Microbiology Society releases new statement on research metrics

25 May 2018

The mission of the Microbiology Society is to advance the understanding and impact of microbiology by connecting and empowering communities worldwide. Our journal publishing programme is a key part of that mission, providing opportunities for researchers in microbiology to communicate their work to a wide audience.

All articles go through a rigorous peer-review process, evaluated by expert academic editors and by peers drawn from institutions around the world. With a 70-year history, our journals provide a platform for innovative work in everything from fundamental microbiology and virology, to cutting-edge microbial genomics, clinical microbiology, and microbial taxonomy.

We are a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and believe that while metrics form part of a holistic assessment of research, no metric should be used in isolation to assess the value of research. To this end:

• We make a range of metrics available to the community to allow assessment of the impact of individual articles as well as the journals in which they are published.
• We encourage responsible authorship practices, including use of ORCiD and the provision of information about the contributions of each author.
• We have signed up to the Initiative for Open Citations, allowing free reuse and mining of reference lists.
• Our self-archiving and sharing policies are simple and liberal, making it easy for researchers to share their work.

“DORA is an important initiative aiming to improve the ways in which research is valued. We have been providing article-level metrics for some time, and in signing DORA we are joining our voice to those of the other signatories asking institutions and funders to use this rich, relevant information and avoid journal-based metrics like the Impact Factor as a surrogate measure of the quality of researchers’ contributions,” said Tasha Mellins-Cohen, Director of Publishing.