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Click here to download this report. This report may also be found in DORA’s Resource Library. Background Research funding organizations are well positioned to be drivers of change towards more responsible research assessment practices. They are in a unique position to shape research culture, determining the allocation of resources, shaping research priorities, and influencing who…

Recording and materials from this event The accomplishments of the DORA Community Engagement grant Awardees (slideshow below). Event information Date: This event took place on May 16, 2023Time: 12:00 AM UTC (time conversion here) As part of DORA’s 10th Anniversary Celebration, we held two plenary sessions to capture as many time zones as possible and ensure…

Recording and materials from this event The accomplishments of the DORA Community Engagement grant Awardees (slideshow below). Event information Date: This event took place on May 16, 2023Time: 12:00 PM UTC (time conversion here) As part of DORA’s 10th Anniversary Celebration, we held two plenary sessions to capture as many time zones as possible and ensure…

DORA will be 10 years old in May 2023 and we are planning to mark the occasion! We’ll be holding a weeklong celebration for DORA’s 10th Anniversary and we’re inviting you to join in by organizing an event on research assessment for your local community. We want to have conversations about what DORA has done…

DORA at 10: Looking back at the history and the future of research assessment The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) will celebrate its 10th birthday in May next year and we want to invite the worldwide research community to help us mark the occasion. We aim to coordinate a series of events across…

Introducing two new tools for debiasing committee composition and recognizing the many facets of “impact” On October 25, 2022 DORA hosted a community call to introduce two new responsible research evaluation tools and provide feedback on future tool development. The toolkit is part of Project TARA, which aims to identify, understand, and make visible the…

By Penny Weber — HuMetricsHSS On June 1, 2022, the HuMetricsHSS Initiative partnered with the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) to bring together the HuMetricsHSS Community Fellows and the DORA Community Engagement Grant Awardees to share knowledge and strategies on their respective—but interconnected—areas of work. The meeting brought together 23 academics working on projects looking…

  In recent years, an increasing number of organizations have started to consider how to implement practical changes toward responsible academic assessment practices. However, reform is a process that takes time and resources, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. In December 2020, to begin to address the increasing need for clear, structured examples of the…

Introduction to Project TARA As more institutions begin to examine and refine their approach to academic assessment, there is growing awareness of the value of knowledge-sharing resources that support the development of new policies and practices. In light of this need, DORA is building an interactive online dashboard as part of Project TARA to monitor…

  Introduction to Project TARA As institutions experiment with and refine academic assessment policies and practices, there is a need for knowledge sharing and tools to support culture change. On September 9, 2021, we held a community call to gather early-stage input for a new resource: an interactive online dashboard to identify, track, and display…

Because every institution is different, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. With this in mind, the SPACE rubric was designed to be an adaptable tool. It supports institutions that are just beginning to consider improving their assessment practices, as well as institutions that have already developed and implemented new practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced many facets of the research landscape, including the manner in which researchers disseminate and gather feedback on their findings. Increasingly, researchers have been sharing preprints for the rapid dissemination of information to the public and policymakers. Recent surges in the use of preprints, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, have highlighted…

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many facets of the research ecosystem, from interruptions in research and career advancement to research dissemination and evaluation. It has also revealed and accentuated flaws in academic recognition and reward systems. Traditional academic hiring, promotion, and tenure practices that prioritize publication quantity and journal metrics do not tend to reward…

In late 2020 and early 2021, DORA, the European University Association (EUA) and SPARC Europe created a case study repository and accompanying report to showcase a range of innovators in the area of research assessment. To complete this project, the organizations hosted a joint webinar on February 24, 2021, to present and discuss the main…

This blog is part two in a 2-part series on multilingualism in scholarly communication. Read part one here. In recent years, numerous initiatives have highlighted linguistic biases embedded in current evaluation processes and have called for change.  The DORA-hosted community discussion on multilingualism in scholarly evaluation (covered in an earlier blog) was inspired by actions…

This blog is part one in a 2-part series on multilingualism in scholarly communication. The globalization of research has led to the simultaneous rise of English as the recognized language of scholarship and the decline of national and local languages in scholarly communication. Yet disseminating research in diverse languages allows geographically and culturally relevant research…

Discussions about research integrity are prompting a reevaluation of research culture, including academic assessment. To understand the opportunities and barriers to improve academic assessment in the Asia-Pacific region, DORA hosted its first webinar in collaboration with the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) on Thursday, July 2, 2020. Panelists included Michael Barber, Australian Academy of Science; Yukiko Gotoh, The University of Tokyo; Xiaoxuan Li, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Donna McRostie, University of Melbourne; and Justin Zobel, University of Melbourne.

The emergence of the corona virus this winter led to the unprecedented global stoppage of academic research. To identify faculty challenges in the wake of the pandemic, DORA co-sponsored a webinar with Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR) on May 7, 2020.

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020, more than 180 individuals around the world joined DORA’s webinar discussion to examine what roles libraries play in research assessment reform. Panelists Curtis Brundy (Iowa State University), Yvonne Nobis (University of Cambridge), Leonidas Papachristopoulos (Hellenic Open University Distance Library and the Association of European Research Libraries), and Devin Savage (Illinois Institute of Technology) discussed their experiences as librarians working to improve how research is evaluated on campus.

On Wednesday February 12, 2020 DORA hosted a community interview with Chris Pickett, the Director of Rescuing Biomedical Research (RBR), a non-profit initiative dedicated to addressing systematic flaws in the United States (US) biomedical research system. In the interview, Pickett discussed hypercompetition, training grants, and why faculty search committees should look beyond funding records when selecting candidates for a job.

On Wednesday April 3, 2019, we hosted a #sfDORA community interview with Janet Halliwell to learn more about the 2017 report from the Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Canada, Approaches to Assessing Impacts in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We also wanted to hear about a new project she is working on to improve assessment in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) by creating a standardized vocabulary of terms related to research assessment.

Across the world, institutions and funders experience similar challenges in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions. How do we define research quality? What criteria should be included in researcher assessments? While some challenges might be shared, the academic ecosystem can vary from region to region.

In academia, the bar for success continues to get higher for early-career researchers who are looking for faculty positions and grant funding. On November 4, we sat down with Prof. Christopher Jackson from Imperial College London to hear his perspective on the incentive structure in academia and what we can do better.

Research articles are one of the main outputs of scholarly research and factor heavily in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions in academia. On September 11, the chair of the DORA steering committee, Prof. Stephen Curry, interviewed the Editor-in-Chief of Springer Nature, Sir Phillip Campbell, about the role of publishers in research assessment.

Obtaining grant funding is often seen as a critical step for career advancement, and the presence or absence of external funding can influence hiring and promotion choices. The Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance has a three-step evaluation process for its awards.