Community Call: Introducing the 2022 Project TARA tools to support responsible research assessment

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 criteria and standards universities use to make hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. The interactive call introduced and explored these new tools, which covered two important topics:

  • Debiasing Committee Composition and Deliberative Processes: It is increasingly recognized that more diverse decision-making panels make better decisions. This one-page brief can be used to learn how to debias your committees and decision-making processes.
  • Building Blocks for Impact: Capturing scholarly “impact” often relies on familiar suspects like h-index, JIF, and citations, despite evidence that these indicators are narrow, often misleading, and generally insufficient to capture the full richness of scholarly work. This one-page brief can be used to learn how to consider a wider breadth of contributions in assessing the value of academic achievements.

The tools were created by Ruth Schmidt, Associate Professor at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech and member of the Project TARA team.

In the above clip from the October 25, 2022 call, Schmidt introduces the 2022 Project TARA tools: “Debiasing Committee Composition and Deliberative Processes” and “Building Blocks for Impact”.

Participants also provided their thoughts and feedback on the next round of Project TARA tools, slated for release in 2023. Sign up for DORA’s email list to be notified when the blog summary of the community discussion-portion of the call is published: https://sfdora.org/.

The event was be moderated by Haley Hazlett, DORA Acting Program Director and Ruth Schmidt. DORA Policy Associates Sudeepa Nandi and Queen Saikia provided chat moderation and support.

 

Project TARA is supported by Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge.

Haley Hazlett
Dr. Haley Hazlett has been DORA's Program Manager since 2021. She was a DORA Policy Intern before taking the role of Program Manager. She obtained her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2021 and is passionate about improving research culture for all researchers.

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