Responsibility in the presentation and interpretation of results

The responsible use of publication metrics requires perspectives on opening the source data, presenting the results and interpreting them. Compliance with the national and international recommendations means that attention should be paid to the following issues:

• Remember that publication-based metrics can be used to support a qualitative expert evaluation, but it must not be the only method for evaluating universities, their units or individual researchers.

• The whole analysis process, including the data used, the analytical methods and the results, must be as open and transparent as possible.

• Those being evaluated should, as far as possible, be presented with the opportunity to check both the data used as a basis for the analysis and the results of the analysis. When presenting the results of the analysis, a presentation format that allows you to drill down into the source data used should be preferred and, where possible, computational access to the source data should be provided.

• The results of the analyses should be presented with the accuracy of the relevant indicator values. Inapplicable indicators should be excluded from the results of the analysis.

• As publication and citation practices differ significantly between fields of science, results from different fields of science should not be compared.

• Producing publication metrics and interpreting results requires sufficient knowledge of the methods of publication metrics. Care must be taken to ensure that those who use publication metrics also understand the methods used and their potential limitations, and are able to interpret and use the results of analyses responsibly.

Dear reader, in this chapter we would appreciate your examples of publication-based analysis that consider responsibility aspects

If your organisation has conducted a statistical publication-based review or analysis that you believe is in line with the recommendations of publication metrics and you are willing to share it with the readers of this guide:

• You can send your suggestions to the working group of the National guide to publication metrics at the service address: kjmo@postit.csc.fi
• Please include a description of the extent to which the example complies with the recommendations of responsible publication metrics.

Figure 1. The Aalto Key Information Dashboard, implemented with the Power BI tool, contains key information about Aalto University and is open to the whole Aalto community. The figure shows an example of an Open Access report from the 2020–2022 publications of the School of Chemical Engineering. The data in the Power BI report is updated mostly automatically and the date of the data update is shown on the front page of each report. The report allows you to drill down to a more detailed level of information, from the university level to the school and department levels, and in some reports all the way to the publication level. For each individual report, the source data used and the definitions for the indicators used are presented in the Definitions tab. The Power BI reports also include information on who/which unit is responsible for producing the report and their contact details.