Operations Officer

Rachel Miles is the Research Impact Coordinator and assistant professor at Virginia Tech University Libraries. She received her B.A. in psychology from Wichita State University in 2009 and her Master of Library Science from Emporia State University in 2015. She is an active member of the bibliometrics and research impact practitioner community. She is a committee member of the international LIS-Bibliometrics Community and the manager of the Community's blog, The Bibliomagician. In her daily work, she assists administrators and researchers with research assessment, researcher profiles, scholarly publishing, research analytics and metrics, and scholarly communication. She is also an expert in copyright as it pertains to academia, higher education, publisher copyright policies and contracts, and Open Access and open licensing. She is the library subject liaison to the Psychology Department and the School of Neuroscience. You can find her library guides on research impact metrics, researcher profiles, research assessment, psychology, and neuroscience on her library faculty profile page. Rachel also grounds her work in fair, ethical, and responsible research assessment and has taken efforts in university governance to advocate for equitable and responsible research assessment. She recently chaired a task force that drafted and published the Virginia Tech Faculty Statement on the Responsible Use of Research Metrics, which was endorsed and approved by the Faculty Senate in April 2023. Her own research focuses primarily on how researchers, faculty members, and academic librarians perceive research assessment and use research impact metrics as well as how academic incentives and systems influence attitudes towards metrics and assessment practices.