Resource Library

Three national academies issued a statement on good practice in the evaluation of researchers and research programs in October of 2017. The statement recognized the need for efficient, fair, and robust researcher evaluation, especially as the size of the research community continues to increase.

The idea for the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment began at the 2012 ASCB Annual Meeting. As one of the initial DORA signatories, the ASCB does not promote its publications by the 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.

The FWF recognizes a diverse range of research outcomes and requires grant applicants to provide information on various research achievements.

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.

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.

The Federation released a report in 2017 to support the ongoing conversation in Canada about the assessment of research impact in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).

Ghent University published a vision statement for evaluating research based on eight principles agreed on by the University’s Board of Governors.

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

In keeping with HHMI’s commitment to basic scientific discovery, the Institute employs outstanding researchers for renewable seven-year terms as HHMI Investigators.

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

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

The Swiss National Science Foundation is testing a structured narrative CV format called ‘SciCV’ to increase consistency in decision-making for its grant applications.

The NWO is piloting a narrative CV format for assessment of early career researchers who apply to the Veni funding scheme.

The Open Research Working Group on behalf of the Research Committee developed a set of five principles to guide the use of bibliometric indicators in research assessment, which include expertise, diversity, data, integrity, and transparency.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has revised the format of the CV or “biosketch” in grant applications.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has modified its instructions to grant applicants to recognize that the outputs of scientific research include more than just publications, an idea endorsed by DORA.

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) signed DORA in December 2018 as a fundamental element of its Open Knowledge Action Plan.

University College London (UCL) released its Academic Careers Framework, which provides information related to its promotion processes.

In order to create a culture around research assessment that is free from metrics including Journal Impact Factor, the university held a series of meetings to facilitate discussions with researchers on the best ways to create change.

The Office for Faculty Equity & Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley provides support for faculty search committees to evaluate candidate contributions to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), including guidance for search committee composition, application requirements, rating criteria, and more.

The University of California, Irvine developed guidance “Identifying Faculty Contributions to Collaborative Scholarship” to help faculty describe and assess team science.