IIMCB decided to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the document created by The American Society for Cell Biology in 2012 containing a set of recommendations on improving the way in which the quality of research output is evaluated. These recommendations focus primarily on practices relating to research articles published in peer-review journals but can and should be extended to any research-related products which undergo evaluation. They are aimed at funding agencies, academic institutions, journals and individual researchers.

The Declaration epitomizes the current, civilized trend in an evaluation of research quality on the principle of merit and not metrics, like two-year journal impact factor (JIF), a dominant bibliometric indicator widely misunderstood therefore also widely misused by the scientific community, especially in the assessment of individual work and scientists for which it was never intended.

Application of DORA recommendations will impact the course of recruitment procedures at IIMCB and routine evaluations of individual researchers performed on a regular basis at the Institute. IIMCB is one of the very first Polish institutions signing DORA.

More information about DORA: http://am.ascb.org/dora/