Commitment to DORA and Responsible Research Assessment
The Journal of Sustainability is a proud signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). We fully support DORA’s principles and are committed to promoting fair, responsible, and qualitative evaluation of research outputs.
We recognize that journal-based metrics such as Journal Impact Factors should not be used as proxies for the quality of individual research articles or to assess the contributions of individual researchers. Instead, we commit to:
- Evaluating research on its own merits, including methodological rigor, theoretical contribution, and practical relevance.
- Encouraging the use of diverse research outputs (e.g. datasets, software, and policy briefs) in assessing scholarly impact.
- Providing a platform for replication studies, null results, and applied contributions, even when these do not appear in high-impact venues.
- Avoiding the use of impact factor metrics in editorial decisions or reviewer instructions.
- Raising awareness among our authors, editors, and reviewers about responsible research assessment practices.
We view responsible research assessment as an ongoing process. Our editorial board is exploring further steps to align our practices with DORA principles, including internal training, revised reviewer guidelines, and periodic assessment of our publication and evaluation policies.
This page will be updated as our implementation efforts progress. For inquiries or suggestions, please contact us at [email protected]
