Five years post-DORA: promoting best practices for research assessment
- PMID: 29084913
- PMCID: PMC5662254
- DOI: 10.1091/mbc.E17-08-0534
Five years post-DORA: promoting best practices for research assessment
Abstract
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) was penned 5 years ago to articulate best practices for how we communicate and judge our scientific contributions. In particular, it adamantly declared that Journal Impact Factor (JIF) should never be used as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research contributions, or for hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. Since then, a heightened awareness of the damaging practice of using JIFs as a proxy for the quality of individual papers, and to assess an individual's or institution's accomplishments has led to changes in policy and the design and application of best practices to more accurately assess the quality and impact of our research. Herein I summarize the considerable progress made and remaining challenges that must be met to ensure a fair and meritocratic approach to research assessment and the advancement of research.
© 2017 Schmid. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). Two months after publication it is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).
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References
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- Alberts B. Impact factor distortions. Science. 2013;340:787. - PubMed
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- DORA. Declaration on Research Assessment. 2012. Retrieved from www.ascb.org/dora/
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- Franzoni C, Scellato G, Stephan P. Science policy. Changing incentives to publish. Science. 2011;333:702–703. - PubMed
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