[PeterisP]

I'd iterpret that as the fact that right now, any academic or institution who chooses to unilaterally avoid the current system will lose lots of funding, as the publication metrics are actively used by the funding bodies in project evaluation.

I am not aware of any alternative that can replace the current publication metrics for this purpose. The funding bodies have no motivation, capability or resources to make a replacement themselves, so that would have to come as a ready-made replacement in order to be accepted, and actually work (have usable content) for evaluating all current academic disciplines and academics out of the box (which seems rather unrealistic) so that a multi-disciplinary funding body can actually put that metric in their next funding round official evaluation criteria.