  The appeal of metric evaluation of research impact has attracted considerable
interest in recent times. Although the public at large and administrative
bodies are much interested in the idea, scientists and other researchers are
much more cautious, insisting that metrics are but an auxiliary instrument to
the qualitative peer-based judgement. The goal of this article is to propose
availing of such a well positioned construct as domain taxonomy as a tool for
directly assessing the scope and quality of research. We first show how
taxonomies can be used to analyse the scope and perspectives of a set of
research projects or papers. Then we proceed to define a research team or
researcher's rank by those nodes in the hierarchy that have been created or
significantly transformed by the results of the researcher. An experimental
test of the approach in the data analysis domain is described. Although the
concept of taxonomy seems rather simplistic to describe all the richness of a
research domain, its changes and use can be made transparent and subject to
open discussions.
