Declaration on Research Assessment

Declaration on Research Assessment
Name	Declaration on Research Assessment
Date	2012
Subject	Research assessment reform

Declaration on Research Assessment is an international statement proposing reforms to the evaluation of scholarly research, emphasizing responsible metrics and fair assessment practices across academic institutions, funding bodies, and publishers. It calls for de-emphasizing journal-based metrics in favor of qualitative judgement and transparent criteria, and has influenced policies at universities, funders, and professional societies worldwide.

History

The initiative emerged from discussions among researchers at the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, Science Translational Medicine, Royal Society and organizers of meetings such as the Leiden Manifesto workshop and gatherings linked to the European Research Council, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Systems Biology consortia. Early advocacy involved stakeholders from the University of Leiden, Max Planck Society, Karolinska Institute and representatives attending events at the Royal Society and National Institutes of Health; this culminated in a public statement circulated in 2012 and promoted at venues including the OpenAIRE forum and conferences hosted by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands and the African Academy of Sciences.

Principles and Recommendations

The text urges institutions such as the University of Oxford, Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and funding agencies like the National Science Foundation, European Commission, Wellcome Trust and National Institutes of Health to assess research on its own merits rather than on proxies tied to titles like the Journal Impact Factor or rankings such as those produced by Times Higher Education and QS World University Rankings. It recommends that hiring panels in bodies like the Medical Research Council and the German Research Foundation use qualitative evaluation akin to peer review practices at the Royal Society and citation analyses employed by the Institute for Scientific Information only as supportive evidence, and that promotion committees at institutions including the University of Cambridge and University of California transparently document criteria comparable to reforms initiated by the European University Association and policies debated at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Signatories and Endorsements

Initial signatories included prominent researchers affiliated with organizations such as the Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Society, European Research Council, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and universities like Ghent University, University of Bath, Utrecht University and Imperial College London. Endorsements grew to include funders and scholarly societies including the Royal Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, International Science Council, Association of American Universities and national bodies such as the Swedish Research Council and Australian Research Council.

Implementation and Adoption

Adoption involved policy changes at institutions including the University of Amsterdam, University of Helsinki, University of Zurich and systems-level shifts at funders like the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK and the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme. Implementation pathways included revisions to hiring guidelines at the University of Toronto, grant assessment criteria at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and editorial policies at publishers such as Elsevier, Springer Nature and PLOS, alongside infrastructural support from projects like ORCID, Crossref and OpenAIRE.

Impact and Criticism

Supporters cite measurable changes in policy at the Wellcome Trust, the European Commission, UK Research and Innovation and several universities including University College London and University of Edinburgh, while critics argue that entrenched incentives tied to rankings by Times Higher Education, citation aggregators like Scopus and metrics from the Institute for Scientific Information remain influential, complicating compliance for early-career researchers at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and University of Melbourne. Debates at forums including the World Conference on Research Integrity and panels hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science highlight tensions between qualitative peer review traditions exemplified by the Royal Society and quantitative metric systems promoted by commercial vendors.

Related Initiatives and Declarations

The statement is linked conceptually and historically to efforts such as the Leiden Manifesto, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the COAR principles drafted by the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, and policy frameworks like the Declaration of Helsinki in ethics and the DORA-aligned guidelines adopted by entities including the European University Association and the Association of Research Managers and Administrators.

Category:Research assessment