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6 September 2017 Moving Beyond Metrics: A Primer for Hiring and Promoting a Diverse Workforce in Entomology and Other Natural Sciences
Robert L. Reece, Margaret C. Hardy
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Abstract

The lack of a representative scientific workforce is a challenge being addressed by federal agencies, funding bodies, and research institutes. As organizational units emphasize the work of training, recruiting, retaining, and promoting an inclusive scientific body, issues around bias and metrics appear frequently in the literature. The goal of this manuscript is to introduce some of the most commonly misunderstood areas of bias, and ways to adjust hiring and promotion practices; and to focus on innovative ways to quantify scientific outputs through metrics other than journal impact factors and paper citation numbers. These alternative metrics, or altmetrics, are increasingly reliable predictors of impact for a scientific community that is asked to engage more frequently and more effectively with the public. Additionally, we address discipline-specific concerns around metrics used for hiring and promotion in biosecurity and biosafety, taxonomy, and researchers in government and regulatory roles. We conclude that in the future, societal and scholarly impact will be more closely tied. This is a critical time to ensure scientists are adequately trained and recognized for their contributions as public intellectuals, and supported in this important work.

© The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
Robert L. Reece and Margaret C. Hardy "Moving Beyond Metrics: A Primer for Hiring and Promoting a Diverse Workforce in Entomology and Other Natural Sciences," Annals of the Entomological Society of America 110(5), 484-491, (6 September 2017). https://doi.org/10.1093/aesa/sax059
Received: 20 May 2017; Accepted: 23 June 2017; Published: 6 September 2017
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KEYWORDS
affirmative action
career development
diversity
equity
STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
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