Category Archives: oa.coara

REPORT: Best Practices for Institutional Publishing Service Providers – DIAMAS

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“DIAMAS plans to improve Open Access publishing practices. To do so, we will create Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP), which aim to ensure the quality and transparency of governance, processes and workflows in institutional publishing. The Best practices report is an initial step in this process.

The report is based on an analysis of existing quality evaluation criteria, best practices, and assessment systems in publishing developed by international publishers’ associations, research funding organisations, international indexing databases, etc (full dataset available here). If you are an institutional publisher, a service provider involved in Open Access publishing, or a journal editor, this report can help you learn about current best practices and identify where you need to align.

Our recommendations and tips cover seven categories, which are also the core components of the Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP): 1) Funding; 2) Ownership and governance; 3) Open science practices; 4) Editorial quality, editorial management, and research integrity; 5) Technical service efficiency; 6) Visibility; and 7) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).

A self-assessment checklist summarises the best practices outlined in the report. Institutional publishers, service providers and journal editors can use it to get an idea of the future Extensible Quality Standard for Institutional Publishing (EQSIP), and assess their current practices and see where to make improvements.”

Documentation, Working Groups, and National Chapters [CoARA]

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“Working Groups are central to CoARA’s mission to enable systemic reform of research assessment. Based on a bottom-up approach with members’ voluntary involvement, Working Groups operate as ’communities of practice’, providing mutual learning and collaboration on specific thematic areas. Participating members exchange knowledge, learn from each other’s experience, discuss and develop outputs to advance research assessment and support the implementation of members’ commitments.

Please note that for now Working Groups are open to CoARA members only.

If you would like to join the Coalition as a member, please follow the link here to sign up. If you are already signatory and would like to become a member, please contact the CoARA secretariat….”

Statement of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) on European Council Conclusions on “High-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing”

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“In particular, the DFG underpins the propositions that scholarly publication channels ? should continue to evolve as high-quality, openly accessible, sustainably funded digital infrastructures for research; ? should be organised in such a way that they protect the principles of the freedom of research, contribute to research integrity and quality, and ensure the highest possible accessibility and re-usability of research results; ? must apply the highest standards to the quality assurance of publications, the trustworthiness of processes and the reliability and reproducibility of content; ? should make even more effective use of the innovative possibilities of digital publishing…”

DFG, German Research Foundation – DFG welcomes EU Council Conclusions on Scholarly Publishing

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“The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) welcomes the Council Conclusions on scholarly publishing adopted today, Tuesday 23 May 2023, by the Com-petitiveness Council of the European Union.

In the opinion of the largest research funding organisation and central self-governing body of the research community in Germany, the conclusions adopted under the title “On high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy and equitable scholarly publishing” contain a series of trend-setting recommendations. These are commented on in detail in a statement issued simultane-ously by the DFG.

The DFG underlines that the academic publication system should continue to develop based on high-quality, openly accessible, sustainably funded digital infrastructures for research. It must be organised in such a way that the principles of the freedom of research are protected, scien-tific integrity and quality are guaranteed and the accessibility and re-usability of research re-sults are enabled….”

CoARA Working Group Towards Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment announced – GraspOS

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“A few months have passed since the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) launched its call for members to propose Working Groups and National Chapters on 28 March 2023. Being the first since the beginning of CoARA in December 2022, the call was an important step in the Coalition’s action to tackle the need to reform research assessment and highlighted how the working groups will support the implementation of the commitments contained in the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. Members of the Coalition had until 6 July 2023 to send their proposals which were then reviewed by the CoARA Steering Board.

We are very pleased to announce that the proposal for the CoARA Working Group Towards Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment (OI4RRA) has been accepted. A group of 23 Coalition members* from around the globe joined forces to propose a Working Group focused on making research assessment more transparent and responsible, consequently enabling the research community to be in full control of the data and indicators it relies on in assessments.

Research assessment generally relies on proprietary databases which often use proprietary analytic tools. Still, open research information is crucial for responsible research assessment which in turn needs data, tools and infrastructures that ensure transparency, reproducibility and geographic-discipline-output coverage in data and indicators. The existing Open Infrastructure community has created and operates open solutions (e.g., OpenAIRE, OpenCitations, COKI, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar), most of which have yet to find their way in official research assessment operations….”

Die Berlin University Alliance tritt der Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) bei • Berlin University Alliance

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From Google’s English:  “The process of reforming the research assessment of the European Union is supported by well-known national and international scientific organizations, and the BUA will help shape it in the future.

The excellence network of the three Berlin universities, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin and the Charité – Universitätsmedizin has the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment effective April 26, 2023 and is therefore a member of the international Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).

Since the publication of the agreement on July 20, 2022, this agreement has been signed by almost 500 scientific organizations, both universities and non-university research institutions as well as specialist societies and research sponsors, including the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the European Research Council (ERC).

The science organizations represented in CoARA are united by the goal of jointly initiating a cultural change in research assessment and developing and establishing new principles of research assessment.”

GraspOS Landscape Survey on Reforming Research Assessment – GraspOS

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“The purpose of this survey is to gain overview of the state-of-the-art research assessment practices at the research performing and funding organisations, and other organisations involved with research assessment, who already are, or could become, signatories of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment.

The survey is conducted by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) for the Landscape analysis of EU project GraspOS. The landscape report supports the development of Open Science Assessment Framework (OSAF).

The questionnaire is structured based on CoARA core-commitments and principles. The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment sets a shared direction for changes in assessment practices for research, researchers and research performing organisations, with the overarching goal to maximise the quality and impact of research. The Agreement includes the principles, commitments and timeframe for reforms and lays out the principles for a Coalition of organisations willing to work together in implementing the changes.

Signatories commit to a common vision, which is that the assessment of research, researchers and research organisations recognises the diverse outputs, practices and activities that maximise the quality and impact of research. This requires basing assessment primarily on qualitative judgement, for which peer-review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators….”

Scientific research is deteriorating | Science & Tech | EL PAÍS English

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“The field of scientific research is deteriorating because of the way the system is set up. Researchers do the research – financed with public funds – and then the public institutions that they work for pay the big scientific publishers several times, for reviewing and publishing submissions. Simultaneously, the researchers also review scientific papers for free, while companies like Clarivate or the Shanghai Ranking draft their lists, telling everyone who are the good guys (and leaving out the people who, apparently, aren’t worth consideration).

In the last 30 years – since we’ve been living with the internet – we’ve altered the ways in which we communicate, buy, teach, learn and even flirt. And yet, we continue to finance and evaluate science in the same way as in the last century. Young researchers – underpaid and pressured by the system – are forced to spend time trying to get into a “Top 40? list, rather than working in their laboratories and making positive changes in the world.

As the Argentines say: “The problem isn’t with the pig, but with the person who feeds it.” Consciously or unconsciously, we all feed this anachronistic and ineffective system, which is suffocated by the deadly embrace between scientific journals and university rankings. Our governments and institutions fill the coffers of publishers and other companies, who then turn around and sell us their products and inform us (for a price) about what counts as quality….

Despite the issues, there’s certainly reason to be optimistic: although we scientists are victims (and accomplices) of the current system, we’re also aware of its weaknesses. We want to change this reality.

 

After a long debate – facilitated by the Open Science unit of the European Commision – the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (COARA) has been created. In the last four months, more than 500 institutions have joined COARA, which – along with other commitments – will avoid the use of rankings in the evaluation of research. COARA is a step forward to analyze – in a coherent, collective, global and urgent manner – the reform of research evaluation. This will help us move away from an exclusively quantitative evaluation system of journals, towards a system that includes other research products and indicators, as well as qualitative narratives that define the specific contributions of researchers across all disciplines….”

 

 

Working Groups and National Chapters – COARA

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“Working Groups are central to CoARA’s mission to enable systemic reform of research assessment. Based on a bottom-up approach with members’ voluntary involvement, Working Groups operate as ’communities of practice’, providing mutual learning and collaboration on specific thematic areas. Participating members exchange knowledge, learn from each other’s experience, discuss and develop outputs to advance research assessment and support the implementation of members’ commitments….”

The new European reform of research assessment

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“Since being released in July 2022, an Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment has been signed by more than 400 European research performing and funding organizations. It is intended to guide a reform and mutual learning process within a coalition of its signatories, CoARA. This policy brief analyses the agreement and provides recommendations for the next steps….”

German universities still wary of EU push to reform research assessment | Science|Business

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“The European Commission is making a big push to reform research assessment, but Germany’s university leaders are not convinced the call for change from above is the right way to deliver it.

While the German Rector’s Conference sees value in rethinking how research is assessed in Europe, it believes the debate is not independent enough. “The agreement itself was designed and conceptualised along the policy lines of the EU Commission and, at its core, is basically the result of a top-down process,” says Walter Rosenthal, the Rectors’ Conference vice president for research, academic career paths and transfer.

The reform process was kicked off by the European Commission in the beginning of 2022, as part of moves to create a single European Research Area (ERA).

With research becoming more impact-driven, multidisciplinary and open, the aim is to align research assessment with these changes, moving away from metrics such as the number of papers published and the number of times these are cited, to a broader set of achievements reflecting the wider impact of research….”

Stepping up Open Science with OpenAIRE services

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“Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) are encompassing all Universities and Institutions that enable researchers to conduct and perform their research and duties by ensuring the presence of infrastructures and (human) resources to support and produce valuable research products (publications, data, software, patents, etc.).??

 

Thousands of organisations have expressed an interest in shifting the new research culture vision, enforcing the need for policy changes in research assessment. The embrace of this vision has been translated into signing several declarations such as the DORA declaration, the?Leiden Manifesto, the?Metric Tide, and the?Hong Kong Principles for Assessing Researchers just to name a few. RPOs are key stakeholders of the more recent Agreement on Research Assessment, being part of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).?…”

The Agreement full text – COARA

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“Launched in January 2022 as a co-creation exercise, the process of drafting an agreement for reforming research assessment has reached an important milestone. On 8 July, the final version of the agreement was presented at a Stakeholder Assembly bringing together the 350+ organisations from 40+ countries having expressed interest in being involved in the process. Today, the final Agreement is made public with this news.

Organisations involved include public and private research funders, universities, research centres, institutes and infrastructures, associations (and alliances thereof), national and regional authorities, accreditation and evaluation agencies, learned societies and associations of researchers, and other relevant organisations. They represent a broad diversity of views and perspectives….”

CoNOSC joint statement on CoARA – CoNOSC

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“In the early summer of 2022, all European Union Ministers agreed that in order to accelerate the implementation and the impact of Open Science policies and practices across Europe, action must be taken in three areas, one being reforming research assessment. This new policy was published in European Council Conclusions in June 2022. Reforming the assessment system for research, researchers and institutions is also a priority for the European Research Area in ERA Action 3 for the period 2022-2024.

In line with this, we welcome the establishment of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) since it provides a common direction to reform research assessment practices across nations. We envisage that this is of great interest to governments, research funders, research performing organisations and researchers.

The transition to Open Science as the new normal will be accelerated through such a more balanced research assessment system.”