Everyone onboard? Participation ratios as a metric for research activity assessments within young universities

Research productivity metrics designed for international and national comparison of institutions may be uncritically adopted for research assessments, especially within young universities with short research traditions. It is argued that such measures can be misleading when assessing small groups of researchers such as within a department, and that they may provide limited usefulness for leaders at different levels of an organization. Instead, the ratio of participation is proposed as a research evaluation metric for smaller groups of researchers. Publication data from Norway are used as examples. The proposed metric is simple to implement and understand, and therefore holds potential for young universities that are strategically strengthening their research capabilities.