Category 3: Initiatives on improving the accuracy of research contribution assessment

San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment
On December 16, 2012, 155 editors and publishers of scholarly journals in a variety of disciplines, mostly in biological sciences, representing 82 organizations worldwide gathered in San Francisco to sign a declaration with specific suggestions for a new framework for assessing research contribution. They declared: Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. The Declaration offers specific recommendation for funding agencies, institutions, publishers, and organizations that supply metrics. Basically, they are arguing development criteria and methods that put science back into assessing research. Scholars in business and management also have written about this issue and discourage tenure and promotion committees to rely solely on publications in the A-journals as a measure of research quality and contribution.