Alternative Metrics of Impact in Multilateral Agencies: The Potential for Knowledge for Sustainable Human Development

在全球范围内，过去几十年来，我们在消除贫困和减少不平等方面取得了进展。然而，仍有许多全球性挑战有待解决。这些复杂的发展挑战需要由研究和证据驱动的开放、创新的系统。为了产生影响，这项研究必须得到重视，不仅是研究人员，而且政策制定者和实践者也必须这样做。在为可持续发展进行相关、有用的研究的过程中，该领域的研究人员致力于了解不同受众如何使用他们的工作。因此，他们渴望开发有效的方法来衡量更广泛的社会影响，以便为他们的研究重点、资金、沟通和报告战略提供信息。目前，发展研究机构使用一系列工具来衡量其研究的重要性和影响力他们产生的。例如，专家同行审查可用于评估质量，定量指标可暗示影响力，案例研究可表明对政策的影响。然而，衡量对决策者和从业人员的更广泛影响是困难的，而且往往缓慢和效率低下，这些工具各有长处和局限性。在数字经济和大数据的背景下，作为衡量学术界以外影响力的一种方式，影响力的替代指标迅速发展。“Altmetrics”是旨在衡量不同研究成果对不同受众的影响的工具。利用社交媒体和社交网络的巨大增长，altmetrics提供了新的数据：（a）政策文件，博客，新闻，维基百科中的提及，（B）社交媒体“份额”（例如Twitter，Facebook），以及（c）社交“书签”（例如Mendeley，ResearchGate）。这些工具在过去五年中迅速发展，现在已被有影响力的大学和出版商采用。因此，它是至关重要的，以审查其日益增长的作用，在当前的研究context.This项目将调查altmetrics的多边援助机构的影响。多学科是主要的研究中心，但对其研究成果的产生、传播和吸收却知之甚少。这些机构大力投资于了解世界各地用户如何利用他们的工作，并已开始从altmetric来源收集证据。然而，这些工具的价值尚不清楚，而且常常引起争议，尽管它们有可能提供对政策和实践背景中影响的更细致、更及时的了解。我将在这个项目上工作的多边机构都在不同程度上参与了altmetrics，但仍然陷入了关于其使用的内部辩论。作为第一个关于altmetrics对机构知识生产影响的社会学研究，该项目将通过创新的方法学方法产生大量新的定性和定量数据。该项目力求：（i）确定多边机构中替代计量学的性质和影响，（ii）为研究和政策机构的目标和战略提供信息，（iii）扩大社会学、研究评估、研究政策和发展研究方面的知识。该项目将通过以下方式实现其目标：（i）两个比较民族志案例研究，（ii）使用测高数据的网络分析，以及（iii）与研究生产者和用户的补充访谈。这种新颖的方法组合将使我能够绘制研究影响的网络，而且，至关重要的是，捕捉围绕altmetric使用的意义和实践的复杂性。使用一个新的社会学，混合方法的框架，该项目将提供新的理论和经验的见解，以了解在全球政策背景下使用的替代指标的影响。这些贡献将通过一些学术和以用户为中心的产出来实现，以更好地利用知识和证据来应对全球挑战。

Globally, over the past decades we have made progress in the eradication of poverty and the reduction of inequalities. However, there are still many global challenges to be addressed. These complex development challenges require open, innovative systems driven by research and evidence. To have impact, this research must must be taken up, not only by researchers, but also by policymakers and practitioners. In their pursuit to produce relevant, useful research towards sustainable development, research producers in the field are invested in understanding how their work is used by diverse audiences. As such, they are eager to develop efficient ways to measure wider societal impact, in order to inform their strategies around research focus, funding, communication and reporting.Currently development research institutions use a range of tools to measure the importance and influence of the research they produce. For example, expert peer review can be used to assess quality, quantitative metrics can hint at influence, and case studies can indicate effects on policy. However, measuring wider impact on policymakers and practitioners is difficult and often slow and inefficient, and each of these tools have strengths and limitations. Against the backdrop of the digital economy and big data, alternative metrics of impact have grown rapidly as a way of measuring impact beyond academia. 'Altmetrics' are tools designed to gauge the impact of diverse research outputs on diverse audiences. Capitalising on the huge growth of social media and social networking, altmetrics provide new data: (a) mentions in policy documents, blogs, news, Wikipedia, (b) social media 'shares' (e.g. Twitter, Facebook), and (c) social 'bookmarks' (e.g. Mendeley, ResearchGate). These tools have grown rapidly in the last five years, and have now been taken up by influential universities and publishers. Thus, it is crucial to examine their growing role in the current research context.This project will investigate the effects of altmetrics for multilateral aid agencies. Multilaterals are dominant research centres, but the production, dissemination and uptake of their research are poorly understood. Strongly invested in understanding how their work is utilised by users around the world, these agencies have begun to gather evidence from altmetric sources. Yet, the value of these tools is unclear and often controversial, despite their potential to provide more nuanced and timely understanding of impact in policy and practice contexts. The multilateral agencies I will work with on this project are engaged with altmetrics to varying degrees, but remain stalled in internal debate about their use.As the first sociological study on the effects of altmetrics for knowledge production in institutions, the project will generate a wealth of new qualitative and quantitative data through an innovative methodological approach. The project seeks to: (i) determine the nature and effects of altmetrics in multilateral agencies, (ii) inform the goals and strategies of research and policy institutes, and (iii) expand knowledge in sociology, research evaluation, research policy, and development studies. This project will meet its aims through (i) two comparative ethnographic case studies, (ii) network analysis using altmetric data, and (iii) supplementary interviews with research producers and users. This novel methodological combination will allow me to chart the networks of research impact, but also, crucially, to capture the complexity of meanings and practices surrounding altmetric use. Using a novel sociological, mixed-methods framework, this project will provide new theoretical and empirical insights to understand the use of alternative metrics of impact in the global policy context. These contributions will be delivered through a number of academic and user-focused outputs, towards better utilisation of knowledge and evidence in addressing global challenges.