Each year, DORA reflects on progress toward responsible research assessment. The following list is of new developments from DORA on this front.
New Developments from DORA
In January, members of DORA’s Steering Committee selected the awardees for the Community Engagement Grants program, who were announced in February. DORA piloted the program as a mechanism to directly support a broad range of ideas to promote assessment reform at academic institutions. Teams from countries around the world were awarded funding for their project proposals to promote assessment reform at academic institutions.
DORA and the Funding Organisations for Gender Equality Community of Practice (FORGEN CoP) organized a collaborative workshop for the funder discussion group in September “Using Narrative CVs: Process optimization and bias mitigation.” A report on the workshop was released in January 2022 and accompanied by a blog post that provided context for the work. DORA organized an additional workshop “Using Narrative CVs: Identifying shared objectives and monitoring effectiveness” with the FORGEN CoP, Science Foundation Ireland, Swiss National Science Foundation, and UK Research and Innovation in February. The goal of the workshop was to deliver on the first recommended action in the report: build a foundation to support the use of narrative CVs by creating a shared definition of what a narrative CV is and a list of objectives for what it hopes to achieve.
In collaboration with two university associations, CESAER and CINDA, DORA worked with Ruth Schmidt to organize a series of workshops in April 2022 on the practical use of SPACE, a tool to facilitate academic assessment reform at universities by examining what infrastructure is needed to support the development of new policies and practices. SPACE was also translated into Catalan and Spanish. Following the workshops, DORA released a SPACE workshop kit and workbook, available in Spanish and English, in July.
In October, DORA held a community call to introduce two new tools from the Tools to Advance Research Assessment (TARA) Project, which is generously funded by Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge. The tools, created in collaboration with TARA team member Ruth Schmidt (Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology) focus on Debiasing Committee Composition and Deliberative Processes and reimagining academic “impact” with the Building Blocks for Impact.
In November, DORA announced a new policy on engagement and outreach for organizational signatories. The policy clarifies expectations for signatory organizations to implement the commitments entailed in signing the Declaration on Research Assessment.
Finally, DORA announced in December that it would be celebrating its 10th Anniversary in May 2023. The details of the celebration will be announced in the new year.
