Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to discuss this important issue. I've thought a lot about research excellence, how we define it and how we assess it. In addition to being on the Canadian Black Scientists Network, I have served as vice-dean of faculty affairs at the University of Toronto Scarborough. In that role, I oversaw assessments and career progression for over 400 faculty members from across fields. I'm also currently the chair of the national Killam selection committee, which adjudicates the Dorothy Killam fellowships and Killam prizes, some of the most prestigious research awards in Canada.

What is research excellence? Most people agree that excellence is consistently producing research that is rigorous, repeatable and transparent, with a positive impact on the field of study or on society. Impact is one of the key elements of excellence, but it can be very hard to assess in the short term. In retrospect, impact often involves disruption and innovation that breaks with conventional thinking or use in a particular area, adding something novel and valuable to theory, practice or translation into benefits for society.

The most commonly used metrics for research excellence in the past were relatively quick and easy to assess and generally fell into two categories. One was output. This included the number of papers, the number of citations and the impact factors, things we've talked about already today. The other was recognition and experience—the number of awards and fellowships you received and your track record of training and related experiences. Were you in the lab of a Nobel Prize winner? Well, then, you must be good.

Canada is now recognized internationally for research excellence. That has been built on supporting researchers from across the country and assessing them with these metrics. But the pathways from research to impact can change, and they are changing. The criteria for assessment have to change with them, or Canada will be left behind. To retain and build Canada's impact, the tri-council and our comparators internationally are evolving to use broader criteria. There is good evidence that the traditional measures no longer capture or encourage excellence. Basically, the ideas that affect Canadians the most are not necessarily the same as the ones that produce the most papers or the most citations.

First, even as the number of publications has skyrocketed in the past decades, the proportion of those papers that are disruptive and truly innovative has plummeted. This was shown most recently in a definitive study published in Nature that looked at 45 million manuscripts and 3.9 million patents from 1945 to 2010. Both showed a significant decline, a 70% to 90% decline, in disruption and novelty. Tallies of papers, patents and impact factors are metrics that are not fit for purpose. Worse, using these as our primary metrics encourages researchers to publish more and more, even if it matters less and less to Canadians.

Second, there's a substantive body of literature showing that recognitions like awards, fellowships and opportunities to do research, particularly in top labs, are affected by identity, not just by scientific promise or excellence, and perceptions of race, gender, socio-economic status and whether you live near a large university. In Canada, the challenge of being pushed to do science in English can affect conventional metrics. For example, a number of studies have shown that standardized application packages and emails are treated differently if the names attached indicate that women or racialized people are submitting them.

Another recent example is the record of Nobel Prize winner Katalin Karikó. Dr. Karikó persisted in science despite outright sexism, being judged as an underperformer and being pushed out of research labs. Her research eventually made it possible to create the mRNA vaccines against COVID. That research was published in a low-impact journal after one review at Nature concluded that her work was not important.

The tri-council has recognized these problems and is seeking to ensure development of the next generation of talent across the country by encouraging researchers to be intentional about inclusive recruitment and mentorship in their publicly funded research labs. It really is about HQP, or highly qualified personnel. This is critical to our future science and innovation ecosystem. We cannot afford to leave talent on the sidelines.

As far as output goes, the tri-council has not discarded the traditional metrics. They're still there. Incremental advancements are still important, but they've added a wider range of assessments and impacts. Canada is not alone in this. As you've already heard, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment has been adopted worldwide. It is a rigorous guide to broadening our understanding of excellence to include a range of impacts and outputs and the accomplishments and talents of diverse people from across the country. Change is never easy, but this evolution of our understanding of measuring excellence is critical to retaining Canada's international impact and our internal fuel for innovation.

Thank you very much for listening to my thoughts.

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