UKRI admits role in Researchfish Twitter controversy, 2022, Sophie Inge

Research Professional News, UKRI admits role in Researchfish Twitter controversy, 2022, Sophie Inge.

"Funder reveals it agreed Researchfish should share “abusive” tweets with it

National research funder UK Research and Innovation has admitted it encouraged Researchfish to report some tweets from academics to it, after enraged researchers criticised the online service for doing this last month.

Researchfish is used by leading UK funders to track researchers’ work. A number of researchers accused it of intimidation and bullying last month after it said it had reported them to their funders for posting critical Twitter posts about the service.

Now UKRI has admitted it agreed with Researchfish that the latter’s staff should flag “abusive, threatening or offensive tweets” to it, and apologised for this approach. It said it had originally agreed with reporting of tweets to protect those affected by abuse and that this had no impact on grant decisions.

“We have stopped this approach with immediate effect and recognise that it was the wrong thing to do,” UKRI said on 19 April.

“We understand that this has raised questions around personal data. We take data protection very seriously. Our assessment of the data protection considerations is ongoing and is expected to be concluded shortly.” "

More at link:

https://researchprofessionalnews.co...its-role-in-researchfish-twitter-controversy/


The use of the phrase “abusive, threatening or offensive tweets” seems have meant "critical".

 

Much like "vexatious" has been, seemingly, deliberately misused in other circumstances, particularly Freedom of Information requests.