DORA Roadmap: A two-year strategic plan for advancing global research assessment reform at the institutional, national, and funder level

Signing the 2013 San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is an important  way for individuals and organizations to publicly acknowledge their commitment to improve research by strengthening research assessment. But it is only a first step. The next and more challenging steps require changes in academic culture to ensure that hiring, promotion, and funding decisions focus on the qualities of research that are most desirable – insight, impact, reliability and re-usability – rather than on questionable proxies. To advance this agenda, the DORA roadmap for the next two years will focus on three strategic goals to enable signatories to take action:

  1. We will increase awareness of the need to develop credible alternatives to the inappropriate uses of metrics in research assessment.
  2. We will research and promote tools and processes that facilitate best practice in research assessment.
  3. We will extend the reach and impact of DORA’s work across scholarly disciplines and in new areas of the world.

Our vision is to advance practical and robust approaches to research assessment globally  and across all scholarly disciplines

We will take a variety of actions in support of each of these strategic goals and monitor progress on all fronts. In particular we hope to see:

  • Additional signatures to the Declaration
  • Growing awareness and support for DORA around the world and across disciplines
  • Good practices coming to light through the website
  • An increase in attention in the social and news media

Some of the specific actions we aim to take include the following.

1. Increase awareness

1.1  Recruit signatories.
1.2  Showcase the implementation of good practices and how policy changes have improved research assessment in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions.
1.3  Participate in scientific and scholarly meetings.
1.4  Capitalize on social (and other) media activity.
1.5  Host a meeting on research assessment.

2. Promote tools and processes

2.1  Establish partnerships with like-minded organizations.
2.2  Encourage organizations to publicize their efforts to implement DORA principles.
2.3  Host discussions  with the researcher community.
2.4  Develop and/or increase visibility for tools that enhance good practices.

3. Extend the disciplinary and geographic reach of DORA

3.1  Create regional nodes to leverage local experience in adapting best practice in research assessment to different parts of the world.
3.2  Proactively engage additional scholarly disciplines.

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