From: Leyla Williams <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:00:00 +0000


OASPA is pleased to announce our formal endorsement of the Declaration
on Research Assessment (DORA).

Developed in 2012 at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for
Cell Biology in San Francisco, DORA is a cross-disciplinary global
initiative seeking to improve the ways in which scholarly research
outputs are evaluated. OASPA is delighted to join over 11,000
individuals and 445 organisations including the Wellcome Trust, Cancer
Research UK, and OASPA members the Public Library of Science (PLOS),
Hindawi, eLife, F1000, and The Company of Biologists as fellow
signatories of the declaration.

As the declaration describes, it is crucial for today’s wide variety
of scholarly outputs to be measured accurately and evaluated wisely.
As a method of assessment of outputs, the Journal Impact Factor has
been increasingly understood as having a number of limitations; most
importantly, over-emphasising the venue of publication of research
findings rather than the research itself, and introducing perverse
incentives into scholarly reward system. DORA therefore recommends:

‘ - The need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as
Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion
considerations;

- the need to assess research on its own merits rather than on the
basis of the journal in which the research is published; and

- the need to capitalize on the opportunities provided by online
publication (such as relaxing unnecessary limits on the number of
words, figures, and references in articles, and exploring new
indicators of significance and impact).’

Paul Peters, President of OASPA and Chief Executive Officer of
Hindawi, said: ‘As an association of Open Access publishers we have
seen firsthand how the reliance on Impact Factors for the assessment
of researchers has slowed innovation in scholarly publishing.’

OASPA hopes that our endorsement of this important initiative will
contribute to encouraging improved practices in research assessment.

The full declaration can be read here.

This announcement can be found on the OASPA blog here.

Best wishes,
Leyla
—————
Leyla Williams
Events and Communications Coordinator
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA
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