Assessment reform and publishing reform need to go hand in hand - Leiden Madtrics

"Various reform movements are working hard to improve the research system, focusing on issues ranging from research assessment, diversity and inclusion, and research culture to scientific publishing, open science, reproducibility, research integrity, and several others. The agendas of the different reform movements are interconnected and partly overlapping, but sometimes they are also in tension. And while the different movements have the potential to reinforce each other, they also compete for scarce resources and for the attention of researchers and policy makers.

Being involved myself in two reform movements, the research assessment reform movement and the scientific publishing reform movement, I feel increasingly concerned about the limited coordination and collaboration between these movements....

In conclusion, while it is widely acknowledged that scientific publishing reform will fail if it is not supported by reform of research assessment practices, the opposite also applies: assessment reform will fail without reform in scientific publishing. Assessment reform and publishing reform therefore need to go hand in hand...."