Humane Metrics/Metrics Noir
Creators: name: Franzen, Martina
name: Joy, Eileen
name: Long, Christopher P.
name: Press, Post Office
name: press, meson
Publisher: name: Post Office Press, Rope Press and meson press
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Scholarly publishing

description: That Elsevier/RELX group has now rebranded itself as a "global provider of information and analytics," seems indicative of the way academic publishing is increasingly moving into the highly pro table data analytics market. Here the linking of journals and scholarly social networks to the data underlying them through article level metrics, citation and download gures, usage statistics, ratings and altmetrics, serves as an opportunity to further extract value from the relationalities of scholarly publishing. Connect this to the demand of neoliberal governments for bibliometrics to index and rank scholars and their universities in order to measure impact and excellence, and enable accountability and transparency as part of national research assessment exercises, and it is clear that the logic of calculation and its accompanying mechanisms of surveillance and control is now omnipresent in scholarly publishing—and this includes requirements towards researchers to measure and monitor themselves as "brands."

The texts in this pamphlet will ask, what are the implications of this state of a airs for scholarship and for the value of expertise and democratic judgement? Is it indeed the case that, as Chris Newfield argues "with indicators ascendant over judgment itself, and tied to complicated, obscure, or proprietary procedures, metrics can pacify the interpretive powers of the public and professionals alike"? Yet the authors of this pamphlet will also explore strategies for pushing back against the metrification of scholarship and publishing.
description: That Elsevier/RELX group has now rebranded itself as a "global provider of information and analytics," seems indicative of the way academic publishing is increasingly moving into the highly pro table data analytics market. Here the linking of journals and scholarly social networks to the data underlying them through article level metrics, citation and download gures, usage statistics, ratings and altmetrics, serves as an opportunity to further extract value from the relationalities of scholarly publishing. Connect this to the demand of neoliberal governments for bibliometrics to index and rank scholars and their universities in order to measure impact and excellence, and enable accountability and transparency as part of national research assessment exercises, and it is clear that the logic of calculation and its accompanying mechanisms of surveillance and control is now omnipresent in scholarly publishing—and this includes requirements towards researchers to measure and monitor themselves as "brands." The texts in this pamphlet will ask, what are the implications of this state of a airs for scholarship and for the value of expertise and democratic judgement? Is it indeed the case that, as Chris Newfield argues "with indicators ascendant over judgment itself, and tied to complicated, obscure, or proprietary procedures, metrics can pacify the interpretive powers of the public and professionals alike"? Yet the authors of this pamphlet will also explore strategies for pushing back against the metrification of scholarship and publishing.