DORA to Launch Practical Guide to Responsible Research Assessment

The team at the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA, is celebrating its 12th birthday by launching “A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations” this May.

DORA arose in 2012 during the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco, and since has become a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines and all key stakeholders including funders, publishers, professional societies, institutions, and researchers.  It’s mission is to advance practical and robust approaches to research assessment globally and across all scholarly disciplines. The declaration now has more than 25,000 signatories, including Sage, the parent of Social Science Space.

Interest holders meeting in the US state of Maryland in January helped develop the guide, which has been created as part of DORA’s Project TARA. Alongside Reformscape, the Building Blocks for Impact, and the Debiasing Committee Composition, the guide forms a suite of tools designed to help organizations who are seeking to reform research assessment practices. Project TARA is supported by Arcadia, a family charitable foundation that helps people to record cultural heritage, to conserve and restore nature, and to promote open access to knowledge, whom we thank.

DORA’s chairs will introduce the guide in three online panel sessions, and guest speakers will discuss it in light of the specific contributions the guide can make to their environments. To cater to DORA’s our global community, panels are offered at various times:

• Asia-Pacific friendly: Thursday, May 15, 14:00 AEST – register here
• Africa & Europe friendly: Friday, May 16, 10:00 BST – register here
• Americas: Friday, May 16, 14:00 EDT – register here

Dora notes that many organizations are keen to reform their research assessment practices but lack the time, space and/or expertise to reflect on how to do this and often don’t know where to start. Organizer say the guide presents practical activities – such as engaging the organization leadership, creating a working group, and developing a communication and engagement plan – that DORA staff know from its work with the DORA community over the last decade can make a real difference in delivering change, along with suggestions of key moments in research(er) assessment where change is possible. To inspire action, the guide has action-oriented resources and examples from across the world of organizations who have developed and adopted responsible research assessment approaches – including three new examples from universities in Canada, Denmark and Japan.

One approach to research assessment certainly does not fit all, so the guide is intended to be an inspirational tool. Dora staff says they are curious, through these and further events throughout the year, to understand and discuss how the guide can be used in different environments.