Miscellaneous

DORA chair, Prof. Stephen Curry made a short introduction to DORA for the Global Research Council conference on Responsible Research Assessment, which was held online over the week of 23-27 November 2020. He briefly explains the origins of DORA, the meaning of the declaration, and how DORA developed into an active initiative campaigning for the world-wide reform of research assessment.

DORA seeks nominations and self-nominations from North and South America to fill two open positions on our international Advisory Board.

The emergence of COVID-19 has drastically upended the academic enterprise. Because of physical distancing, many non-tenured faculty members are facing additional, unexpected obstacles in their promotion and tenure trajectory. Transitioning classes to online learning environments will detract from research efforts, and winding down laboratory operations will result in a more direct reduction in research output. While trying to stay healthy themselves, many faculty members are also balancing job responsibilities with kids at home, adapting to telework, etc.

As Alison Mudditt described in her Scholarly Kitchen post last month, the path to reforming research assessment has been met with significant challenges. We agree with her that culture change is often a slow process. However, as DORA demonstrates, it is possible to identify tangible progress on the path to large-scale research assessment reform.

As 2019 winds down, the DORA steering committee and advisory board wanted to highlight the ways research assessment reform has advanced in the last year. From new data on assessment policies to the development of new tools, the scholarly community is taking action to improve research assessment in concrete ways.

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.

There certainly is not a magic bullet when it comes to comprehensive and efficient research assessment, whether in the humanities or STEM fields. Publisher prestige currently influences tenure assessments in the humanities, as do journal names in the life sciences.