Join us in our celebrations of DORA at 10 with this talk from two inspirational speakers, Professor Stephen Curry and Professor Cameron Neylon. In his talk, Professor Stephen Curry will discuss the origins of the declaration and the organisation behind it. While there have been many important developments over the past decade, and clear signs that change is happening and accelerating, there is still a need for DORA to make the case for research assessment reform and to participate in the development and testing of new and more robust practices in evaluating research and researchers. Cameron’s talk, ‘The problem of evaluation: DORA the explorer at 10 and our paths into the future’ will cover the following: the role of evaluation in research remains vexed, whether of people, programs, departments, institutions or whole countries. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment was an early sign of shifts away from a perceived status quo. But despite the success of DORA and other efforts to diversify research assessment there are still major challenges with our thinking on the how, and even the why of, of research evaluation. There is a tension between a desire for “objectivity” to deliver “fairness” and the very real differences between research programs that make it impossible to compare. Cameron will present recent results from his work on rethinking what “excellence” means in research, and place that in the context of the paths that DORA have laid out, looking forward to options for the future.
