Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A learned society signs DORA and updates its journal-prize criteria to remove JIF-based eligibility.
- Is an instance
A research institute signs DORA and publishes a revised academic-promotion framework citing the declaration.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An institution signs DORA but its promotion guidelines continue to list JIF thresholds.
- Not an instance
A publisher claims DORA alignment while still marketing journals primarily by impact factor.
Editorial commentary
Becoming a DORA signatory means an individual or organization has added its name to the declaration on the DORA website, publicly committing to apply DORA’s recommendations within its own sphere of activity. DORA does not gatekeep who can sign, does not charge a fee, and does not audit or verify compliance after the fact — the mechanism is self-declared, public commitment, not certification.
What signing commits a signatory to do, by type
What signing means in practice differs by signatory type, because DORA’s recommendations are addressed to different audiences:
- Institutions (universities, research institutes, funders’ host organizations) are expected to be explicit about the criteria used in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions, and to remove journal-based metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor from those criteria in favour of assessing the scientific content of a candidate’s work.
- Funding agencies are expected to state clearly the criteria used to evaluate scientific productivity of grant applicants and make explicit that an article’s scientific content matters more than publication-venue metrics.
- Publishers carry the most detailed set of recommendations, including reducing emphasis on the Journal Impact Factor as a promotional tool and offering a range of article-level metrics.
- Individual researchers are expected to use article content, not journal metrics, when serving on hiring, promotion, or funding panels, and to challenge research-assessment practices that rely inappropriately on journal metrics wherever they encounter them.
Symbolic commitment versus documented reform
Because DORA does not audit signatories, signing is best read as a public, symbolic commitment rather than evidence that reform has actually happened. A learned society that signs but leaves Journal Impact Factor thresholds in its promotion criteria has not violated any DORA rule — there is no enforcement body to violate — but it also has not done what its signature implies. DORA’s own working groups publish case studies and assessment-reform toolkits precisely because the gap between signing and implementing tends to be where reform stalls; a research office assessing whether a partner institution’s DORA signature reflects real practice should look for revised, published policy documents (promotion criteria, funding-panel guidance), not the signature alone.
How this compares to CoARA membership
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) takes a structurally different approach: organizations sign a detailed CoARA Agreement and commit to a defined implementation timeline with periodic reporting, rather than a one-time declaration with no follow-up mechanism. See DORA vs. CoARA and DORA and CoARA: Comparing Research Assessment Reform Commitments for the full comparison, and Hong Kong Principles (2020) for a related, narrower reform statement focused specifically on assessing responsible research practices.
References
- San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, sfdora.org (signatory registration and recommendation text, accessed 2026-08-22).
Also known as
DORA signatory organisation · Signatory to DORA
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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