Managing competition & publication pressure

Improving research and scholarship assessment practices requires the ability to analyze the outcomes of efforts and interventions. However, when conducted only at the unit level of individual interventions, these evaluations and reflections miss opportunities to understand how institutional conditions themselves set the table for the success of new efforts, or how developing institutional capabilities might improve the effectiveness and impact of these new practices at greater scale. The SPACE rubric was developed to help institutions at any stage of academic assessment reform gauge their institutional ability to support interventions and set them up for success. The SPACE rubric is a result of DORA’s partnership with Ruth Schmidt, Associate Professor at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology, who led the iterative participatory design process. The creation of the rubric was informed by nearly 75 individuals in 26 countries and 6 continents, and benefited from multiple rounds of feedback.