ERC signs Dora declaration and tweaks its assessment process

Top EU funder rejects journal impact factors as indicator of quality of applicants’ publications

The European Research Council, the EU’s most prestigious research funder, has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, thereby committing to abide by certain practices when choosing which proposals to support.

Signatories to the Dora declaration pledge not to make decisions about the quality of researchers’ work using broad metrics relating to the journals in which they have published, such as citation-based impact factors. They also pledge to be explicit about the evaluation criteria they use, and to consider all kinds of research outputs and impact in their evaluations.