New Briefing: DORA Announces 5 Design Principles to Help Institutions Improve Research Assessment Practices

From a DORA Blog Post:

The brief is a collaboration between DORA and Ruth Schmidt, associate professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, and is based on discussions held at a meeting co-sponsored by DORA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in October 2019一Driving Institutional Change for Research Assessment Reform. The meeting convened a diverse group of stakeholders invested in research assessment reform, including faculty, university administrators, librarians, funders, scientific professional society staff, culture change experts, and representatives from other non-profit initiatives.

The brief outlines five common myths about research evaluation to help universities better understand barriers to change and provides analogous examples to illustrate how these myths exist inside and outside of academia. It also offers five design principles to help institutions experiment with and develop better research assessment practices, including:

1. Instilling standards and structure into research assessment processes
2. Fostering a sense of personal accountability in faculty and staff
3. Prioritizing equity and transparency of research assessment processes
4. Taking a big picture or portfolio view toward researcher contributions
5. Refining research assessment processes through iterative feedback

Direct to Complete Blog Post

Direct to Briefing Doc
1 page; PDF.