Academic publisher Emerald Publishing has signed up to DORA, the Declaration on Research Assessment, supporting its vision to advance practical and robust approaches to research assessment globally and across all scholarly disciplines. This aligns with Emerald’s Impact Manifesto, launched by Vicky Williams, Emerald’s CEO in March 2018. The manifesto called for change across the whole academic ecosystem, recognising that the traditional markers of influence such as citations were not sufficient to tell the full story of impact.
A core thrust of DORA is that journal-based metrics are often misused and ill applied in research and researcher evaluation. This takes place at key transition points during a researcher’s career, including hiring, promotion, and tenure. In signing the Declaration, Emerald is committing to playing its part in improving the culture around research evaluation. In the short term, this involves implementing a number of existing DORA recommendations for publishers, including presenting the journal impact factor within the context of a variety of journal-based metrics, exploring ways to make article-level metrics available, encouraging editors and authors to adopt wider, responsible author practices e.g. in line with TOP guidelines, as well as introducing new Open Access and Open Research opportunities for researchers.
Emerald was the first to launch an Open Research Publishing Platform for mission driven research last month, with its first six gateways, tackling critical world issues linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In a further move away from traditional publishing, all research published on Emerald Open Research will be subject to open peer review, where reviews are published alongside the article together with the authors’ responses. This approach not only offers rapid publication, but the transparent peer review process encourages experts to provide constructive feedback to help authors improve their work.
Emerald is continuing to lead the publishing charge towards meaningful impact, working with its global author network to publish research which makes a difference and investing further in the research community to support real world change. In line with its real impact manifesto, Emerald is supporting communities to overcome barriers to impact, working in partnership with key agencies to strengthen connections between research and society, challenging simplistic and outdated approaches to impact, and driving impact literacy in the research sector.
Signing DORA is a natural extension to Emerald’s commitment to driving positive change, working in partnership with communities across and beyond the research ecosystem.
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