Declarations

Become a high-skilled geospatial professional

Shaping2030

Shaping2030 is the University of Twente's mission, vision, and, strategy for 2020-2030. Open Science is mentioned explicitly in the second strategic goal of Shaping Connections. Particularly Citizen Science, which is an essential aspect of Open Science, plays an important role to address the People-First mission. Open Science is used as a guideline for "why, where, and how we conduct our research and offer education". To support the Open Science transition, Shaping2030 consequently strives for 100% Open Access publications and FAIR data as the new norm already in 2023. Moreover, there will be a stronger focus on Research Data Management Plans which adhere to the norms of transparency. This will be achieved by an infrastructure to support Open Data and Open Software activities.

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment is a set of recommendations to evaluate researchers and the quality of research output. It addresses funding agencies, academic institutions, journals, organizations, and individual researchers. The recommendations focus on research articles and the limitations of traditional impact measures. According to the declaration, the journal impact factor should not be used to assess the quality of a paper or a researcher's work, for example, when it comes to hiring or funding decisions. This means that funding agencies and institutions need to make clear in advance which evaluation criteria they use. Instead of traditional metrics, a broader range of measures should be considered, such as the impact of a researcher's findings on policies or the value of all research outputs, including data and software. Publishers are also put in charge of the transition towards a more responsible evaluation of research. They should encourage statements about each author's individual contribution, remove limitations on the number of references, and stop promoting journal impact factors. Finally, researchers who are involved in hiring committees should not take into account journal metrics of an applicant's papers but focus on the entire scientific content. For further details, check the full list of recommendations.

Hong Kong Principles

The Hong Kong Principles aim at minimizing 'perverse' incentives that result in questionable research practices. The principles focus on evaluating a researcher's contribution by taking into account practices that demonstrate research integrity:

  1. Assess researchers on responsible practices from conception to delivery, including the development of the research idea, research design, methodology, execution, and effective dissemination
  2. Value the accurate and transparent reporting of all research, regardless of the results
  3. Value the practices of open science (open research)—such as open methods, materials, and data
  4. Value a broad range of research and scholarship, such as replication, innovation, translation, synthesis, and meta-research
  5. Value a range of other contributions to responsible research and scholarly activity, such as peer review for grants and publications, mentoring, outreach, and knowledge exchange

The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics

The Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics is a further guide for research evaluation and is composed of a set of ten principles to tackle the misapplication of traditional indicators to evaluate a researcher's work. Papers should be judged based on a mixture of quantitative metrics and the qualitative, subjective opinion of a referee. A research programme should have an individual evaluation model that is tailored to the specific goals of the project. Furthermore, regional research should be protected by not insisting on English-language publications. This issue is particularly relevant in the social sciences and humanities and additionally speaks against the impact factor which is calculated mostly based on the English-language Web of Science. Similar to the declarations mentioned above, the Leiden Manifesto also promotes transparent research practices and focusing on the actual scientific content instead of journal metrics when it comes to research evaluation. For further details, check the full list of recommendations.

Promovendi Netwerk Nederland

The Promovendi Netwerk Nederland also made a statement on Open Science. They ask universities and other actors involved in the research process to increase their support for early-career scientists. They should receive training in Open Science practices and the infrastructure to realize them. They also support Plan S, an initiative aiming at making all research articles Open Access, and the aforementioned San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment towards a new recognition and rewarding system.