One of the main arguments for Open Access was that society as a whole deserves to be able to access research with which they have contributed through taxes. When discussing RI, it still appears largely confined to the scholarly communication sphere, and doesn’t take into account social or societal impact, which is an altogether different and much larger realm. I think this is what we need to aim for when assessing the true value and impact of research – how do we measure it’s impact on all facets of society? Altmetrics and the Relevance Index, to me, seem like a great step in the right direction over the anachronistic IF, but there’s still a long way to go yet to develop metrics that assess ‘true’ impact.

I think.