RoRI announces new partners and projects – and a new website

The second phase of the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) is now fully underway, with an expanded consortium of partners, £6.5 million of fresh funding and in-kind support, and an exciting suite of new projects which will run for between two and five years.

RoRI aims to unlock more of the potential of the US$2.5 trillion invested globally in research every year. By turning the tools of research back on itself, RoRI generates data and analysis to improve how we fund, practice, evaluate and communicate research.

After the completion and positive evaluation of its pilot phase, in March 2023, RoRI was incorporated as a nonprofit community interest company (CIC). Our second phase will run for five years, to the end of 2027. RoRI’s operations are coordinated by a small core team, based at UCL in London, who manage a network of researchers and collaborators across our partner organisations. 

RoRI’s work programme is determined by its Partnership Board, made up of representatives of its fourteen Core Partners, who include: Australian Research Council; Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR); Centre for Science & Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University; Digital Science; Dutch Research Council (NWO); Michael Smith Health Research BC; FNR Luxembourg; Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF); Research England (part of UK Research and Innovation); Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); University College London (UCL); Volkswagen Foundation; and Wellcome Trust. For this next phase, we also have several project-level partnerships with funders, universities, publishers and data providers.

One of our new Core Partners for this phase is the Australian Research Council (ARC). Announcing the partnership, Judi Zielke PSM, CEO of the ARC, said that joining the RoRI consortium “directly supports the ARC’s current reform agenda.” Ms Zielke added: “This partnership will allow us to learn from other countries to improve the way we measure research impact and quality, and ensure we continue to be a world leader in this space.”.

Through its flagship projects, RoRI brings together partners and people who want to change research for the better. Today, we are delighted to announce nine new projects which will run for between two and five years:

AGORRA: a global observatory of responsible research assessment

GRAIL: getting responsible about AI and machine learning in research funding and evaluation

FUNDER DATA PLATFORM: supporting data-sharing to unlock insights into research funding

MATTHEW: a study of cumulative advantages in funding allocation 

MetaROR: a new platform for metaresearch

NARRATIVES: the uses & evaluation of researchers’ narrative CVs

PEER REVIEW: RoRI Atlas of Peer Review

PORTFOLIOS: research funding landscape analysis

UNDISCIPLINED: future models of funding & evaluating transdisciplinary research

Three of these projects – AGORRA, GRAIL and MetaROR – are the focus of special sessions at this week’s STI 2023 international conference on science, technology and innovation indicators, which is taking place in Leiden (NL). 

Speaking about this week’s launch of AGORRA, a new global observatory of responsible research assessment, Dr Steven Hill, Director of Research at Research England, said: “I am delighted to co-chair the AGORRA working group and contribute to a global conversation on the systems to assess research from the world’s research performing organisations. I look forward to sharing the insights from Research England’s role in reforming the UK’s research evaluation system – the Research Excellence Framework (REF) as well as the work we do on research assessment through the Global Research Council’s working group on Responsible Research Assessment. It will be invaluable in building the evidence base on system-wide research assessments to learn from the experiences of the 11 funders and 7 research partners in the AGORRA international collaboration.”

RoRI has also announced several new members of its core team, including Professor Stephen Curry, the outgoing chair of DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment), who will be joining as our new Director of Strategy. And we will shortly be recruiting for a series of new research and operational roles in the core team. Keep in touch with developments by signing up to the RoRI newsletter below.