Funding councils sign up to ‘responsible’ research assessment | timeshighereducation.com

"All seven of the UK’s research councils have signed up to a declaration that calls for the academic community to stop using journal impact factors as a proxy for the quality of scholarship. The councils, which together fund about £3 billion of research each year, are among the latest to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, known as Dora. Stephen Curry, the chair of the Dora steering committee, said that the backing of the research councils gives the initiative a “significant boost”. Dora was initiated at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in 2012 and launched the following year. It calls on researchers, universities, journal editors, publishers and funders to improve the ways they evaluate research...."