We are pleased to announce the formation of an international advisory board to provide strategic guidance to DORA and to further our vision of advancing practical and robust approaches to research assessment globally and across all disciplines.
“I am excited and delighted that so many distinguished and committed people have volunteered their expertise to help make DORA a truly global initiative. It is a testament to the importance and the urgency of the work that lies ahead to improve research evaluation,” says Stephen Curry, DORA Steering Committee Chair.
With representation from six continents, fifteen countries, and the different areas within the research landscape, advisory board members will serve as liaisons for DORA in their region. This type of broad geographic distribution and disciplinary reach is essential for DORA to move forward with its 2018 Roadmap, which states:
“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 reusability – rather than on questionable proxies.”
Advisory board members include:
Dominique Babini, El Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), Argentina
Babini is the Open Access Advisor at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). She has a doctorate in political science and postgraduate in information science.
Virginia (Ginny) Barbour, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Barbour is Director of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group and Advisor to the Office of Research Ethics & Integrity and the Library at Queensland University of Technology. She was one of the three founding editors of PLOS Medicine and has been involved with many open access, publishing, reporting and ethics initiatives.
José Pío Beltrán, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), València, Spain
Beltrán is Professor of Research at the CSIC in València. He is the Head of the Lab of Biology and Biotechnology of Reproductive Biology at the Institute of Plant Cell and Molecular Biology (IBMCP, CSIC-UPV).
Leslie Chan, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada
Chan teaches at the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He has a long standing interest in the use of the Web for scholarly exchange and for teaching and learning.
David Drubin, University of California, Berkeley, United States
Drubin has been on the faculty at UC Berkeley for 30 years studying the cytoskeleton and membrane trafficking in yeast and mammalian cells. He serves as Editor-In-Chief of MBoC, the research journal of the American Society for Cell Biology.
Christian Gonzalez-Billaut, Universidad de Chile, Chile
Gonzalez-Billaut is a Professor at Universidad de Chile; Adjunct Professor at The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and Director of the Geroscience Center for Brain Health and Metabolism (GERO). His research interests include the role of neuronal cytoskeleton in the development of nervous system, as well as neurotransmission and neurodegenerative diseases.
Yukiko Gotoh, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Gotoh is a Professor at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo. Her research goal is to understand the molecular and cellular basis of brain development with an emphasis on the regulation of neural stem/progenitor cell fate and epigenetics.
Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, National Library of Finland, Finland
Hormia-Poutanen is the Director of Library Network Services at the National Library of Finland. She is also a special adviser to the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) and a member of the Open Science Policy Platform for the European Commission.
Rebecca Lawrence, F1000, United Kingdom
Lawrence is Managing Director of the F1000 Group and was responsible for the development of the next-generation open science publishing approach used in F1000Research and funder-based publishing platforms. She is a member of the Open Science Policy Platform, is an Advisory Board member of FAIRsharing, and has chaired many initiatives around data sharing and peer review.
Xiaoxuan Li, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China
Li is a professor at the CAS Institute of Science and Development and director of the CAS Innovation Management and Research Evaluation Centre. His research interests include decision-making mechanisms for science and technology (S&T) development; S&T resources allocation and management; and S&T human resource, project management and evaluation.
Satyajit Mayor, National Centre for Biological Science (TIFR), India
Mayor is the Centre Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (TIFR) and is also the Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) at Bangalore, India. The broad aim of his work is to understand of the molecular mechanisms of endocytosis in metazoan cells, and describe the cell membrane’s physical structure and organization.
Valerie Mizrahi, University of Capetown, South Africa
Mizrahi is the Professorial Director of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on aspects of the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis relevant to tuberculosis drug discovery, drug resistance and mycobacterial persistence.
Ahmed Ogunlaja, Open Access Nigeria, Nigeria
Ogunlaja is a medical professional and the Founder of Open Access Nigeria, an advocacy organization promoting Open Science.
Sandra Schmid, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States
Schmid is Chair of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Her laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms and regulation of clathrin-mediated endocytosis.
Iara Vidal Pereira de Souza, Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Vidal is a librarian and is currently PhD candidate at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). She is interested in altmetrics, open access, and research assessment.
Rhoda Wanyenze, Makerere University School of Public Health, Uganda
Wanyenze is an Associate Professor and Dean at Makerere University, School of Public Health. She has been engaged in public health research for more than 15 years and has published over 100 peer reviewed journal articles.
“Research assessment acts as a gatekeeper for career progression in academia,” says advisory board member Dominique Babini, Open Access Advisor at CLACSO. “Unfortunately, evaluation criteria are not always reflective of a scientist’s true contributions to the field and to addressing societal challenges. I am looking forward to working with DORA to advance robust and scalable solutions to evaluating research in diverse contexts.”