Responsible research assessment
How is the SNSF developing its evaluation procedure to continue fostering excellent research in the future? This is the core of what responsible research assessment (RRA) entails.
This page replaces the SNSF's previous page on the DORA declaration and contextualises DORA as one of several international initiatives informing responsible research assessment at the SNSF.
The SNSF continuously improves its research assessment to ensure that it supports the best proposals that it receives. This work rests on three core principles:
Excellence is manifest in original and relevant research questions; innovative and rigorous methods; and research practices and behaviours that enable researchers to contribute to knowledge gain while bringing their projects to successful completion.
Effective knowledge gain is embedded in inclusive and diverse research cultures, requiring researchers to pursue the highest standards of ethics and integrity, to adopt a duty of care and collegiality in collaboration and mentoring, and to acknowledge the contributions of all those involved in the research.
In a highly competitive research funding system, how the SNSF assesses proposals shapes how applicants prepare them and what they put forward to demonstrate excellence, how evaluators judge them, and, more broadly, the behaviours and norms that make up research culture.
The principles require the SNSF to reflect continuously to ensure that its research assessment is, and remains, responsible. At the same time, the national and international research landscape continues to change, and assessment practices need to evolve with it. The SNSF is committed to broader international efforts to shift entrenched norms and incentive structures across the research system.
As part of responsible research assessment, the SNSF is committed to a transparent and just evaluation procedure that funds the best projects and the best researchers. It supports excellent research careers and respects the principles of Open Science and equality, diversity and inclusion. Its evaluation procedure fosters conditions that encourage responsible leadership, healthy research environments and the development of diverse talent at all career stages.
The SNSF’s guiding model of excellence reflects this holistic view.
As a funder, the SNSF is committed to strengthening responsible research assessment, guided by its model of excellence. This is a stepping stone towards the broader purpose of research funding: facilitating knowledge gain for the common good.
In concrete terms, the SNSF implements responsible research assessment in the following areas:
The SNSF shapes the work it does by building on broad experience and on internal and external reviews of its processes, as well as ongoing exchange among the committees of its Research Council and Administrative Offices. The SNSF’s model of excellence is rooted in well-established international efforts to improve research assessment, including the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which the SNSF signed in 2014. The SNSF is represented on DORA’s Steering Committee and, currently, on its Executive Board.
As a founding member of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), the SNSF affirms a shared set of commitments and a shared direction for research assessment reform. Together with other funders and research organisations, the SNSF works to improve the transparency and clarity of research assessment by reviewing and developing criteria, tools and processes in line with these commitments. It also regularly monitors and reports on progress in putting these commitments into practice.
The SNSF co-leads CoARA’s Swiss National Chapter, which enables a more coordinated and systematic approach at the national level – through mutual learning across institutions, aligned standards and dialogue with the broader research community.
The SNSF adapted its evaluation procedures in 2022 to make them more transparent and fairer, harmonising procedures across almost all funding schemes. The UEP rests on four key elements: individual voting in evaluation panels, a single numeric rating scale applied across all evaluation phases, the separation of scientific evaluation from funding decisions, and the application of a lottery to those proposals judged to be of equal quality according to the evaluation criteria.
The standardised CV format is designed to include a researcher’s career history, academic age (instead of biological age), and a section describing up to three major achievements, focusing on the content and quality of the research. The latter allows researchers to present their most important scientific contributions in narrative form, supported by easily accessible references to their research outputs.
By focusing on a limited number of contributions, the SNSF allows applicants to focus evaluators on what they see as most important to their work, while also encouraging applicants and evaluators to judge quality rather than count listed outputs.
Contributions are deliberately defined broadly, in recognition that excellence can be demonstrated in different ways. The narrative format allows applicants to set their contributions in context. Restricting the number of contributions also makes comparison between applicants easier and the evaluation of their scientific career more transparent.
In its evaluation procedure, the SNSF aims to implement measures that reduce the impact of biases and to remove barriers. The SNSF also seeks to give proper recognition to efforts supporting early-career researchers and, more broadly, encouraging more inclusive work environments, including through the adoption of an intersectional approach to sex and gender.
The SNSF aims to ensure that diverse tasks are equally recognised, a diverse pool of researchers is funded, and different forms of knowledge are valued and supported.
Aligning practices and guidelines for everyone involved in the evaluation procedure is a necessary component of RRA. The SNSF provides training and guidance for evaluation panels, including chairs and panel members, as well as for the SNSF employees who facilitate the process.
Training is aimed at building a shared understanding of RRA principles and ensuring their consistent application throughout the evaluation process. It clarifies evaluators' roles, responsibilities and expectations, and promotes respectful, collaborative discussion and well-aligned practices in evaluation panels. It also emphasises impartiality and fair, transparent voting procedures.
To keep its own practices under evidence-based review, the SNSF is a member of the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) and takes part in a range of co-creative projects to pilot and evaluate different aspects of research systems, cultures and decision-making.