaks.

According to Elsevier, the result could be a graphical CV for academics using data, “from a variety of sources” which individuals can annotate.

The company’s intent appears to be for participating academics’ profiles to be housed with Elsevier’s International Centre for the Study of Research which would respond to employers seeking staff.

“For researchers, benefits include a more transparent and equitable recruitment process.” Elsevier states.

The company add it “might be possible” to create a dashboard using its SciVal product, “or even select a researcher who fits a vacancy’s requirements and then ask the dashboard to find lookalikes.”

SciVal “allows you to visualise your research performance, benchmark relative to peers, develop strategic partnerships, identify and analyse new, emerging research trends, and create uniquely tailored reports.”

To which research metrics expert James Wilsdon (University College, London) replies, “essentially this is a form of predictive analytics based on the usual data, now washed with a gloss of benefiting disadvantaged groups. …  But how on earth do they reliably measure ‘innovation’ …? ”

Elsevier’s announcement reports QUT VC Margaret Sheil’s interest in the project. Professor Sheil is presently chairing the Commonwealth’s review of the Australian Research Council, terms of reference for which include, “the measurement of the impact and excellence of Australian research and advise on contemporary best practice for modernising and leveraging these measure.”

However Professor Sheil tells CMM, “this was an academic exercise done by the (Elsevier) team arising from my long standing interest in the issue of metrics and gender bias. … . We have not done any work on this since well before the ARC Review started and the Review will not address details of metrics and methodology in any way in any case.”