Research assessments should recognize responsible research practices — Narrative review of a lively debate and promising developments

Abstract

Research assessments have been under growing scrutiny in the past few years. The way in which researchers are assessed has a tangible impact on decisions and practices in research. Yet, there is an emerging understanding that research assessments as they currently stand might hamper the quality and the integrity of research. In this chapter, we provide a narrative review of the shortcomings of current research assessments and showcase innovative actions that aim to address these. To discuss these shortcomings and actions, we target five different dimensions of research assessment. First, we discuss the content of research assessment, thereby introducing the common indicators used to assess researchers and the way these indicators are being used. Second, we address the procedure of research assessments, describing the resources needed for assessing researchers in an ever-growing research system. Third, we describe the crucial role of assessors in improving research assessments. Fourth, we present the broader environments in which researchers work, explaining that omnipresent competition and employment insecurity also need to be toned down substantially to foster high quality and high integrity research. Finally, we describe the challenge of coordinating individual actions to ensure that the problems of research assessments are addressed tangibly and sustainably.

Publication games: in the web of reciprocity

“…the number of papers they appear on as (co)author. As many scientometrics currently in use are strongly associated with the number of publications a scholar has produced (Aubert Bonn and Bouter 2021; Fong and Wilhite 2017; Grossman and DeVries 2019) becoming cartel member can have a very general positive effect on one’s academic career.…”

“…Research integrity is, however, under threat as a result of how science currently operates. The recent, unprecedented expansion of science, exemplified, for instance, by the exponentially growing number of scientific articles (Fire and Guestrin 2019), gives way to the wide-spread use of scientometry for assessing the productivity and impact of researchers (Aubert Bonn and Bouter 2021). As science is usually funded by public resources, the desire to measure the performance of its actors is well justified.…”

“…they are publishing the same amount of knowledge in more papers (salami articles). Furthermore, mangling with authorship appeared where offering authorship to those who did not contributed to the given paper considerably (honorary authorship) can quickly increase their number of publications, again without any increase in knowledge produced (Aubert Bonn and Bouter 2021; Biagioli et al 2019; Fong and Wilhite 2017; Gopalakrishna et al 2021). A possible sign of this questionable authorship practice can be the recent raise of number of authors per paper (Fire and Guestrin 2019).…”

Promoting trust in research and researchers: How open science and research integrity are intertwined

“…It has become apparent that if researchers feel treated unfairly by their department or institution, they may be more likely to engage in questionable research practices, or worse, to compensate for this perceived unfairness [ 12 ]. Research institutions should have policies and procedures in place to fairly assess researchers [ 25 ] and ensure that research integrity is embedded into those policies [ 26 ].…”

The failure of success: four lessons learned in five years of research on research integrity and research assessments

“…With over 20,000 signatories–2500 of which are organizations–the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessments is a perfect example of the emergent mobilization, a movement that has captured the attention of important funders such as the Wellcome Trust in the UK, the Canadian federal Tri-Agency, and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, among many others. The dialogue is also increasingly diverse, merging the voices of different stakeholders who are willing to join forces to make research better [ 15 ]. But the voices of former-researchers and early career scientists whose perspectives may be very different than that of those who survived and succeeded in the current system are often missed.…”