A collection of materials to facilitate the development of responsible research and researcher assessment policies and practices.
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Journal articles
For: FundersProfessional societiesResearch institutes
A survey was conducted by Noémie Aubert Bonn and Wim Pinxten to understand how Flemish researchers work and how they would rate the relevance of specific research assessment indicators in career advancement and advancing science. Survey results suggested that current indicators used to assess career advancement (e.g., indicators of prestige like high journal impact factor…
Good practices
For: Funders
Applicants understand how funding decisions are made, because the Agency openly shares a general summary of its decision-making process on their website written in English and French.
Good practicesPolicies and guidance
For: Funders
The NHMRC guide for peer review instructs assessors not to rely on the Journal Impact Factor when making judgments.
Good practicesPolicies and guidance
For: Funders
The FWF recognizes a diverse range of research outcomes and requires grant applicants to provide information on various research achievements.
Advocacy resourcesTools
DORA-produced
For: Funders
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…
Good practices
For: Funders
CRUK recognizes value from all outputs of research, including publications. CRUK has modified its grant application process to ask candidates to describe the significance and impact of 3-5 key research achievements, which can include preprints, training delivered, contribution to consortia, patents, and sharing of key datasets, software, novel assays and reagents, and research publications.
Good practicesTools
For: FundersResearch institutes
CIRAD developed the ImpresS method to assess the environmental and societal impact its research.
Good practices
For: Funders
The application process for EMBO Long-Term Fellowships emphasizes the most important outcomes and impact of the applicant’s work rather than where it is published and specifically states that journal impact factors should not be provided.
Good practices
For: Funders
The fundamental activity of the ERC is to provide attractive, long-term funding to support Principal Investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high-gain/high-risk research. The ERC puts particular emphasis on the frontiers of science and scholarship. In particular, it encourages proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature which cross the boundaries between different fields…
Good practicesPosition papers
For: Funders
Evaluation of Research Careers fully Acknowledging Open Science Practices, a report released by the European Commission in 2017, recognizes the emerging Open Science movement creates an opportunity to develop an evaluation system for hiring and promotion that is focused on the equal treatment of applicants.
Advocacy resources
For: FundersProfessional societiesResearch institutes
The Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) studies bibliometric and scientometric tools to support research assessment reform and strategic decision making for developing science policy. In March 2021, the CWTS published an infographic on “problems with the H-index and reasons for integrating other contributions into evaluations”. This infographic gives different examples of how the…
Good practices
For: Funders
The Health Research Board (HRB) has taken several actions since 2016 to implement DORA’s principles in its grant review process.
Initiatives
For: FundersResearch institutes
The Helsinki Initiative has three tenets to recognize multilingualism in scholarly work. This includes the promotion of language diversity in research assessment, evaluation, and funding systems.
Position papersTools
For: FundersResearch institutes
This is a report that describes mechanisms and approaches to improve and incentivize the recording, the evaluation, and the recognition of contributions to Open Scholarship practice. It presents a digital resource called the Openness Profile (OP) and describes how the OP can help address existing gaps in the assessment of open science. Developed by consultants…
Initiatives
For: FundersResearch institutes
Make Data Count is a global, community-led initiative focused on the development of open, responsibly created research data assessment metrics. Driven by partners at California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, DataONE, ScholCommLab, University of Ottawa, and ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, their goals are to produce evidence based studies on researcher behavior in citing…
Position papers
For: FundersResearch institutes
This is the final report of EOSC Co-Creation projects: “European overview of career merit systems” and “Vision for research data in research careers.” It builds on extensive document overview, survey, case-studies and co-creation processes to argue for FAIReR academic assessments that are rooted in the FAIR guidelines for data management, as well as policies for…
Policies and guidance
For: FundersResearch institutes
In 2021, the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) implemented a structured narrative CV template as a requirement for applicants to all funding schemes granted by the organization. The motivation to implement narrative CVs in the agency was based on the pursuit of two main goals: Shifting towards responsible research assessment practices Streamlining and simplifying the…
Good practicesPolicies and guidance
For: Funders
The ORFG released guidance for funders called, Incentivizing the sharing of research outputs through research assessment: a funder implementation blueprint.
Position papers
For: FundersJournals and publishersResearch institutes
This is the 2020 final report from the European Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP) that provides an update on the adoption of their Open Science recommendations (OSPP-REC, 2017) and their transformation on PCIs (Practical Commitments for Implementation). The OSPP is an advisory group established by the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission…
Tools
For: FundersJournals and publishersResearch institutes
The Research Quality Committee at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) has developed a new tool to assess and improve scientific research quality and reproducibility: Quality Output Checklist and Content Assessment (QuOCCA) The QuOCCA was designed after extensive research and feedback from external experts and researchers. The QuOCCA was specifically created to assess a broad spectrum of…
Case studiesPosition papers
DORA-produced
For: FundersResearch institutes
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.
Journal articles
For: FundersResearch institutes
Niels Mejlgaard and co-authors conducted a comprehensive study of research integrity in Europe, called “Standard Operating Procedures for Research Integrity (SOPs4RI).” Their work identified nine topics and accompanying action items to improve research integrity within three broad areas: Support Research environment Supervision and mentoring, Integrity training Ethics structures Organization Integrity breaches Data practices and management…
Tools
For: FundersJournals and publishers
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada developed a tool called Research Quality Plus (RQ+) to assess and improve quality of research . The three tenets of RQ+ approach are: identify contexts of research, quality is multi-dimensional, and use of rubrics for systematic and empirical appraisal. RQ+ Approach has five major applications: Priority Setting:…
Position papers
For: Funders
The United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) in collaboration with the UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics and the National Research Foundation (NRF) in South Africa delivered a Global Research Council Virtual Conference on Responsible Research Assessment (RRA) in November 2020. International speakers presented existing practices and approaches to responsible research assessment (RRA). Funders discussed…
Tools
For: FundersResearch institutes
The Résumé for Researchers is a tool developed by the Royal Society to help support the evaluation and assessment of individuals’ varied research contributions.