The UOC publishes the Catalan translation of the rubric for applying the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

Helping the signers of the San Francisco Declaration (DORA) to change how they assess research is the aim of the SPACE rubric – a tool universities and other academic institutions can use to take the quality of research into account rather than the reputation of the journals in which it is published. The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has translated the guide into Catalan, following its translation into Spanish, and has published it in open access format to facilitate consultation.

Four experts on research assessment at Catalan institutions supervised the translation of SPACE into Catalan: Paula Adam, Head of Research Assessment at the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS); Esteve Arboix, Head of Assessment of Teaching Staff and Research Department at the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU); Montserrat Daban, Director of Science Policy and Internationalization at Biocat; and Ignasi Labastida, Rector's Delegate for Open Science at the University of Barcelona.

The tool is aimed at institutions that are considering changing their research assessment practices and policies and at other organizations that have already started on that path and wish to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of their reform, regardless of the stage in the process they have reached. The SPACE tool relates the key areas of institutional work (Standards for scholarship; Process mechanics and policies; Accountability; Culture within institutions; Evaluative and iterative feedback) with the level of reform, from lower to more advanced.

The SPACE rubric

The SPACE rubric is a result of DORA's partnership with Ruth Schmidt, Associate Professor at the Institute of Design (Illinois Institute of Technology), who led its participatory design process. It is based on the opinions of nearly 75 individuals in 26 countries and benefited from their feedback. 

About the UOC

In January 2019, the UOC was the first university in Spain to sign the San Francisco Declaration (DORA), which is currently supported by more than 2,500 academic organizations around the world. The decision to sign the declaration, within the framework of the Open Knowledge Action Plan approved in 2018, was the result of the reflection process by an interdisciplinary working group, which led to a working document to assess the implications of implementing DORA's principles in areas such as the recruitment and promotion of research staff.