Our Commitment to DORA

As part of its commitment to research inclusivity, Heart Research UK has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), ensuring that a wide range of research results are valued as part of the review process.

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), launched in 2012 at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Francisco, seeks to improve how research outputs are evaluated. DORA calls for assessment systems that recognize the full range of scholarly contributions and move beyond simplistic metrics such as journal impact factor.

For more information and to read the full declaration, visit the DORA Official Website.

To uphold the DORA principles we have made the following changes to our research processes including:

• The CV requirements in our application forms have been updated:
  • We now ask applicants to include up to six relevant research outputs with a single sentence to describe the applicant’s contribution rather than a full publication list.
  • We have included a statement explaining that journal-based metrics such as journal impact factors or an h-index should not be included.
• We have developed guidance for applicants on why we have made these changes and what they can/cannot include in their CV.
• We have developed guidance for reviewers on why we have made these changes and how they should use the updated CV information to assess the potential of the applicant(s) to undertake the proposed research.