VBSA Values-based Scholarship Array
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About this Handbook

About the VBSA Handbook

The Handbook is written for people who have to make, support or receive a judgement about Arts & Humanities scholarship — and who want that judgement to be fair, transparent and legible to the scholar being evaluated.

Why should I use the VBSA Handbook?

Arts and Humanities (A&H) scholars, and the institutions that support them, produce work of profound and lasting value to society. Yet the systems used to evaluate that work have seldom been designed with A&H scholarship in mind. Too often evaluators rely upon quantitative proxies borrowed from the sciences that overlook, or at least underweight, the distinctive ways in which A&H outputs are produced, disseminated, and demonstrate impact over time.

“Without proper metrics, diverse contributions are often ignored, making it hard to recognise the true value of arts and humanities. If there are indices that can help us capture value, capture what we know is valuable, it would help us tell our own story better in terms that translate.”

Associate Vice President for Faculty Advancement, San Diego State University

The stakes are high. Where evaluation fails to recognise the forms in which A&H knowledge is made and shared, funding, and institutional support tend to follow the indicators, and disciplines that sustain languages, histories, ethical reasoning, professional practice, and cultural memory risk being diminished or lost. That knowledge is central to social cohesion and to well-functioning societies. For universities especially, the VBSA offers a transparent, defensible evidence base for strategic decisions, for reporting to funders and governments, and for making the case for A&H to external stakeholders; its values and audiences can also be read at the level of the institution and of national priorities, not only that of the individual scholar.

The Values-based Scholarship Array (VBSA) has been designed to help institutions, evaluators and scholars assess A&H scholarship in ways that are fair, transparent, and rooted in the values that the work is intended to serve.

Universities, funders, and governments increasingly need to understand, measure, and demonstrate the value of A&H scholarship, yet frequently lack appropriate, field-tested and community-accepted tools for doing so. The VBSA responds to this gap by mapping the values that underpin A&H scholarship, and the audiences it is intended to reach, to qualitative and quantitative indicators that inform human-led evaluation. This Handbook explains the thinking behind the array and offers practical guidance on applying and adapting it to your own context.

Key benefits of the Handbook

  • Provides a structured framework for evaluating A&H scholarship on its own terms
  • Can be adapted and nuanced to suit the requirements of different institutions, disciplines and contexts
  • Recognises the diverse audiences for A&H scholarship and brings their perspectives into the evaluation process
  • Maps each value and audience into practical indicators drawn from both qualitative and quantitative evidence
  • Helps evaluators and scholars reach a shared understanding of what counts in evaluative settings
  • Encourages measures that go beyond traditional, STEMM-oriented metrics such as publication and citation counts

What the Handbook contains

  • 01Why Arts and Humanities Scholarship Needs Its Own Evaluation Approach.
  • 02What A&H Scholars Value and Who They Serve.
  • 03Building the Values-based Scholarship Array.
  • 04Operationalising the VBSA.
  • 05Limitations and Next Steps for the VBSA.
  • 06Glossary, references, further reading and the Technical Appendix.

Foreword

From the two partners

The Handbook opens with a foreword from each partner organisation. Both are reproduced in full below.

“To change research assessment, we cannot simply critique existing tools. We must build better ones, and we must build them with the scholars who will live with the results.”

Dr Nick Fowler Chief Academic Officer, Elsevier

Read the full foreword

For as long as people have measured research, they have argued about what the measures should capture. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) wanted knowledge to serve the betterment of human life; four centuries on, most of the research community agrees, and the question that remains is how we recognise that contribution fairly. Nowhere is that question harder, or more neglected, than in the Arts and Humanities.

Too often, evaluation has been designed around the habits of other disciplines and then applied to scholars who work quite differently. The result is a system that can miss what matters most: the books, performances, translations, teaching, and public conversations through which humanistic scholarship reaches people. To change research assessment, we cannot simply critique existing tools. We must build better ones, and we must build them with the scholars who will live with the results.

That is what makes the Values-based Scholarship Array important. It starts from what A&H scholars value and who they serve, and only then asks what evidence could reflect it, from scholarly recognition to real-world impact such as policy influence. It is practical, transparent about its limitations, and offered as a starting point to test and improve, not a finished answer.

This work was possible only because of the close partnership between Hong Kong Baptist University and Elsevier. Colleagues at HKBU brought deep knowledge of scholarly practice and of the institutional realities of evaluation. Our colleagues in the Research Collaboration Unit brought data, analytical experience, and a willingness to be challenged. Neither side could have done this alone, and the responsibility for the result is shared equally. I am grateful to everyone involved, and I hope this Handbook encourages other institutions to join us in taking it further.

“Talent is the most valuable resource of any university. If we wish to nurture it, we must also ensure that the way we recognise scholarship is fair, respectful, and humane.”

Professor Aiping Lyu Vice-President (Research and Development), Hong Kong Baptist University

Read the full foreword

Research excellence is linked to interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving. At Hong Kong Baptist University, we see this every day: scholars of the creative arts, the humanities, the sciences, and Chinese medicine learn from one another, and are stronger for it. Our Humanities and Cultures cluster is a cornerstone of that community, and the work of its scholars deserves to be understood and valued on its own terms.

Talent is the most valuable resource of any university. If we wish to nurture it, we must also ensure that the way we recognise scholarship is fair, respectful, and humane. For Arts and Humanities scholars, whose work is often long in the making and wide in its reach, familiar indicators tell only part of the story. The Values-based Scholarship Array responds to this need. It places the values of scholars, and the audiences they wish to reach, at the centre of evaluation.

I am delighted that this Handbook is the fruit of a genuine partnership. Colleagues from our Office of Institutional Research and Planning, our Library and our academic community worked side by side with the Research Collaboration Unit at Elsevier, listening carefully to each other and to the scholars they seek to serve. Such collaboration, across disciplines and across institutions, is the spirit in which we hope to advance research at HKBU.

I thank everyone who contributed, and I warmly invite colleagues in Hong Kong and around the world to use this Handbook, to adapt it, and to help us improve it together.

Q&A Questions & answers

The questions we are asked most

Three questions, answered in full. Open each one — or expand them all to read straight through.

The VBSA was developed and initially tested in a university setting, hence the examples in this Handbook remain grounded in the higher education sector and its operational contexts. It is intended for everyone involved in evaluating A&H scholarship, including university leaders and their strategy teams; faculty deans; college or department heads; research group leaders; and the scholars whose work is being evaluated.

Although the VBSA was developed at a university, the questions it raises may also be relevant to research funders, public bodies supporting funded research, learned societies, private foundations and other persons and entities concerned with the fair evaluation of A&H scholarship and its impacts. We hope that these communities will engage critically with the approach and contribute to its further testing and refinement.

The Handbook is best read in sequence: the earlier sections set out the motivation for the VBSA and the data and methods behind it, while later sections describe how it was developed and how it can be applied. As familiarity with the array grows, we anticipate that readers will return to the sections most relevant to their own evaluative needs.

The following scenarios illustrate how diverse groups of users may use this Handbook.

University leaders and institutional strategists

University leaders and strategists may use the Handbook to develop a broader understanding of the contribution of A&H scholarship at institutional, faculty, or disciplinary levels and how quality research engages multiple levels dynamically. The array may support strategic reviews, institutional narratives, advocacy, resource planning, and the development of more inclusive evaluation policies.

These users may wish to:

  • Identify dimensions of A&H contribution that are not visible through conventional publications and citation-based indicators
  • Examine patterns of strength across different values and diverse audiences
  • Review whether institutional systems capture the evidence required for fair evaluation
  • Support institutional reporting and communication about the wider value of A&H scholarship, and
  • Establish principles for the responsible use of indicators in assessment

“We need to be able to have that conversation about the relative strength of arts and humanities research compared to science, social science and we need to find a metric that we can use to do that.”

Vice Chancellor for Arts and Humanities, University of East Anglia

Deans, heads of departments and research leaders

Academic leaders may use the Handbook to support periodic reviews, research planning, staff development, and conversations about the contribution of academic units, research groups, or individual scholars. The array can help make visible different forms of contribution within a unit, and across units, including measuring the impact of scholarship, creative practice, pedagogy, collegiality, leadership, and engagement with audiences beyond academia.

These users may wish to:

  • Agree which values and audiences are most relevant to the mission and disciplinary profile of the unit
  • Select a manageable set of evidence tiles for a particular review
  • Recognise complementary forms of contribution across a department, a multi-disciplinary team, or research group
  • Identify activities that are important but insufficiently documented under existing review parameters, and
  • Use the resulting evidence to inform qualitative discussions and future planning

“You’re bringing extremely valuable data to any kind of assessment. I will reach for any and all evidence I can find to help me build a better case.”

Professor of Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University

Appointment, promotion, and performance-review panels

Panels responsible for appointment, promotion, or performance review may use the Handbook to broaden the range of evidence considered and to make evaluative expectations more transparent. It may be particularly helpful when conducting reviews where conventional indicators provide an incomplete or inaccurate account of the impact of books, creative outputs, teaching, public engagement, professional influence, or disciplinary service.

Panels may wish to:

  • Agree upon relevant values and forms of evidence before the assessment begins
  • Invite candidates to explain the values and audiences most relevant to their work
  • Consider indicators alongside portfolios, narratives, and expert peer review
  • Interpret evidence in relation to discipline, career stage, role, and opportunity, and
  • Distinguish the absence of recorded evidence from the absence of contribution

“I can see it being useful for promotion applications and for writing a REF environment statement — to look at the array of types of engagement coming out of research.”

Professor of Theatre and Performance; Director of Research and Innovation in the School of Arts and Architecture, University of Kent

Individual scholars

Individual scholars may use the Handbook to reflect upon, organise, and communicate the breadth and impact of their scholarship beyond conventional metrics. It can provide effective guidance for preparing promotion or performance-review materials, developing an academic portfolio, planning future activity, or explaining contributions that are not currently well represented in research databases.

Scholars may wish to:

  • Identify the values that best describe their scholarly contribution
  • Consider the academic and non-academic audiences their work is intended to reach
  • Select evidence tiles that support an account of those contributions
  • Validate externally sourced information and supplement it with contextual or self-reported evidence, and
  • Develop a narrative that explains the significance, development, and interrelationships of the evidence presented

“I like when I hear that I’m doing some good stuff. But I like even more to change that — that’s the opportunity for learning: if you hear precisely what you are doing wrong.”

Professor of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, on the value of specific, constructive feedback in individual evaluation

Institutional research, library, and data teams

Institutional research and data offices, libraries, and research offices may use the Handbook to support the practical implementation of the VBSA. Their role may include identifying data sources, linking records, assessing data quality, documenting limitations, and presenting evidence in forms that support responsible and actionable interpretations conducive to effective decision-making in higher-education contexts.

These teams may wish to:

  • Map existing institutional and external data to the relevant evidence tiles
  • Assess the coverage, accessibility, and reliability of potential data sources
  • Establish procedures for researcher validation and correction
  • Record the provenance, time period, and limitations of each indicator
  • Identify where institutional or self-reported information is required, and
  • Develop profiles or dashboards that retain the connection between evidence, context, and narrative

“Some way of, for instance, a software package that could take a much more holistic view, the intersection of qualitative and quantitative data would be fantastic.”

Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of East Anglia

Research funders, learned societies, and sector bodies

Research funders, learned societies, and sector bodies may use the Handbook as a basis for reviewing evaluation criteria, when consulting cross-disciplinary or transdisciplinary scholarly communities, and exploring more appropriate evidence of A&H contributions. The framework may also support programme evaluation or analysis at disciplinary, sectoral, or national levels.

These users may wish to:

  • Examine whether existing criteria adequately recognises the diversity of A&H scholarship
  • Work with cross-disciplinary or transdisciplinary scholarly communities to adapt the values, audiences, and evidence tiles to specific research contexts
  • Pilot selected elements of the array before applying them more widely in learning, teaching, and research
  • Identify systematic gaps and biases in available evidence, and
  • Use aggregated findings to inform policy and system development

“One thing to be concerned about when it comes to arts and humanities is that different disciplines really are quite different.”

Professor of Applied Ethics, University of Leeds

This VBSA was piloted at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). As a representative, medium-sized institution with a research-led liberal-arts legacy of promoting A&H scholars and their work, HKBU has provided us with an effective use-case when stress-testing an alternative evaluation framework built to measure a broader array of A&H values-based scholarship. HKBU’s foundational strengths lie in A&H, with ‘Humanities and Cultures’ and ‘Creative Media and Practice’ among its institutional research clusters. Its Academy of Visual Arts and Academy of Film were the first of their kind in Hong Kong and, together with its Academy of Music, the School of Creative Arts places practice-based, performance and creative output at the centre of the University’s scholarly performance and impact. These are precisely the kinds of contributions that conventional, citation-based metrics tend to overlook. This combination of transdisciplinary breadth and strength in creative practice have made HKBU an indicative setting in which to test whether the proposed array could capture what A&H scholars and stakeholders off campus truly value.

“Arts and humanities, creative fields, performance arts, all of those have non-traditional outputs. They are underpinned by research in various ways. But the output itself is not the journal type of a publication as such. It's much harder to quantify”

Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University

Elsevier brought complementary strengths to the collaboration. As a research-information and analytics organisation, it contributed to the data infrastructure, indicator expertise and access to data types and sources needed to operationalise the array at scale, together with experience in the responsible use of research metrics. Central to Elsevier’s practice is the principle that runs throughout this Handbook: quantitative indicators should inform expert, context-sensitive judgement rather than replace it.

The partnership therefore pairs HKBU’s deep, transdisciplinary understanding of A&H scholarship with Elsevier’s capacity to source, link and compute indicators responsibly. Together, the two partners have sought to produce a VBSA that is conceptually credible and practically implementable, while recognising that further consultation, validation, and refinement remain necessary.

Our early experience of development and testing the array at HKBU highlighted several factors that may be helpful to organisations considering its implementation:

  • Identify a suitable sponsor: where evaluation initiatives are championed by a senior leader, they tend to achieve much stronger buy-in and adoption.
  • Establish a project team and lead: in our experience, a dedicated team with a clear lead has been important to maintaining momentum. The lead need not be a disciplinary expert, but should have the authority and resources to plan, to co-ordinate and to bring together the necessary activities and information prompting effective dialogue and consensus among users of the VBSA. It helps greatly if team members can commit sufficient time during the implementation period; where this has not been possible, progress has slowed markedly. Team size and composition may evolve as the work progresses.
  • Read this Handbook: implementation has worked best where sponsors and team members familiarised themselves with the array, and the thinking behind it, before deciding how it might be interpreted or adapted within their organisation.
  • Agree a shared purpose: organisational change can be difficult and time-consuming. Agreeing from the outset why you are adopting the array — grounded in your institution’s mission and its commitment to A&H scholarship — helps to keep the work focused and guide subsequent decisions.
  • Draw upon change-management best practices: adopting the array involves organisational change. It may be helpful to draw upon established change-management principles and to involve colleagues within your institution who have relevant experience.
  • Reach out to us (optional): we would welcome hearing from you at any time about how the implementation of the VBSA is going, its ups and downs, and any potentials you have observed or challenges you are currently experiencing. Please feel free to contact us with any questions, feedback, or expressions of interest as to further testing and development. See the ‘How can I connect?’ section below for contact details.

"In a lot of arts and humanities, they don't think the current systems are reliable or valid or they don't buy into it, but then they kind of have to conform."

Associate Professor, Department of English, City University of Hong Kong

Limits

Limitations and next steps

What the array does not do, stated as plainly as what it does.

The VBSA offers a practical route between two unsatisfactory extremes: opaque qualitative judgement and reductive metricisation. Setting out what it achieves is only half the story, however; the Handbook is equally direct about where the array remains exposed to the risks it was designed to guard against.

A first, and fundamental, limitation is that however carefully an indicator is chosen, however plural the evidence behind it, and however much room is left for narrative, the VBSA remains a metric-based framework, and that carries a tension it cannot fully resolve. Turning a value such as esteem or collegiality into a countable tile is what allows the array to scale; but the same move invites exactly the ‘countable, therefore comparable’ reading that reductive metricisation encourages. The narrative field is intended as the counterweight — though writing it well takes time and confidence that not every scholar has in equal measure.

A second limitation follows from the data sources themselves. Most of the database and platform sources skew towards English-language, Western-published and often STEMM-oriented content; web-scraped sources have no authoritative record of what should be included; and self-reported data are subject to recall, selection and reporting bias. Taken together, they mean that a scholar working in a well-indexed field, publishing in English and comfortable navigating institutional reporting systems will tend to produce a fuller array than a scholar of comparable standing whose outputs are less visible to these sources.

A third limitation concerns who can realistically create the array at all. Assembling even a pilot version drew on paid database licences, a considerable investment in AI-augmented web-scraping infrastructure, and privileged access to institutional systems of record. A framework intended to offer a shared, portable standard is of limited use if only well-resourced institutions can afford to populate it.

Next steps. None of this is reason to abandon the values-based approach; it is reason to be candid about its limits alongside its ambitions. The team proposes to report coverage gaps for a given cohort alongside its results rather than leaving them implicit in a data-sources table, to treat the narrative field as a required rather than optional part of each tile, and to pilot the array deliberately on cohorts likely to expose its blind spots rather than only on cohorts likely to flatter it.

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The Handbook and the framework figures

The Handbook is available free of charge in digital format. A limited number of printed copies are also available for project partners, conferences, and interested organisations. Except where otherwise indicated, it is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) — you may share and adapt the material provided the appropriate credit is given, a link to the licence is included, and any changes are indicated.

Cover of the first edition of the VBSA Handbook

The Handbook

Available free of charge in digital form, with a limited number of printed copies for project partners, conferences and interested organisations. Register your interest and we will send you the link as soon as the download location is confirmed.

Digital edition — free of charge Download location to be confirmed
Nov 2026
Printed copies Limited number, for partners and interested organisations
Nov 2026

Framework figures

Available now — high-resolution exports from the design guideline, for use in your own documentation.

Handbook cover — First Edition Front cover artwork, print specification
Values & Audience charts Rose charts, four-ring scale, radial gradient
Evidence-tile matrix Values and audiences, as published
Indicator specifications What each indicator counts

Cite Referencing the array

How to cite this Handbook

The Handbook gives one citation to use. The three styles below are that same entry, formatted.

Suggested citation

A DOI will be minted for the First Edition on publication; the identifier shown above is a placeholder until then, and the citation details are provisional.

Connect Talk to the team

How can I connect?

Whether you are implementing the VBSA, adapting it to a different discipline, or evaluating whether it is right for your institution — we would like to hear about it.

Email the VBSA team contact@vbsarray.org
Office of Institutional Research and Planning Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR
Research Collaboration Unit Elsevier
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