Resource Library

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…

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.

The NHMRC guide for peer review instructs assessors not to rely on the Journal Impact Factor when making judgments.

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…

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.

CIRAD developed the ImpresS method to assess the environmental and societal impact its research.

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.

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…

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.

Strengthening equity in international research partnerships can help address the current power imbalances that characterize the global research ecosystem and improve the ethical integrity of research agendas and knowledge production. This document was jointly created by the UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR) and ESSENCE on Health Research to provide practical advice and actionable steps…

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…

The Health Research Board (HRB) has taken several actions since 2016 to implement DORA’s principles in its grant review process.

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.

This one-page tip sheet is a part of the short report Using Narrative CVs: Identifying shared objectives and monitoring effectiveness. In February 2022, DORA organized the online workshop series “Using Narrative CVs: Identifying shared objectives and monitoring effectiveness” in partnership with FORGEN CoP, Science Foundation Ireland, the Swiss National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation,…

The IDRC in Canada developed a tool called Research Quality Plus (RQ+) to assess applied and translational research.

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…

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…

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…

The Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) introduced a standardized narrative-style CV format in 2021 as a requirement for applicants to all of FNR’s funding schemes. This new format was introduced to streamline and simplify the evaluation process, broaden the types of contributions considered during review, and to align with DORA’s principles that research should be…

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…

The ORFG released guidance for funders called, Incentivizing the sharing of research outputs through research assessment: a funder implementation blueprint.

The Peer Exchange Platform for Narrative-style CVs (PEP-CV) is a free and open resource for everyone in research and innovation to add to existing guidance on narrative CVs. As a not-for-profit initiative, the PEP-CV platform is a collaborative effort among funders, institutions, and researchers that fosters a culture of collaboration, mutual learning, and expands national…

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…

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…

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.