A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations

"A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations" provides action-oriented guidance, resources, and illustrative examples, for research performing organizations (RPOs) who are looking to shape and deliver responsible research assessment (RRA) practices. This includes RPOs who are looking to create an RRA strategy, organizations wanting to reform existing practices, and organizations simply wanting to take steps towards more holistic and inclusive approaches to research assessment.

One approach to research assessment certainly does not fit all, so the Guide is intended to be an inspirational tool. It is discipline-agnostic, flexible, and is intended to be adaptable to diverse organizational and disciplinary contexts by users. We envision the Practical Guide being modified and updated over time - and especially being enriched with real examples and through feedback from research performing organizations as they start to use it.

The Practical Guide has been co-developed especially with interest holders who met January 31, 2025 in Maryland, USA, whose valuable contributions we acknowledge with appreciation. We also thank the helpful feedback from DORA Steering Committee Members Sean Sapcariu and Bernd Pulverer. We are grateful to Janet Catterall for her help in compiling and organizing the references and supporting resources mentioned in the Guide.

The Guide was originally published in English, and as of June 2026 it has now been translated to Portuguese and Japanese. We thank the Brazilian and Japanese communities for their initiatives.

The Practical Guide has been created as part of Project TARA and, alongside Reformscape, the Building Blocks for Impact, and the Debiasing Committee Composition, forms a suite of tools designed to help organizations who are seeking to reform research assessment practices. Project TARA is supported by Arcadia, a family charitable foundation that helps people to record cultural heritage, to conserve and restore nature, and to promote open access to knowledge, whom we thank. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.2 billion to organizations around the world.

As of May 2026, the RPO Practical Guide has a sister volume for Research Funding Organizations, which has been created in collaboration with the Global Research Council RRA Working Gorup and Science Europe. The RFO Practical Guide is intended to be used in conjunction with the RRA Self-Assessment Tool for Funders, a diagnostic tool that enables funders to self-assess their processes and plan for more structured implementation of RRA aligned with global practices, developed by the Global Research Council RRA Working Group in collaboration with DORA.

This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial CC BY-NC. This information may be freely used, copied and adapted for non-commercial purposes, provided that the source is acknowledged.

Authors are ordered alphabetically by surname.