Global movement to reform researcher assessment gains traction | Physics Today | AIP Publishing
peter.suber's bookmarks 2023-09-23
Summary:
"A growing global movement toward holistic approaches to evaluating researchers and research aims to value a broader range of contributions than an institute’s reputation and such metrics as numbers of publications in high-impact journals, citations, and grant monies. Contributions that go largely unrewarded include committee service, outreach to the public and to policymakers, social impact, and entrepreneurship.
An early push was the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment in 2013. DORA has grown into a worldwide initiative for which reducing the emphasis on journal impact factor has been a “hobbyhorse,” says program director Zen Faulkes. “But we are broadening our efforts in assessment reform.” As of September, more than 20 000 individuals and about 3000 organizations in 164 countries had signed DORA.
A related effort spearheaded by the European Commission, the European University Association, and Science Europe—an association of funding agencies that spends more than €22 billion (roughly $24 billion) annually—is widely seen as having the most punch. In July 2022 they laid out guiding principles for reform, and in December 2022 they established the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). More than 600 universities, funders, learned societies, and other organizations, overwhelmingly in Europe, had signed on as of late August. Signatories commit to examining their research assessment procedures within a year and to trying out and reporting on alternative approaches within five years...."