RRA-CP: Responsible Research Assessment - Community Perspective

Project description

Over the past decade, the criteria used to assess researchers have begun to change. Initiatives such as the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Hong Kong Principles, the revised CV templates of research funders, and the recommendations of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) call for looking beyond publication counts and journal impact factors. Open science practices, peer review, teaching, mentoring and societal impact are meant to count as well.
These criteria have largely been developed by funders, research organisations and learned societies. How researchers view them, both those who are assessed and those who assess others on hiring committees and review panels, has rarely been asked.

SZENE addresses this gap for psychology. The project asks two questions: (1) Which criteria do researchers in psychology accept as a basis for assessing their work? (2) Who should be able to see this information, and under what conditions?

To answer them, we first compiled the indicators proposed across current frameworks and funder guidelines into a single list. We are now surveying researchers in psychology at all career stages, and in interviews we talk with early-career researchers, members of hiring committees, institute directors and funders about how assessment works in practice. We will publish the results openly and contribute them to the ongoing discussion on responsible research assessment.
 

• Araya, C., & Sassenberg, K. (2025). The impact of co-opetition on cognitive flexibility: A replication study of (Landkammer & Sassenberg, 2016). Social Psychology, 56(4), 190-201.  https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000585
• Bittermann, A., Petrule, C., Ritter, V., Haberkamp, A., Hofmann, S. G., Rief, W., & The PsyChange Network (2025). Research on translational psychological treatment: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 32(3), 243–258.  https://doi.org/10.1037/cps0000256
• Bittermann, A. (2026). We Need Reference Evaluation, Not Reference Limits. An Empirical Complement to Lawson et al. (2025). Collabra: Psychology, 12(1): 169369.   https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.169369
• Breitwieser, J.*, Bittermann, A.*, Theobald, M., Lauer, T., Schaaf, M., & Brod, G. (2026). Digital Prompting in Education: A Design Framework and Bibliometric Analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 38, 66. *shared first-authorship.   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-026-10164-1
• Burgard, T., Heck, T., Petrule, C., Jung, N. (2025). Advancing Transparency and Reproducibility: Criteria for Documenting Research Synthesis Processes and Data. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 233(2), pp.70-85.   https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000592
• Hahn L., Glöckner A., Gollwitzer M., Hellmann, J., Lange, J., Schindler, S., & Sassenberg, K. (2025). A cross-sectional study of the completeness of preregistrations by psychological authors from German-speaking institutions. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 8(3).   https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459251357568
• Hindenlang, F., Kranz, D., Chourdaki, M., & Koupa, M. (2025). Homophobia in Greece: Contact-Mediated Effects of Demographics and Political and Religious Orientation. European Journal of Psychology Open, 84(2), 57-68. https://doi.org/10.1024/2673-8627/a000071
• Petrule, C., Bittermann, A., Ritter, V., Rief, W., Haberkamp, A., & the PsyChange Network (2026). Waiting for Translation: A Review of Translational Research in Psychological Treatment. Clinical Psychology Review, 124, 102708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2026.102708