Reforming research assessment

Abstract

Our publishers, Wiley, have informed the editors of EJISDC that they are endorsing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). This is, they say, because “supporting a diverse community of authors and ensuring our publishing services enable responsible research assessment practices is key to our publishing mission.” As we fully endorse this objective, we need to explain the implications for our authors and readers. DORA intends to de-emphasize the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as a means of evaluating research. In its place, there are a variety of other metrics, such as CRediT, Scite, and Altmetric, that can be employed to assess research. We expect that these other metrics will be listed on the journal's website in the near future. Notwithstanding Wiley's signing of DORA, EJISDC is currently listed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), an index produced by Clarivate that caters to emerging journals not yet deemed to be ready for the more established Science Citation Index (SCI) or Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). However, EJISDC may become eligible for SCI/SSCI indexing in the future: these indices are not controlled by Wiley, our publisher, and thus a journal can be indexed irrespective of the DORA-signatory status. Wiley has explained that everyone involved in research shares the task of responsible research assessment. The thrust of DORA's initiative is to shift emphasis away from journal level metrics and assessment toward article level metrics and the recognition of the contributions made by individual authors. DORA has laid out a set of 18 recommendations that apply to a variety of stakeholders. Five of these are of particular relevance for publishers, viz.: