News
09/10/2018

The ANR signs the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

On 7 September 2018, the French National Research Agency (ANR) joined research organisations and institutions in signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). The Declaration sets out a series of recommendations to improve research assessment, emphasising the quality of scientific output over the reputation of scientific journals.

The San Francisco Declaration, drafted by researchers from the American Society for Cell Biology and a team of scholarly journal editors, stresses the limits of using the Journal Impact Factor as a research assessment metric. Its recommendations – aimed at research organisations, funding agencies, academic journals, producers of metrics, and researchers – are designed to encourage best practice in research assessment.

The Declaration stresses that research should be assessed on the strength of its scientific content, rather than publication metrics or the identity of the journal in which it is published. It recommends abandoning the Journal Impact Factor and other journal-based metrics and instead considering the value of the scientific output holistically when assessing a piece of research – in other words, looking not just at journal articles, but also at datasets, software and other outputs that reflect the quality of the research. The new measures recommended by the Declaration include exploring new, qualitative research impact indicators such as influence on policy and practice. The Declaration also stresses the need to capitalise on the opportunities provided by online publication, such as relaxing the limits on the number of references in articles.

Read the recommendations of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

 

The ANR pledges its support for open publication of research data

The ANR is also one of the 11 national research funding organisations that form the cOAlition S and support the Plan S, which calls for open access to scientific publications and research data. The agency’s commitment aligns with France’s National Open Science Plan, presented by the French Minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Frédérique Vidal, on 4 July 2018.

The ANR’s Open Science policy is described in the 2019 Work Programme.

 

Further reading:

Last updated on 08 January 2019
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