HuMetricsHSS Principles

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Over the years, in addition to our set of values, the HuMetricsHSS team has come to hold a core set of beliefs that underpin our work. We’ve identified 15 key principles that guide our work, and we're ready to share them with the wider community. You can see a description of our current and past HuMetricsHSS team values here, as well as an explanation of how we arrived at them.

15 Key HuMetricsHSS Principles

    • Universities are shaped by values in principle, but those values often do not filter down to processes.

    • If we don’t measure what we value, we will only value what we can measure.

    • Values—positive and negative—are enacted all the time, often without intention or understanding.

    • Values are often in competition with one another. Taking a values-enacted approach is about engaging with intention, deliberation, and nuance, not perfection.

    • It’s possible to bring a values-enacted approach to multiple forms and contexts of work.

    • All work done by academics is scholarly work.

    • Research, teaching, and service can be considered as cumulative, complementary, and interlinked, rather than isolated and competitive categories.

    • Excellence is an ill-defined principle and yet often a proxy to determine the value of academic work.

    • Excellent or quality scholarship can be defined by the ways it clearly fulfills a stated and agreed-upon set of guiding values.

    • There is no such thing as a “solitary scholar;” all academic labor relies on other, often hidden, academic labor.

    • The changing landscape of academic labor, including increased reliance on non-tenured professionals, requires a re-evaluation of scholarly production.

    • Focusing on the processes of academic labor offers opportunities for values-based decision-making in each microtransaction.

    • Current incentives and rewards create an unsustainable and unstable scholarly ecosystem.

    • Making change requires understanding the levers you control within your institution and outside of it; recognizing your own agency and the spaces in which you have influence.

    • Values work is iterative, ongoing, and moves at the speed of trust.