Hicks and Paul Wouters, Ludo Waltman, Sarah de Rijcke, and Ismael Rafols received the award on September 3, 2016 during the annual meeting of EASST, the leading professional association for international scholars in science and technology studies. The Leiden Manifesto, a set of 10 principles pertaining to the use of metrics in research evaluation that was published in Nature last year, was recognized by the association for its collaborative promotion of public interaction with science and technology.

The Leiden Manifesto’s principles engage with the rise of metrics-based research assessment by drawing on the insights of science and technology studies and on the nature of knowledge. It addresses a broad audience of evaluators tasked with assessing research performance with the ultimate goal of assuring public accountability.

The manifesto is intended to be a serious, public-facing, and comprehensible interpretation of the technical area of metrics that is understandable by a wide audience. It draws on state of the art knowledge on research metrics and is linked to an extensive range of international projects, publications, conferences, workshops and networks. It is designed to influence evaluation practices and take specialized knowledge into a wide policy arena.

A video summarizing the Leiden Manifesto principles has been published in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Leading Edge Digital Publications Series.