Reforming research assessment at the UOC

The UOC has the opportunity to contribute to the process while also opening up a debate internally on the need to reform research assessment and how this reform should be designed and implemented.

What is the UOC's interest in signing this agreement?

What has the UOC done so far and what does it aim to achieve?

In 2018, the UOC rolled out its Open Knowledge Action Plan to promote the concept of open science and expand it to the models it uses to evaluate and assess its research. Likewise it expressed its commitment to rethinking these evaluation models and moving towards a more qualitative form of assessment that embraces ongoing learning and transformation as objectives.

In this spirit, the UOC became the first Spanish university (as a whole) to sign the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) in January 2019. It did so as part of its firm belief that the impact factor (IF) should not replace an assessment of the quality of individual research papers and the scientific contributions of researcher recruitment and promotion. The integration of the DORA principles into its research assessment processes has been included in the UOC's Strategic Plan 2022-2025.

The UOC's long-term objective is to have a research assessment system in place that, in line with the European reform proposal, will:

What internal implications will signing the agreement have?

How will we decide whether to join CoARA?

Additional points of interest