DORA reforms its governance to meet inclusion standards

DORA reforms its governance to meet inclusion standards

The main transformations are aimed at distributing power outside of Europe and North America on the Steering Committee; reducing financial barriers for organizations from developing or transition economies that wish to support DORA; and ensuring that leadership positions on the Steering Committee reflect the broad diversity of academia.

CLACSO, along with other representatives from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Oceania, is honored to join the DORA Board of Directors.

DORA challenges academic institutions, funding organizations, and scholarly societies to include broader representation of researchers in the design of responsible research evaluation policies and practices. We apply this same standard to our organization and are committed to addressing the long-standing structural inequalities that limit participation and success in academia.

Over the past 18 months, DORA has reviewed our operational structure to see how we can better live out our values ​​as an organization. While we have global aspirations to accelerate research assessment reform, our governance effectively limited participation on the Steering Committee to representatives from organizations in Europe and North America. Although our Advisory Board had representation from every continent and brought a global perspective, this dual committee structure did not embody the aspirations for equity that we wish to see incorporated into responsible research assessment. Therefore, DORA’s Steering Committee and Advisory Board worked collaboratively—through multiple rounds of discussion, feedback, and refinement—to develop a new governance structure. This work drew on examples from the broader scholarly communications community. We are especially grateful to Invest in Open Infrastructure and Code for Science & Society for sharing their work on developing anti-racist governance.

Thanks to the knowledge gained through this important work, DORA is implementing a series of changes to our governance procedures, effective from 1 January 2022:

-Distribute power outside of Europe and North America in the Steering Committee.

How we will do this: We have merged the Steering Committee and the Advisory Council. Current members of the Advisory Council have been reassigned as full members of the Steering Committee. From now on, each representative of a supporting organization on the Steering Committee will have one full member. Full members will have the same voting rights as representatives of supporting organizations.

-Reduce financial barriers for organizations in developing or transition economies that wish to support DORA.

How we will do it: We have created a political which will calibrate quotas for support organizations located in "developing economies" and "economies in transition," as defined in the United Nations' annual World Economic Situation and Prospects report (see the 2021 report). here).

-Ensure that leadership positions on the Steering Committee reflect the broad diversity of the academic world.

How we will do this: We have adjusted the governance structure to operate through an elected Steering Committee and Executive Board. Unlike the previous relationship between the Steering Committee and the Advisory Council, the Executive Board is composed of a subset of Steering Committee members who must come from diverse backgrounds, academic fields, and geographical locations. They are elected by and from the Steering Committee through a self-nomination process. This change will also improve DORA's organizational flexibility by enabling faster responses when needed.

The new Board of Directors is made up of:

Stephen Curry, who will complete his term as President; Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Ginny Barbour, who will become vice-chair from her role as chair of the Advisory Council; Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Christian González-Billaut; University of Chile, Chile

Anna Hatch (ex officio); San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

Laura Rovelli; The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), Argentina

Rhoda Wanyenze; ​​Makerere University School of Public Health, Uganda

DORA's vision is to advance practical and robust approaches to research assessment globally and across all academic disciplines. This requires global participation at the operational level. The revised governance procedures, which can be found here, have been designed to increase geographical representation on the Steering Committee. But we know there is more work to be done. As with responsible research assessment, this is not a one-off exercise. We will continue to reflect on and refine how we can better function as an inclusive organization, optimally supporting the academic community in its efforts to improve research assessment. 

Please read here the entire communication in English.