Blog The Disorder of Things is sharing a response to the call of the UK Higher Education Funding Concil about the use of metrics in research assessment.
Are metrics (i.e. citation counts) useful for assessing "quality" (which is different from impact on the academic environment)? According to Meera Sabaratnam and Paul Kirby, they are not (and there's a lot of reasons for agreeing with them). The debate is still open and especially people from the UK may be interested adding an endorsement to the response or joining the debate.
Why Metrics Cannot Measure Research Quality: A Response to the HEFCE Consultation.