Findings of the ON-MERIT project: a reform of research assessment is needed
February 9, 2022

Open science, such as publishing Open Access (OA) or sharing research data and code, is key to the changes that make research and innovation more responsive to society's needs. Financiers such as the European Commission, with its 95.5 billion Euro Horizon Europe funding scheme, are part of this, as they increasingly demand open and responsible practices in the research they fund. However, current research assessment processes are increasingly proving to be an obstacle to achieving such goals. Potential issues include overuse of inappropriate indicators, overemphasis on quantity over quality and neglect of open and responsible practices as such.

The ON-MERIT project, which is part of Horizon 2020, conducts research on equity in open and responsible research. To this end, they analysed policies for promotion, review and tenure of 107 academic institutions in 7 countries (Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Portugal, UK and USA) to determine the extent to which they take practices and goals of Open Science and RRI activities into account when evaluating researchers and professors for promotion and tenure.

The results of the research can be found here.