Opening up the Black Box of Peer Review

Liz Allen

Last month I attended a session at KBS on the Future of Research Assessment. I wrote up some notes from this, and particularly the talk by Prof John Mingers, here. 

Also speaking at the event was Liz Allen, Director of Strategic Initiatives at F1000. She published some thoughts on it on the F1000 blog, and has kindly allowed me to republish them here. 

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I recently participated in a workshop hosted by the University of Kent Business School – the subject was whether metrics or peer review are the best tools to support research assessment. Thankfully, we didn’t get embroiled in the sport of ‘metric bashing’, but instead agreed that one size does not fit all and that whatever research assessment we do, while taking account of context, needs to be proportionate.

Using Social Media to Support your Research

I’ve written before about social media, and about some of the sessions we’ve run on research and social media (such as those led by Nadine Muller and Becky Higgitt), but there seems to be an insatiable appetite amongst academics to understand them better, to participate fully and - in time - benefit from them.

The Early Career Researcher Network session in Medway on Wednesday went some way towards satisfying this demand. It was led by three academics from very diverse disciplines, who together gave an overview of the way in which social media can be used to talk about your research and engage with others beyond your School, to recruit research participants and manage a project, and to disseminate research, track impact, and improve citations.