EMBO is a founding member and active supporter of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a global initiative focused on advancing practical approaches to research and researcher assessment across all scholarly disciplines. Since the Declaration was first published in 2013, DORA has transformed from a call to action into an active initiative. Fair research assessment directly aligns with the organization’s goals to support researchers’ exchange of scientific information in a supportive research environment. The related policy work is in alignment with DORA’s aims and recommendations. EMBO continues to be actively involved in DORA, and Sandra Bendiscioli, Senior Policy Officer, serves on its Executive Board and Steering Committee.

EMBO reinforced its commitment to improving research assessment processes by signing the Agreement to Reform Research Assessment in January 2023, which was drawn up by the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), and pledges to align its policies with the commitments of the agreement. Accordingly, EMBO has formed an internal working group with representatives from the funding programmes and publications teams to review and align research assessment processes, and published an action plan. 

CoARA working group Recognizing and Rewarding Peer Review. EMBO played a role in successfully forming this working group, that published Recommendations on Recognizing and Rewarding Peer Review of Scholarly Articles, Books, and Funding Proposals, June 2025.

The group consists of 18 funders and organizations who meet quarterly to discuss how to give additional attention to peer review activities within research assessment system by

• Collecting evidence on how to recognize and reward high-quality peer review activities.
• Developing principles and guidelines for this recognition.
• Piloting their implementation in research performing and funding organizations.
• Supporting wider implementation and evaluate the lessons learned.

In 2025 and 2026, EMBO hosted two workshops to review and align selection criteria across its programmes. The aim of these meetings was to build community consensus, in order to inform policy debates to EMBO’s selection process.   

Revisiting the EMBO Funding Criteria – 20 January 2026  

Read some highlights from the workshop here

On 20 January 2026, EMBO held a workshop to collect the input and feedback of representatives from its scientific community on possible changes to the evaluation criteria for the following funding schemes: Postdoctoral Fellowships, Young Investigator Programme, Global Investigators, and Installation Grants. Bringing approximately forty EMBO Members, including Members serving on the selection committees of different programmes, this was the first cross-programme meeting convened by EMBO to discuss these issues.  

The workshop report will be published in April. 

Young Investigator Network annual meeting – 26 June 2025 

Read some highlights from the workshop here  

In 2025, EMBO hosted a workshop to gather the perspectives of members of the Young Investigator Network (YIN) on the current criteria for the scheme. Representing the younger generation of scientists, the aim of the session was to support the YIN selection committees to reflect on and navigate the challenges of the selection process. Possible improvements to EMBO’s current policies were highlighted. The input from the workshop was used to inform the design of the January 2026 workshop.  

EMBO organizes and leads sessions at international conferences on issues relating to research assessment and peer review.

A selection of past events:

Policy workshop on Revisiting the evaluation criteria for EMBO’s funding schemes, 20 January 2026.

Responsible Research Assessment within the EMBO Young Investigator Network, 26 June 2025.

Exploring best practices in research assessment: EMBO, EMBL and DORA, 12 May 2023 a hybrid panel session to present and discuss funders’, institutes’ and publishers’ initiatives to honour the DORA principles.

Recognizing Preprint Peer Review, a meeting co-organized with HHMI and ASAPbio, 1-2 December 2022. The meeting was covered in an article in Science.

Experiments in evaluation: lessons from randomisation in research funding. An SNSF, EMBO & RoRI virtual workshop
1 and 2 December 2021

Setting Positive Incentives in Research Assessment: How to align criteria with research integrity principles, ENRIO 2021 Congress on Research Integrity Practice, 27-29 September 2021

Emerging Trends at the Intersection of Research Publishing, Open Science, and Academic Reward and Recognition Systems, CellBio2020 Virtual Meeting, 2 December 2020