Ghent University first of Belgian Universities to sign San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
By signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) Ghent University reaffirms its commitment to a more holistic and nuanced approach to research assessment.
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment was established in 2012 by the American Society for Cell Biology. It comprises a number of logical but also pioneering (for its time) recommendations regarding the way in which research should be assessed. DORA asserts that the quality of the research itself should be assessed, regardless of where or by whom it is published, and that its quality should not be determined based on, for example, the impact factor of the journal in which it is published.
Furthermore, in addition to articles, the declaration advocates for the inclusion of other forms of research output in the assessment of research, such as datasets and software, and for establishing a broad overview of the impact of the research, such as by taking into account the influence of the research on policy.
Ignace Lemahieu, Director of Research: “Traditional quantitative, output-oriented assessments do not sufficiently align with the nature of the objectives of the research under assessment, nor with the role that researchers wish to occupy in society. DORA is a call to include ‘other’ kinds of research output in research assessment, as well as to assess research output in ‘other’ ways.”