Five years after making a decisive shift to become an international campaigning initiative and completing the aims of its first strategic plan, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is pleased to announce a new three-year strategic plan to continue its focus on implementing global research assessment reform.
To meet the goals of our first strategic plan, published in 2018, we have:
- Worked to increase awareness through the creation of the resource library, our social media, public events and community calls, and co-hosting the meeting Driving Institutional Change for Research Assessment Reform with HHMI.
- Promoted the use of tools and processes to implement reform by partnering with community members to hold workshops and create resources, establishing an international dialogue via the creation of communities of practice for research funders and initiatives working to implement assessment reform, and creating the case study repository and the community engagement grants program.
- Extended the disciplinary and geographic scope of DORA by updating our operational structure to do our utmost to distribute power and address structural inequities that limited participation in the Steering Committee.
To build on these efforts and identify the most important challenges ahead, DORA consulted extensively with the worldwide research community through a detailed survey and a series of informal interviews. The insights gathered from this consultation were of enormous help to DORA’s Steering Committee, which is itself made up of dedicated individuals from around the globe representing funders, publishers, scientific societies, and researchers, in drafting the new strategic plan.
DORA’s 2023-2026 strategic plan defines four objectives that will provide the framework and focus for our work over the next three years.
Our new strategic objectives are to:
- Increase awareness of the negative impacts of research assessment practices that are too dependent on inappropriate metrics, and of the positive impacts of alternative practices
- Accelerate the development of clear and concrete measures to reform research assessment
- Support advocates of research assessment reform worldwide
- Secure the funding needed to deliver DORA’s mission as efficiently and as rapidly as possible.
The strategic plan outlines DORA’s principles, values, rationale, and outlines the specific activities that we hope to complete over the next three years. While we are still aiming to gather signatures as a show of individual and organizational commitment to reform, our main goal is to make significant progress to equip community members with the resources, community support, and tools they need to implement change.
As our ten year anniversary approaches in May of this year, we look forward to working with you to usher in the next decade of responsible research assessment! If you would like to get involved or be signed up to our mailing list, let us know at info@sfdora.org.
Haley Hazlett is DORA’s Acting Program Director, Stephen Curry is DORA’s Chair