Despite becoming increasingly institutionalised, there remains a lack of discourse about research metrics among much of academia

The active use of metrics in everyday research activities suggests academics have accepted them as standards of evaluation, that they are "thinking with indicators". 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 pertaining to metrics? Lai Ma suggests a combination of complacency and inertia contributes to a lack of discourse about evaluative metrics outside of specialists such as bibliometricians and some science and technology studies scholars. There is an urgent need for everyone who uses and is affected by metrics, particularly those in junior positions, to be fully informed and to engage in conversations in an open and public discourse.