Africa & Europe Launch of Practical Guide for Research Performing Organizations

DORA is excited to announce the launch of "A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations" (available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15000683). The Guide is designed to support research performing organizations (RPOs) looking to shape and deliver responsible research assessment (RRA) practices. It reflects a collective effort and draws upon learning from the DORA community.
To celebrate this milestone and gather global perspectives, we hosted three virtual launch events across the Asia-Pacific, Africa & Europe, and Americas regions. This session, hosted by Rebecca Lawrence (DORA Vice-Chair, F1000, United Kingdom), featured Emmanuel Boakye (African Reproducibility Network, Ghana), Henk Kummeling (Utrecht University, CoARA Chair, The Netherlands), and Andiswa Mfengu (University of Cape Town, South Africa). The panelists shared insights on implementing RRA in their regions, common challenges, and the role of collaborative initiatives.
Across the three launch events, several common themes emerged: the critical importance of community building and dialogue, the necessity of leadership support and buy-in, the value of case studies and practical examples, the need to address resistance and fear associated with change, and the understanding that implementing RRA is a cultural shift requiring sustained effort and collaboration among various initiatives and stakeholders.
The Guide aims to support RPOs on this journey. It is seen as a valuable "starter kit" and a resource to help institutions identify problems, explore solutions, and bring their communities together for discussion. DORA will be developing additional spin-off materials, including one-pagers and an interactive website version of the Guide.
We invite you to:
• Download the Practical Guide.
• Share it with your colleagues and institutions.
• Use the Guide to inform your RRA efforts.
• Provide feedback to DORA as the Guide is intended to evolve.
• Get in touch if you would like DORA to introduce the Guide to your community or if you are interested in developing a local community of practice ([email protected]).
• Share your own examples of RRA implementation to help others learn.
Thank you to all the panelists, hosts, participants, and contributors who made the Guide and these launch events possible, and to our Funder Arcadia Foundation (http://arcadiafund.org.uk/). We look forward to continuing the conversation and working together to advance responsible research assessment globally.