For much of the 20th century, evaluating scientific activity meant focusing on what could be quantified, such as articles, citations, indexes, degrees, and institutional positions. This language structured career paths but obscured much of the work that makes it possible to research, innovate, and transform knowledge into well-being. Today, a more fruitful idea is emerging, based on the premise that valuing science requires observing the entire ecosystem that produces it.
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (also known as DORA) is an international initiative that promotes measuring contributions by their content, quality, scope, and impact. This trend is further reinforced by narrative curricula promoted by the «UK Research and Innovation» and the «Swiss National Science Foundation", which broaden the perspective beyond the scientific article and incorporate data, with Methodologies, talent development, teamwork, user relations, and social impact. Thus, the career path ceases to be presented as a succession of credentials and begins to be read as a verifiable professional trajectory because it is supported by evidence.
Similarly, the Coalition to Advance Research Evaluation (CoARA) takes this reasoning to unprecedented levels by promoting a qualitative, multidimensional assessment based on professional judgment. In this regard, in the Netherlands, the program «Recognition & Rewards" and the "Strategy Evaluation ProtocolThey incorporate dimensions such as quality, social relevance, and contextualized appreciation. The figure retains its usefulness, although it acquires meaning when related to the circumstances, the functions performed, and the results achieved.
In this regard, Latin America, through the Latin American Forum on Scientific Evaluation (FOLEC), contributes an examination that is sensitive to social relevance, open science, the diversity of knowledge, and the specific characteristics of each environment. Thus, knowledge can germinate in a laboratory and also mature on a technological platform, in an industrial plant, a field station, a cooperative, or a community capable of transforming experience, accumulated knowledge, and collective learning into concrete solutions.
The implementation of these initiatives in Venezuela is clear, since, when the system recognizes diverse ways of contributing, each actor finds a legitimate path to demonstrate their contribution, even beyond academic spaces.
In this column, I have repeatedly affirmed that better evaluation means better observation. A national innovation system gains capacity when it identifies, connects, and recognizes the value distributed among its participants. Scientific excellence acquires depth when merit is demonstrated with relevant evidence. This moves away from a wall full of academic degrees and closer to tangible results; one should be a consequence of the other, and vice versa. Thus emerges a recognition policy closer to reality, a science understood as a collective endeavor, diverse in its trajectories and united by the quality of its contributions to the country.
@betancourt_phd
