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*Re: Corbyn, Zoë (2009) "Conflict of interest warning over Evidence sale<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=405093>" [to Thompson Reuters]. Times Higher Education Supplement. 22 January 2009* There is indeed not only a potential but an actual conflict of interest when the party that is comparing and assessing the different candidate data and databases that can be used in UK national research assessment is the commercial producer of one of the candidate databases. HEFCE is sleep-walking in letting this happen, and in several other decisions it is making without thinking them through properly, including the failure to test and validate a rich variety of other potential research-assessment metrics, over and above the few that either Reuters-Thompson ISI or its (now disadvantaged) rival SCOPUS can offer, especially the ones provided by the growing worldwide network of Open Access Repositories. HEFCE is well on the way to foolishly locking itself into dependence on only what is available from a single commercial provider -- under the guise of an objective assessment by an independent honest broker. *Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>* American Scientist Open Access Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html> Harnad, S. (2001) Research access, impact and assessment<http://cogprints.org/1683/> . *Times Higher Education Supplement* 1487: p. 16. Brody, T., Kampa, S., Harnad, S., Carr, L. and Hitchcock, S. (2003) Digitometric Services for Open Archives Environments<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7503/>. In *Proceedings of European Conference on Digital Libraries*, Trondheim, Norway. Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003) Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives: Improving the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst making it cheaper and easier<http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/> . *Ariadne* 35. Harnad, S. (2006) Online, Continuous, Metrics-Based Research Assessment<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12130/> . *Technical Report, ECS, University of Southampton*. Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Oppenheim, C., McDonald, J. W., Champion, T. and Harnad, S. (2006) Extending journal-based research impact assessment to book-based disciplines <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12725/>.*Technical Report, ECS, University of Southampton*. Harnad, S. (2007) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13804/>. In *Proceedings of 11th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics* 11(1), pp. 27-33, Madrid, Spain. Torres-Salinas, D. and Moed, H. F., Eds. Brody, T., Carr, L., Harnad, S. and Swan, A. (2007) Time to Convert to Metrics <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14329/>.*Research Fortnight* 17-18. Brody, T., Carr, L., Gingras, Y., Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Swan, A. (2007)Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web: Publication-Archiving, Data-Archiving and Scientometrics <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14418/>. *CTWatch Quarterly* 3(3). Harnad, S. (2008) Self-Archiving, Metrics and Mandates<http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/members/secureDocument.cfm?docID=1916> . *Science Editor* 31(2) 57-59 Harnad, S. (2008) Validating Research Performance Metrics Against Peer Rankings <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15619/>.*Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics* 8 (11) doi:10.3354/esep00088 (Special issue: *The Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating Scholarly Performance*) Harnad, S., Carr, L. and Gingras, Y. (2008) Maximizing Research Progress Through Open Access Mandates and Metrics<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/16617/> . *Liinc em Revista* 4(2).