President of the British Academy Warns Against Overreliance on Metrics. (July 20, 2008)

Baroness Onora O'Neill, president of the British Academy and Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, on July 17 called for caution in the use of metrics to assess university research departments, saying there was a risk that it could produce "unintelligent forms of accountability".

According to the academy, speaking at the Academy’s Annual General Meeting, Professor O'Neill reflected "widespread concern in and beyond the Academy" over the possibility that metrics could replace expert judgment in future research assessment exercises (RAE), especially in humanities and social science disciplines.

Citing a British Academy policy study on Peer Review, published last September, she noted and endorsed its conclusions that metrics had 'a tendency to alter behaviour' and that they should only be used 'to augment rather than replace, expert judgment'.

Professor O'Neill made the further point: "Much of the untied funding that supports work in the humanities and social sciences in universities flows from the outcomes of the RAE. We need to be attentive to any risk of unintelligent forms of accountability, and any compromise of the dual support system of funding, which is based on the RAE," and that research by the BA on the current system of peer review where academics judge each others' work found that metrics had a "tendency to alter behaviour" and they should only be used "to augment rather than replace, expert judgment".

However, the baroness did not go so far as to question the necessity of an RAE as an additional layer beyond the evaluation of research grant requests per se.