Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university revises its tenure policy to remove JIF thresholds and cites DORA in the rationale.
- Is an instance
A funder asks reviewers to evaluate publications on content rather than venue, in line with DORA principles.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Promotion committee ranks candidates strictly by sum of impact factors of journals in which they published.
- Not an instance
Funder rejects an application solely because none of the cited works appeared in a Q1 journal.
Editorial commentary
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) was drafted at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting in December 2012 and released publicly in May 2013. It contains 18 recommendations directed at funders, institutions, publishers, metric providers and researchers. The core argument is that the Journal Impact Factor was designed as a library tool to compare journals and is statistically inappropriate as a proxy for the quality of any individual article or researcher. DORA advocates for assessing research on its own merits, valuing a wide range of outputs, and being explicit about evaluation criteria. As of 2025 DORA has more than 25,000 signatories including individuals and organisations across 165+ countries.
References
- DORA (sfdora.org). American Society for Cell Biology, 2012. ASAPbio commentary on DORA implementation.
Also known as
DORA · San Francisco Declaration · SF DORA
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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