DORA signatories are institutions, funders, publishers, or individuals who have formally endorsed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment — a public commitment to stop treating journal-based metrics like the Journal Impact Factor as a proxy for research quality in hiring, promotion, and funding decisions. Signing is voluntary and unaudited: it obliges a signatory to publish a statement of intent, not to hit a fixed reform deadline.
DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) is a set of research-assessment reform principles, published on 13 May 2013, that discourages substituting journal-based metrics for qualitative judgement of individual research contributions. Note: this is unrelated to the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, which regulates financial-sector ICT risk and happens to share the same acronym — this article covers only the research-assessment declaration.
- What do DORA signatories actually commit to?
- How does DORA’s commitment differ from CoARA’s?
- What should an institution check before signing DORA?
- Common questions about DORA signatories
- What this means for institutional strategy
What Do DORA Signatories Actually Commit To?
A DORA signatory commits to a principle, not a procedure. The declaration originated from a December 2012 meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology and was published on 13 May 2013. Its core ask is narrow and specific: do not use the Journal Impact Factor, or any journal-level metric, “as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles” in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.
Beyond that central pledge, signatories are asked to:
- Articulate explicit criteria for hiring, tenure, and promotion that credit scientific content over the venue of publication
- Consider a broad range of research outputs — including datasets, software, and preprints — not only journal articles
- Publish a statement outlining how the organisation intends to implement DORA’s principles
DORA’s own registry records over 27,000 individual and organisational signatories across 174 countries, according to the live signer count maintained at sfdora.org. Notable organisational signatories include the seven UK Research Councils under UKRI and, since May 2020, Springer Nature — the first major research publisher to sign.
How Does DORA’s Commitment Differ from CoARA’s?
DORA and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) are often mentioned together, but their signatory obligations are not equivalent. DORA asks institutions to endorse a principle and publish a statement; CoARA asks institutions to commit to a structured, time-bound implementation process. CoARA’s Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment was published in July 2022 and has attracted more than 800 signing organisations, including funders, universities, and learned societies.
| Feature | DORA (San Francisco Declaration) | CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) |
|---|---|---|
| Founding document | Declaration published 13 May 2013 | Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, published July 2022 |
| Core ask | Stop using journal-level metrics as a proxy for article or researcher quality | Adopt 10 core commitments covering criteria, procedures, and tools for assessment |
| Reporting requirement | Public statement required for new organisational signatories since November 2022; no fixed deadline | Action plan required within one year of signing |
| Oversight | Not an accrediting body; does not audit signatories | Governed by a General Assembly and Steering Board; Secretariat hosted by the European Science Foundation |
| Reported signatories | 27,000+ individuals and organisations in 174 countries | 800+ organisations |
In practice, DORA functions as a values statement institutions can sign quickly, while CoARA functions as an implementation programme with a governance structure and a submission deadline. Many organisations — including several UK universities and Science Europe members — hold both, using DORA as the founding principle and CoARA as the operational framework.
What Should an Institution Check Before Signing DORA?
Because DORA is unaudited, the real work happens internally, before and after the signature. Institutional leaders should treat signing as the start of a governance exercise, not the end of one.
- Confirm HR, promotion committees, and funding panels understand what “not using the Journal Impact Factor” means in practice for their existing criteria
- Audit current hiring, tenure, and grant-review documentation for explicit or implicit journal-name dependence
- Draft (or update) the public statement now required for organisational signatories, per DORA’s Engagement and Outreach Policy, approved 2024
- Decide whether to pursue CoARA membership alongside DORA, given CoARA’s one-year action-plan deadline
- Name an internal owner for ongoing implementation — since DORA does not audit compliance, accountability has to be self-imposed
Institutions that skip this internal groundwork risk the outcome DORA itself has flagged publicly: a signatory whose day-to-day assessment practice has not actually changed. Reform requires deliberate revision of hiring and promotion documentation, not a signature alone.
Common Questions About DORA Signatories
What does DORA stand for?
DORA stands for the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, a set of research-assessment reform principles published on 13 May 2013. It is unrelated to the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, which regulates financial-sector ICT risk and shares the same acronym. Readers researching signatory obligations should confirm they mean the research-assessment declaration.
What is the difference between a DORA signatory and a CoARA signatory?
A DORA signatory commits to principles against using journal-level metrics in hiring, promotion, and funding, with no mandatory reporting deadline. A CoARA signatory commits to 10 explicit reform commitments and must submit a public action plan within one year of signing — making CoARA the more prescriptive route.
Does DORA apply to UK research institutions?
Yes. UKRI and each of its seven constituent Research Councils are DORA signatories in their own right, and Science Europe reported that 60% of its member organisations had signed DORA by March 2023. DORA carries no jurisdictional restriction — any UK university, funder, or publisher can sign voluntarily.
What happens after an institution signs DORA?
Signing is only the start: organisational signatories must publish a statement describing how they will implement DORA’s principles, under DORA’s Engagement and Outreach Policy (approved 2024). DORA does not audit signatories or revoke signatory status, so ongoing implementation depends entirely on internal institutional governance.
What This Means for Institutional Strategy
The practical distinction for institutional leaders is one of pace versus prescription. DORA delivers a values commitment that can be adopted in weeks and signals good faith to researchers and funders. CoARA delivers a structured reform pathway with a governance body, working groups, and a one-year deliverable, better suited to institutions ready to formalise assessment reform as a programme rather than a statement.
Research administrators — through bodies such as ARMA, EARMA, and INORMS — increasingly treat the two as complementary rather than competing: DORA as the founding principle cited in policy documents, CoARA as the operational mechanism for tracking and reporting progress. Institutions weighing either commitment should map both sets of obligations against existing hiring, promotion, and funding criteria before signing either declaration, so that the public statement reflects a change already under way rather than a promise made in advance of it.
