“We’ve been involved in diagnosing, assembling evidence and banging drums about these problems, through initiatives such as the Declaration on Research Assessment (Dora), the Metric Tide report and the UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics.
So we welcome signs that attention is shifting towards implementing solutions, and coalescing around a more expansive agenda for responsible research assessment (RRA). Early debates on metrics and measurement have expanded to encompass questions about how to create a healthy work culture for researchers, how to promote research integrity, how to move from closed to open scholarship, and how to embed the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion across the research community.
This more holistic approach can be seen, for example, in UK Research and Innovation’s commitment to a healthy research culture, and in the recent guidelines on good research practice from the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Next week’s Global Research Council virtual conference on RRA—hosted by UKRI in ?collaboration with the UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics and South Africa’s National Research Foundation—comes at a pivotal time….
Declarations and statements of principle have been an important part of this story. But even though we have co-authored some of these, we feel the time for grand declarations has passed. They risk becoming substitutes for action.
RRA now needs to focus on action and implementation—testing and identifying what works in building a healthy and productive research culture. Institutional commitments must be followed by the hard graft of reforming cultures, practices and processes….”
