Each quarter, DORA holds a Community of Practice (CoP) meeting for National and International Initiatives working to address responsible research assessment reform. This CoP is a space for initiatives to learn from each other, make connections with like-minded organizations, and collaborate on projects or topics of common interest. Meeting agendas are shaped by participants. If you lead an initiative, coalition, or organization working to improve research assessment and are interested in joining the group, please find more information here.
Our most recent meeting on August 12, 2025, featured Dr. James Morris, Senior Policy Officer at Science Europe, who shared Science Europe’s recently release Vision and Framework for Research Cultures. Dr. Morris, with a background in marine and molecular biology, leads Science Europe’s work on research culture and assessment. Science Europe is a Brussels-based membership organization comprising 40 Member Organisations across 30 European countries, collectively funding approximately €25 billion of research per year. We invite you to watch back on the insightful presentation, download the slides (20250812_Research_Culture_Vision_Slides_JPM) and read the summary below.
Science Europe’s Vision for Research Cultures: A Holistic Approach
Morris highlighted that Science Europe’s focus on research cultures emerged from their extensive work on research assessment, a daily business for their member organizations involved in grant allocation and career progression. It became evident that disentangling assessment policies from other priority areas, such as gender equality, open science, or research precarity, was challenging. Therefore, the concept of research cultures was adopted as a way to holistically connect different policy topics and understand how funders and performers shape national research systems through their policies, impacting researchers’ daily lives.
“We found it quite hard to disentangle assessment policies from other priority areas that we were trying to work on, like gender equality, open science, or research precarity. […] We thought that research cultures might be a way of connecting these different policy topics together.” – Dr. James Morris, Science Europe
Science Europe defines “research cultures” broadly, encompassing behaviors, attitudes, actions, practices, policies, and missions at individual, team, institutional, national, and international levels. This comprehensive view considers all individuals who conduct and enable research, their career opportunities, the importance of training and guidance, and the role research plays in society.
A core element of Science Europe’s approach is grounding it in shared values. Through discussions with their members between 2021 and 2022, a set of common values was agreed upon, which apply to both the research process and its management and governance. These values aim to underpin policy changes that support good research practices, diversity, integrity, and career development.
The recently published vision for research cultures presents eight idealistic goals to guide future actions, including attractive careers, diverse representation, open and inclusive science, rigor, and sustainability. These goals are timely, given the rapid evolution of research systems, technological advances like AI, and increasing external pressures on research. The overarching mission for all actions is knowledge advancement, ensuring research quality, and impact.
To enable effective action, the supporting framework sets out the conditions, and Science Europe has made several commitments:
- Building an online map of good practices related to research culture shifts from their members, expected to launch in the second half of 2026.
- Developing new collaborations with the research community, recognizing that culture change starts with researchers, not policy.
- Incorporating a research culture perspective across all their work, including new areas like greening research processes.
- Establishing a method for tracking progress and building evidence of what works and what doesn’t.
Morris illustrated the distinction between behavior change and true culture change using the example of Research Data Management (RDM). While mandating Data Management Plans (DMPs) has led to an increase in their submission (a change in behavior), the deeper question is whether it has changed attitudes or values. True culture change would mean researchers continue to manage and share data because they value it as good practice, even when not explicitly mandated. This highlights the need to support sustainable shifts in attitudes and values for impactful, long-term change.
Looking ahead, Science Europe is considering an annual “barometer” for research culture change. This qualitative, aggregate-level assessment would involve experts from different stakeholders to identify whether research cultures are moving in the right direction and to prioritize actions year-on-year.
Key Discussions from the Q&A Session
The presentation was followed by a rich Q&A session, addressing several critical aspects of research culture evolution:
- Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Change: It was emphasized that culture change requires the involvement of all actors in the system, including funders, and must be developed with the research community, not just imposed from the top. The value of top-down initiatives, however, cannot be overlooked – we need both.
- Defining ‘Society’ and Dual-Use Research: Discussion touched on how we can define “society”, given the increasing levels of inequality we have, to which Morris explained the concept is being used by Science Europe to relate to the publics who interact with and benefit from research. The complex issue of increasing military investment and dual-use research in Europe was raised, with Science Europe noting this is an increasing point of discussion in Europe and for its member organizations, though no formal position has been developed yet, and Science Europe maintains its focus on civil research. Canada is also engaging in similar discussions regarding balancing research security and open science.
- Integrating Research Culture with Research Assessment: A concern was raised that if research culture is not seen as integral to research quality and impact, it might be deprioritized during financial difficulties. While traditional organizational structures often silo thinking, the aim is exactly to position research culture as a connecting factor across different policy areas to ensure its sustained relevance, overcoming siloed thinking whenever it’s adequate to integrate them.
- On (the concept of) Research Culture: While open science is a specific vision, it seemed one member of the audience that research culture is a broader, existing reality, even when you have a culture that is not yet the desired culture. Morris explained the goal is to improve this existing culture to enhance research excellence, though more data is needed to quantify this link.
- Alignment across nations: The benefits of aligning research culture efforts across nations were acknowledged, especially given international collaborations and researcher mobility. However, the importance of remaining sensitive to national differences and autonomy was also stressed, allowing for flexible, nation-specific approaches while seeking beneficial commonalities.
- Shared Values and Divergent Systems: The discussion reinforced the necessity of open conversations about shared values, even when different value systems exist (e.g., weaponization of open science). Transparency about values like openness and integrity is key.
- The Research Culture Barometer: Further details were explored for the proposed annual barometer, envisioning it as a systemic assessment involving qualitative and quantitative insights from various stakeholders at institutional, national, and system-wide levels. It could serve as a platform for sharing evidence of effective interventions.
Updates from the Members
Following the Q&A, group members shared updates on their ongoing initiatives related to responsible research assessment:
- Make Data Count (Iratxe Puebla): Announced the launch of new case studies on their website and upcoming resources including guidance for institutions and a maturity model. They also shared how to sign up for their newsletter.
- Global Research Council (GRC) RRA Working Group (Anh-Khoi Trinh): Shared that a self-assessment tool with a maturity model for funders is under development, with quantitative data from their funders’ survey now reviewed and qualitative analysis underway.
- DORA (Kelly Cobey & Giovanna Lima): Highlighted DORA is developing a practical guide for implementing responsible research assessment for funding organizations, with a draft expected for review in December in a co-creation event, in collaboration with the GRC RRA Working Group and Science Europe.
- UK CoARA National Chapter (Grace Murkett): Announced an upcoming hybrid meeting featuring Rebecca Lawrence from DORA to discuss the guide.
- Projeto Métricas (Jacques Marcovitch): Shared their efforts in presenting DORA principles to the Brazilian community in an upcoming event on September 15 for redesigning their evaluation system. They also noted the opportunity to expanding DORA’s implementation to Lusophone universities in Africa, in collaboration with the Catholic University of Angola through the Métricas network.
- Research Impact Canada (David Phipps): Announced that the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum (KMbForum) will be hosted in Toronto in June 2026, with a call for contributions opening in September 2025. The forum will focus on impact and impact assessment.
- Ethical Data Initiative (Kathryn Bailey): Introduced their initiative as an open platform for discussions on data and research ethics and look forward to presenting their initiatives in the future.
- Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (Janne Pölönen): Shared a new report from the CoARA Working Group on Multilingualism and Language Biases in Research Assessment. They also soft-launched the Directory of Learned Societies (DoLS), an open, growing database to enhance visibility, networking, and community-building among learned societies and their journals worldwide.
Suggested Reading List
We look forward to our next meeting in November 2025. In the meantime, here’s our suggested reading list following this Q3 meeting:
- Presentation slides: 20250812_Research_Culture_Vision_Slides_JPM
- Science Europe A Vision & Framework for Research Cultures: https://zenodo.org/records/15124386
- Make Data Count case studies: https://makedatacount.org/explore-resources/institutions/
- CoARA Working Group on Multilingualism and Language Biases in Research Assessment: https://zenodo.org/records/15262952
- Directory of Learned Societies (DoLS): https://www.tsv.fi/en/services/directory-of-learned-societies