Open-access initiative set to focus on role of scholarly publishing as member of reform group
Coalition S—a group of mainly European research funders requiring work they have supported to be reported with open access—has joined the coalition working to help implement EU-backed reforms of research assessment.
As a member of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment, Coalition S will work with more than 300 other organisations collaborating to implement the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. This agreement aims to better recognise the diversity of research roles, base assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation and abandon the “inappropriate” use of metrics.
Announcing its decision to join Coara on 15 December, Coalition S said it will focus on the role of scholarly publishing in the reform of research assessment.
It said this will include supporting the development of tools and processes to measure the merit of research outputs and helping to ensure that “all scholarly contributions to the publication process—including editorial services, assessments and peer review reports—are given proper and equal credit to the publications themselves and irrespective of whether they are formally published in a journal”.
Membership of Coara “naturally fits” with the aims and scope of Coalition S, the latter said, as its guiding principles say research should be assessed on its own merits rather than on where the research is published.
Coalition S members include research councils, academies and agencies from across Europe, such as the Academy of Finland, the National Science Centre of Poland, the Swiss National Science Foundation and UK Research and Innovation.