'Responsible use of what?': Navigating US university governance to approve an institutional statement on the responsible use of metrics

Despite the first international initiative on responsible research assessment, the 2012 Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), beginning in the US, only one entire US university and four individual units within universities have signed DORA. Furthermore, few US universities have their own institutional statements on the responsible use of research metrics. The lack of visible commitment to responsible research assessment in the US can be partly attributed to the decentralized governing and funding systems of US universities. Unlike the UK and other countries, each US university has its own governing and budget models, with state universities’ funding at least partly reliant on the individual state, and its politics, where it resides. In this presentation, the speaker will talk about her experiences and lessons learned from navigating one US university’s governance structure to form a faculty-led responsible research assessment task force, and then draft, communicate, and approve the university’s first statement on the responsible use of research metrics.