Journal impact factor reform is the shift, led by the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), away from journal-level metrics as proxies for individual researcher quality in hiring, promotion and tenure. Published institutional policy audits show the shift is real but partial: peer-reviewed analysis of promotion documents finds journal impact factor (JIF) language persists at a large minority of research-intensive universities even where DORA has been signed.
DORA is a 2012 declaration, now signed by more than 25,000 individuals and organisations worldwide, that asks institutions to stop using the JIF as a substitute measure of the quality of individual research articles in funding, appointment and promotion decisions. CoARA, launched in 2022 under the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA), extends the same principle into a formal European coalition with published implementation commitments and a 2029 systemic-reform deadline for signatory organisations.
- What DORA and CoARA actually require
- Does signing change hiring practice?
- Which institutions have implemented reform, and how
- Why reform stalls: barriers identified in the audits
- Common questions on DORA, CoARA and impact factor reform
- Implications for research administrators
What DORA and CoARA Actually Require
DORA and CoARA are not enforcement bodies; they are voluntary commitments that institutions self-implement. Neither has an audit or sanction mechanism of its own, which is precisely why independent policy audits — not signatory counts — are the only reliable evidence of actual practice change.
| Feature | DORA | CoARA |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | 2012 (San Francisco) | 2022, under the ARRA agreement |
| Core mechanism | Voluntary declaration; no journal-level metrics as a proxy for article or researcher quality | Ten formal commitments plus a published multi-year action plan per signatory |
| Geographic base | Global | Predominantly European, growing globally |
| Compliance check | None — self-reported case studies only | National chapters and working groups; EC-commissioned baseline studies |
| Reported uptake | 25,000+ individual and organisational signatories | Around 450 European higher-education institutions, roughly 13% of the sector, per the CoARA-by-numbers uptake study |
Does Signing DORA or CoARA Actually Change Hiring Practice?
The most direct published audit remains McKiernan et al.’s 2019 eLife meta-research study, which coded the review, promotion and tenure (RPT) documents of 129 US and Canadian universities. The findings are the clearest evidence-based answer available on this question.
- The JIF was mentioned in RPT documents at 23% of all sampled institutions, rising to 40% among research-intensive (R-type) universities.
- Of institutions that mentioned the JIF, 87% used it in a supportive context — encouraging its use — and none explicitly prohibited it, even where the parent university had signed DORA.
- Where JIF appeared, 63% of mentions linked it to “quality”, 40% to impact or significance, and 20% to prestige or reputation — the exact conflation DORA was written to dismantle.
A follow-up 2024 DORA-commissioned qualitative study of US faculty hiring and tenure assessments reached a similar conclusion: departmental practice frequently lags institutional signature, because RPT criteria are set and applied at department or faculty level, not centrally by the office that signed the declaration. This decentralisation gap is the single most consistent finding across the audit literature and is the primary reason blanket “signed DORA” claims cannot be read as evidence of changed practice.
Which Institutions Have Implemented Reform, and How
Where reform has taken hold, it has required a specific policy rewrite, not just a signature. Three documented examples illustrate the range of implementation depth.
- Utrecht University (Netherlands) signed DORA in 2019 and, by 2022, had formally removed the JIF from all hiring and promotion criteria university-wide as part of its Recognition and Rewards programme, replacing it with team-science and open-science indicators — reported by Nature in July 2021.
- University of Calgary revised its GFC Academic Staff Criteria and Processes Handbook after signing DORA, explicitly incorporating DORA’s principles into the formal criteria used in tenure and promotion committees, according to the university’s own published case study.
- CoARA national chapters, including Spain’s, have published sector-wide mapping reports tracking which member institutions have moved from commitment to documented policy change, rather than relying on signature counts alone.
At the coalition level, the European Commission’s independently commissioned ARRA baseline study — published in mid-2026 — found that engagement is broad and growing but that implementation progress across signatory organisations is uneven and constrained by limited institutional capacity, particularly outside research-intensive universities and outside Western Europe.
Why Reform Stalls: Barriers Identified in the Audits
The audit literature converges on a consistent set of structural barriers, distinct from a simple lack of institutional will.
- Decentralised authority. Central research offices sign declarations; departments and faculties write and apply RPT criteria, creating an implementation gap that persists for years.
- No enforceable alternative metric. DORA and CoARA prescribe what institutions should stop doing more clearly than what should replace it, leaving evaluators to fall back on familiar journal-based shortcuts under time pressure.
- Reviewer and panel habit. External referees and appointment panels — often from non-signatory institutions — continue to reference journal prestige informally, even where the host institution’s written policy is silent on the JIF.
- Absence of external audit. Because neither DORA nor CoARA verifies signatory compliance, self-reported case studies dominate the evidence base, which is why the McKiernan-style document audit remains the field’s methodological benchmark.
Common Questions on DORA, CoARA and Impact Factor Reform
Has signing DORA actually changed hiring practice at universities?
Partially. Published audits of promotion and tenure documents show the journal impact factor still appears at roughly a quarter to two-fifths of institutions, including many DORA signatories, because departmental criteria often lag the institutional-level declaration by years.
What is the difference between DORA and CoARA?
DORA is a global, individually signed declaration with no formal implementation mechanism, launched in 2012. CoARA is a European-centred coalition with ten binding commitments and a published multi-year action plan per signatory institution, launched in 2022.
Do DORA-signatory universities still use the impact factor in tenure decisions?
Some do. A 2019 eLife audit found 87% of institutions that mentioned the JIF in tenure documents used it in a supportive, encouraging context, regardless of DORA status, showing that signature alone does not remove journal metrics from evaluation practice.
What replaces the impact factor under responsible research assessment reform?
Reformed institutions typically adopt narrative CVs, qualitative peer review, and broadened output categories — datasets, software, mentorship, open-science contributions — rather than a single quantitative substitute metric, per CoARA’s core commitments.
Implications for Research Administrators and Institutional Leaders
For research administrators, the audit evidence carries a practical conclusion: a DORA or CoARA signature is a governance commitment, not a completed policy change. Verifying reform therefore requires the same document-level audit McKiernan’s team used — checking actual RPT, hiring and promotion wording for JIF language — rather than relying on signatory-list membership as a proxy for compliance.
Institutions serious about research assessment governance should treat departmental RPT criteria, external referee guidance and appointment panel training as the three concrete levers that determine whether a declaration changes behaviour. Coalition membership sets direction; department-level document rewrites are what the evidence shows actually moves practice.
The trajectory across both audits and coalition-level reporting points toward continued, uneven reform rather than wholesale abandonment of journal metrics. CoARA’s 2029 milestone and the growing base of institutional case studies mean the evidence base for measuring real change — as opposed to signed intent — will keep expanding over the next several years.