Regarding the situation at Liverpool, Tom Stafford (Sheffield) has sent out the following update:
Three weeks ago I wrote to 800 of you. As of today, nearly 3000 academics have signed the open letter. I include the first message I sent below, for those of you who missed it. In that message I said I hoped to only write again once we had won.
I am sorry to report that we have not yet won.
On 3rd of March I delivered the Open letter, with over 2,100 signatures, to the management team at the University of Liverpool and the management team of the faculty of health and life sciences. A PDF of the letter and signatures at that point is here http://tomstafford.staff.shef.ac.uk/docs/liverpool2126.pdf So far we have had no response.
As well as your show of support, and the individual letters that I know many signatories have written, the University of Liverpool has also received letters from the Lead of the Hong Kong Principles and authors of the Leiden Manifesto on responsible metrics, as well as other UK bodies concerned with the responsible use of metrics. A partial collection of responses can be found here https://www.hls47.co.uk/letters-of-support/
A huge majority of staff in the affected faculty (HLS) have publicly stated their rejection of the University strategy, signing this open letter https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iaEhAbcVogT3PjH1bYPfCWJnKt-_ZMuwRiCjtbj3qbs/edit (264 signatures, ~75% of faculty)
Students recognise that these plans are a threat to the quality of University education https://www.liverpoolguild.org/thestudentvoice/solidarity-to-staff-threatened-with-redundancies
Even Elsevier is worried that the metrics they purvey may be being misused https://twitter.com/ElsevierConnect/status/1367422084226428931
The situation has been recognised as the disaster for equality and diversity that it surely is. Here is Athene Donald "In the end the institution will simply be full of those people who think only about their own research, how much cash they have and where they publish. I’m not sure I’d think that would be a very nice place to work, or one where the teaching – with no weight given to this at all – is very good. It is unlikely there will be a diversity of staff and there will certainly be no one to work to improve that diversity going forward." http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/2021/03/14/how-are-universities-supporting-those-worst-affected-by-the-pandemic/
For me the UoL's actions are both a brutal mistake by an individual institution and, as a precedent, a risk to University research culture as a whole. Dorothy Bishop puts it well "effective research is done by teams of people, rather than lone geniuses (see e.g. this report). Such teams can take years to build, but can be destroyed overnight, by those who measure academic worth by criteria such as grant income" http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2021/03/university-staff-cuts-under-cover-of.html
On 8th of March the University of Liverpool - seeming in response to pressure around their irresponsible use of metrics - released a hastily thrown together denial that they were using opaque and arbitrary measures to unfairly target individuals for redundancy. You can read that here https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2021/03/08/project-shape-update/amp/ but bear in mind that it contains a few clear mistakes, which are discussed here https://www.hls47.co.uk/new-tab/
So what's happening now? I don't have any special knowledge of the situation in Liverpool but I know that staff in HLS have been told that the consultation on redundancies has now been extended. Today I will be writing the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (Amanda Solloway MP) as well the Minister of State for Universities (Michelle Donelan MP), and the Office for Students to make sure they are aware of the situation and urge them to investigate the disaster that this will be for University teaching and research.
I am also trying to reach research funders. The Wellcome Trust is currently holding a 'Reimagine Research Culture Festival' https://wellcome.org/what-we-do/our-work/research-culture/reimagine-research-solutions-summit. Most funders have expressed recognition of the perverse incentives that currently exist in UK research. I am left wondering how they can possibly square the optimistic vision of a more inclusive, honest and creative research culture with what they will be implicated in at Liverpool if these redundancies go through. If you can help us reach sympathetic ears at research funders, please get in touch. If you tweet, please use the hashtag #ReimagineResearch to bring the issue to the attention of the wider community.
If you haven't already, please write directly to the University of Liverpool and the Faculty of Health and Life Science management teams. They should hear about the reputational cost their plans represent for the University of Liverpool. If you have active collaborations or other work with the University, such as examining, I urge you to write and say that these redundancies put that work at risk.
Here are their emails:
Prof Janet Beer <jbeer@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Dina Birch <Dlbirch@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Gavin Brown <gmbrown@liv.ac.uk>
Prof Anthony Hollander <aholla@liv.ac.uk>
Prof Wiebe van der Hoek <Wiebe.Van-Der-Hoek@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Fiona Beveridge <F.C.Beveridge@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Louise Kenny <Louise.Kenny@liverpool.ac.uk>
Mr Kevan Ryan <kevan.ryan@liverpool.ac.uk>
Mrs Niki Sandman <N.Sandman@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Zarko Alfirevic <Zarko@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Malcolm Jackson <M.J.Jackson@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Callum Youngson <C.C.Youngson@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Matthew Baylis <Matthew.Baylis@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Iain Buchan, <buchan@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Peter Clegg <P.D.Clegg@liverpool.ac.uk>
Prof Sonia Rocha <Sonia.Rocha@liverpool.ac.uk>
Please forward this email to colleagues who may be able help or express support
Yours
Tom
Open Letter https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OJ28MT78MCMNkUtFXkLw3xROUxK7Mfr8yN8b-E2KDUg/edit?usp=sharing
Form for signing: https://forms.gle/SrhcbttYCC7YJQe38
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