Research assessment can be extremely useful as a tool to evaluate the quality and the impact of the activities needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs, adopted in 2015 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, envision that by the year 2030 the world could be transformed.
How conceptual clarity can improve how we assess research
Current discourse on research assessment places high emphasis on “impact.” However, there are many different concepts of impact, and many different concepts of how research achieves impact. The resulting ambiguity and confusion confound efforts to improve research assessment. To reliably assess research, we need clarity about what it is we want to assess.
Research assessment as a human-centered design problem
Human-centered design is well-positioned to supplement the ongoing activity of sharing best practices and specific, successful examples of new research assessment strategies, contributing a deep understanding what matters to individuals and entities, and a perspective on realigning incentives, social norms, and points of leverage where we might redefine and reward what’s valued in the future.
Pairing research assessment reforms to faculty search procedures
Much of the emphasis of DORA’s initiatives has revolved around appropriate metrics and assessments. Equally important is designing mechanisms that employ those assessments at decision-making steps.
Implementing DORA – A Librarian’s Perspective
On most campuses, the coalition (faculty, research officers, administrators, librarians, and department chairs) needed to move the needle on research assessment reform has yet to come together. Librarians have every reason to take an active role in help making this happen.
Implementing DORA – a funder perspective
In order to fully realise the benefits of open research, we must fundamentally change the way research is assessed. Wellcome is seeking to implement the DORA principles in our own funding processes and support research institutions in changing their own assessment practices.
Reform or remove student evaluations of teaching
The retention, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process is a critical part of a faculty member’s career, during which they are ostensibly evaluated on scholarship, teaching, and service. However, a faculty member’s funding and publication track records are typically weighted more heavily as indicators of productivity. As a result, flawed metrics of teaching and service persist.
Redefining Impact in the Humanities and Social Sciences
On Wednesday April 3, 2019, we hosted a #sfDORA community interview with Janet Halliwell to learn more about the 2017 report from the Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Canada, Approaches to Assessing Impacts in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We also wanted to hear about a new project she is working on to improve assessment in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) by creating a standardized vocabulary of terms related to research assessment.
DORA 6 years out: A global community 14,000 strong
DORA turns 6 years old this week. Or, as we like to say, this year DORA reached 14,000—that’s how many people have signed DORA, and they come from more than 100 countries! Each signature represents an individual committed to improving research assessment in their community, in their corner of the world. And 1,300 organizations in more than 75 countries, in signing DORA, have publicly committed to improving their practices in research evaluation and to encouraging positive change in research culture.
DORA – accentuating the positive
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is well known for its strong position on the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics in decisions on hiring, promotion, or funding of academics. As such, it is sometimes taken to be an initiative merely focused on criticising the undue influence of one specific metric, the journal impact factor (JIF). But to see DORA just in those terms overlooks the many positive prescriptions that the declaration lays out for how to reform research assessment