Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A hiring committee reviewing a narrative CV alongside a citation report, weighting both, rather than ranking candidates by h-index alone.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A panel that reads narrative statements but has already ranked candidates by citation count beforehand is not practising quantitative-qualitative balance, even though both types of evidence were technically present.
Editorial commentary
Quantitative-qualitative balance is the deliberate combination of metrics (citation counts, altmetrics, output counts) with expert qualitative judgement (peer review, narrative case studies) in a single assessment process, rather than relying on either exclusively. Responsible-metrics reform does not argue for eliminating metrics — it argues against using metrics as a sole or unexamined proxy for quality, and against using qualitative judgement without any evidentiary grounding.
Where this framing comes from
The UK’s 2015 Metric Tide report (Wilsdon et al.) is the reference point most CASRAI users will recognise for the phrase “responsible metrics”: it argued that metrics should support, not supplant, expert judgement, and set out robustness, humility, transparency, diversity and reflexivity as the five principles a balanced process should satisfy. Its 2022 follow-up review, Harnessing the Metric Tide, assessed how far UK institutions had actually implemented that balance. See Metric Tide Report and Metric Tide Review.
How CoARA and DORA operationalise it
DORA’s core recommendation targets one specific imbalance — journal-level metrics substituting for judgement about an individual article — without rejecting metrics generally. CoARA’s Agreement commits signatories to basing assessment “primarily on qualitative evaluation for which peer review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators”, which is close to a direct definition of quantitative-qualitative balance as an operating principle rather than an abstract goal.
Practical failure modes
Two failure modes are common in practice: reverting to metrics alone under panel time pressure, since qualitative review is slower; and, less discussed but equally real, qualitative review that is not actually grounded in any consistent evidence base and becomes reviewer-dependent rather than balanced. See peer review in assessment and process diversity in assessment for the mechanisms this balance depends on.
References
- Wilsdon J et al., The Metric Tide, HEFCE, 2015. Harnessing the Metric Tide, Research England/UKRI, 2022. CoARA Agreement, coara.org.
Also known as
Mixed-methods assessment · Balanced assessment
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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