Conclusions

The data gathered in our survey provides a strong evidence base to help us understand researcher perspectives on existing and future evaluation practices. Inevitably, the results cannot reflect every nuance and context for research assessment that is experienced globally, and the wider context of each regional research ecosystem; but they do identify some common trends and themes that can be used to inform dialogue on research assessment reform going forwards.  

Overall, researchers are positive about the ways that they are currently evaluated. However, there are some notable concerns, alongside a desire to move towards a system which places greater weight on positive contributions to society, the wider research community, and research culture. 

Through initiatives like DORA and CoARA, many in the research community are already making progress towards this more holistic approach. However, our survey findings also highlight some disparities between what is happening in practice and researchers’ preferences for the future.  

From our research, some key questions emerged: 

• How can research assessment practices better represent a researchers’ input and effort, as well as the subsequent effects of their work? 
• What is the optimal balance between quantitative and qualitative indicators? How can it be ensured that metrics are used responsibly, while limiting bias within qualitative processes? 
• With contributions to society being naturally harder to measure, how can we ensure they are embedded into evaluation frameworks, rather than just highly regarded? How does this differ between different research areas, and for interdisciplinary research? 
• What are the trade-offs between conducting comprehensive, tailored evaluations and the workload involved in these evaluations? How can processes be designed to minimise the administrative burden on researchers? 

Springer Nature has long been an active part of the conversation around research assessment. This forms part of our commitment to ensuring we remain clearly informed about research and community needs. 

Our publishing ethos has always been to support and enable a balanced, sustainable, and fair approach to using metrics, facilitate responsible authorship practices and enable wider author and researcher choice when coming to the critical decision of where and with whom to publish. 

As a signatory of DORA, we remain focused on enabling a more holistic research assessment ecosystem, and have undertaken a number of initiatives to support this goal: 

• Upholding the recommendations DORA outlines for publishers, including removing or reducing constraints on the number of references in research articles, and providing a wide array of metrics (beyond citations) on our platforms. 
• Encouraging and facilitating responsible authorship behaviour - through, for example, our preprint services and support of transparent peer review practice. 
• Pioneering new approaches to sharing open data, code and protocols. Our single data policy and open code policy make it easier for researchers to share these outputs, and we work with the scientific community in a variety of ways to improve data management and publication. Our annual State of Open Data project, in partnership with Figshare and Digital Science, is the longest running survey and analysis on open data. 
• Using our networks and platforms to share resources on research assessment reform and facilitate discussion on this topic. 
• Partnering with other organisations that support a transparent and open approach to research and research evaluation, such as Transparency in the Process of Science, New Frontiers of Peer Review consortium, Committee on Publication Ethics, and Open Researcher and Contributor ID. 

As identified throughout this white paper, achieving true reform requires commitment from all within the research sector. Springer Nature will ensure that we continue to play an active part in this, supporting our authors, editors, reviewers and institutional partners. We look forward to continuing discussions on this topic with others within the academic community, to work together towards a better future. 

Authors

How to cite this report

Springer Nature (2025, April). The state of research assessment: Researcher perspectives on evaluation practices. https://stories.springernature.com/state-of-research-assessment