AIP Publishing, a leading not-for-profit scholarly publisher in the physical sciences, is delighted to announce it has signed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a far-reaching initiative to overhaul and enhance the ways in which scholarly research outputs are evaluated.
DORA branches out beyond the physical sciences, engaging with stakeholders — including researchers, editors, publishers, institutions, and professional societies — across all scholarly disciplines. It was founded in the belief that creating new, better methods for assessing the value of research will help facilitate change throughout academic culture to, according to the DORA program, “ensure hiring, promotion, and funding decisions focus on the qualities of research that are most desirable — insight, impact, reliability, and reusability — rather than focus on questionable proxies.”
By raising awareness about the need for research assessment reform and working directly with stakeholders at every stage of scholarly research publication, DORA intends to facilitate the development and broad utilization of more consistent, less opaque methods of research evaluation.
“I warmly welcome the decision of AIP Publishing to sign DORA,” said Dr. Stephen Curry, DORA Chair. “It sends a clear signal of support for the growing desire to promote responsible research assessment practices. I look forward to seeing how AIP Publishing implements the DORA recommendations.”
“AIP Publishing is pleased to support the goals of DORA, particularly the need to assess research outputs in more accurate, nuanced, and equitable ways,” said Penelope Lewis, AIP Publishing’s Chief Publishing Officer. “AIP Publishing and the DORA community share a broader commitment to help advance research by improving representation and the transparency with which research is valued.”
“The very nature of scholarly research is the growth and development of our understanding of the world,” she added. “That same sense of discovery and improvement should also apply to the ways in which we determine the value of that research.”
About AIP Publishing
AIP Publishing’s mission is to advance, promote, and serve the physical sciences for the benefit of humanity by breaking barriers to open, equitable research communication and empowering researchers to accelerate global progress. AIP Publishing is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and supports the charitable, scientific, and educational purposes of AIP through scholarly publishing activities on its behalf and on behalf of our publishing partners.