Resource Library

This is part of DORA’s toolkit of resources to support academic institutions that are improving their policies and practices. Find the other resources in the toolkit here.   Balanced, broad, responsible: A practical guide for research evaluators is a short, informative video that is accompanied by a one-page brief. The video and document are meant…

The badges for our signatories show support for DORA, raise awareness about research assessment, and serve as a conversation starter with individuals or organizations that have not heard about DORA yet.

We know that slide presentations are one of the primary means of academic communication. To help you talk about research assessment, we created three presentations that are available for download.

In response to an institutional culture that had become overly reliant on quantitative indicators for research assessment, and from a desire to promote a less competitive academic environment with a renewed focus on collaboration, Ghent University developed a new conceptual framework for research evaluation that is guided by eight principles.

Editorial decisions influence research assessment. This article provides 10 concrete recommendations that journals and publishers can take to help improve how research is assessed.

In 2015 the UK’s Open University (OU) published “An Open Research University” a book outlining the outputs from a three-year project to create and implement an evidence-based strategy to embed the principles and practices of engagement with new processes for research assessment within the university. In keeping with the OU’s existing commitment to open research…

The Open University of Catalonia (UOC) shifted the focus of their assessment criteria and practices for recruitment and career progression away from journal-based outputs to a much broader discussion of achievements. Due to the centralization of career progression for faculty nationally, the new assessment criteria apply to postdoctoral fellows and UOC research staff, not professorial staff.

This report and the accompanying online repository bring together and analyze case studies in institutional change for academic career assessment. Gathered by DORA, together with the European University Association and SPARC Europe, the case studies serve as inspiration for universities and other actors looking to improve their policies and practices.

Finland is among the first countries to have developed national recommendations on responsible research evaluation. In 2020, a task force formed by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies published the “Good Practice in Researcher Evaluation: Recommendation for Responsible Evaluation of a Researcher in Finland.”

This is part of DORA’s toolkit of resources to support academic institutions that are improving their policies and practices. Find the other resources in the toolkit here. Building Blocks for Impact is a one-pager that outlines and illustrates the wide variety of academic achievements and outcomes that could be considered “impactful”. This model visualizes “impact” on…

This is part of DORA’s toolkit of resources to support academic institutions that are improving their policies and practices. Find the other resources in the toolkit here. Debiasing Committee Composition and Deliberative Processes is a one-page brief that identifies strategies for including more perspectives and reducing biases in the evaluation processes for hiring, promotion, tenure, and…

Ideas for Action outlines five common myths about research evaluation to help universities better understand barriers to change and provides analogous examples to illustrate how these myths exist inside and outside of academia.

Unintended Cognitive and Systems Biases identifies seven personal biases that can influence hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions.

This is part of DORA’s toolkit of resources to support academic institutions that are improving their policies and practices. Find the other resources in the toolkit here. With thanks to volunteers in the DORA community, SPACE is also available in Catalan and Spanish. See below. Improving research and scholarship assessment practices requires the ability to…

Tampere University is a new Finnish institution, formed in 2019 from the merger of the University of Tampere and the Tampere University of Technology. As a result of the merger, Tampere recognized it had a unique opportunity to redesign its policies to implement a fair and responsible model for faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure.

In partnership with the Research on Research Institute (RoRI), CWTS-Leiden, and National Research Foundation of South Africa, DORA published a position paper providing a state-of-play of responsible research assessment (RRA) practices from funders.

In a position paper published in November 2019, the Netherlands’ public knowledge institutions and research funders voiced a common ambition to modernize the national recognition and rewards system.1 The purpose is to move toward more holistic evaluation practices in the Netherlands, where the focus is on academic career and research quality assessment. Although the consortium…

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental life sciences research organization operating at six sites across five locations in Europe. As Europe’s only intergovernmental organization for life science research, EMBL believes it has a responsibility to be a leader and innovator in the way research in molecular biology is performed and assessed. Since…

The Latin American Forum for Research Assessment (FOLEC) is an initiative of the international Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). CLACSO created FOLEC to support knowledge sharing on research assessment reform between CLACSO research member institutions and regional policymakers. This initiative was necessary because CLACSO research member institutions are located in 52 countries, primarily…

As a part of a broader action plan on Open Science, a national consortium called Universities Norway formed a research assessment working group in the fall of 2019 with the objective to build a national career assessment framework.

University College London (UCL) has developed several new responsible research development and assessment policies: the Academic Careers Framework (2018) and the Responsible Use of Bibliometrics at UCL (2020). These policies were prompted by internal motivations, which included a wish to create a culture that embraces Open Science practices at the university.

University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht changed its approach to academic assessment through the development and implementation of a new evaluation framework. The purpose of the framework is to move beyond bibliometrics-based evaluations; it formally requires qualitative indicators and a descriptive portfolio when making hiring and promotion decisions.

The University of Bath (United Kingdom) released “Principles of research assessment and management” in 2017. The Principles were designed to “encapsulate current good practice and to act as a guide for future activities” across all disciplines and indices at the university.

The University of Nottingham is a global university, with campuses in the United Kingdom, the People’s Republic of China, and Malaysia. In 2019, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) signed DORA and committed to the implementation of DORA principles through the establishment of an Implementation Task Force.

The University of Zurich (UZH) is Switzerland’s largest university. It was founded in 1833 and has around 30000 enrolled students as well as almost 10000 academic and professional staff. With its 7 faculties and over 100 institutes, UZH boasts the most comprehensive range of academic study programs in the country, covering a wide spectrum of…