Lai Ma

Lai Ma is an assistant professor at School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research is concerned with the interrelationship between epistemology, information infrastructure (primarily bibliographic and citation databases), and its cultural and social affordances and implications. Her ORCID iD is 0000-0002-0997-3605.

Once upon a time written on graph paper

Think of Impact Statements As Maps, Not Short Stories

As a precondition to receiving research funds, many research funders require applicants to state how their project will ultimately achieve impacts prior to any work being undertaken. Reflecting on a study of these impact statements made to the Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Programme, Lai Ma, argues that such statements often introduce a narrow short-term bias to considerations of impact and presents four ways impact statements could be used more productively.

2 years ago
1845
Snail on a ruller

Academe Just Doesn’t Talk Enough about Research Metrics

The active use of metrics in everyday research activities suggests academics have accepted them as standards of evaluation. Yet when asked, many academics profess concern about the limitations of evaluative metrics and the extent of their use. Why is there such a discrepancy between principle and practices?

4 years ago
2535