The Autonomous University of the State of Mexico adopts its first institutional Open Science framework and joins the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
At the conclusion of Open Access Week 2025, UAEMéx reaffirms its commitment to knowledge as a global public good, strengthening its institutional policies through the signing of the DORA Declaration.
Open Access Week was held from October 20 to 26, and this year featured the theme:
Who owns our knowledge? This question invites reflection on how academic communities can exercise control over the knowledge they produce and how to connect it with the social issues affecting people around the world.
In line with the need to rethink models of knowledge control, the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEMéx), under the leadership of its rector, Dr. Martha Patricia Zarza Delgado, announces its first institutional Open Science model. Its first concrete action is the formal adoption of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
This declaration, established in 2012, provides recommendations to improve how the quality of scientific output is evaluated. Based on the general recommendation to avoid using metrics such as the impact factor—focused on the number of publications and citations—it emphasizes that the content of a publication is far more important than the metrics of the journal in which it appears.
This initiative is supported by key infrastructures such as Latindex, Latindex, Redalyc (proudly created at UAEMéx) y CLACSO, which have raised the need to strengthen sustainable, cooperative, non-commercial and protected open access, which promotes quality scientific publications, as the only way to maintain what we call the Latin American regional scientific communication ecosystem.
Globally, DORA has been adopted by leading institutions and funding bodies such as the University of Oxford (2019), the University of Cambridge (2019), the European Commission (2022), and Science Europe (2023), as well as by numerous academic publishers.
Adopting DORA entails concrete lines of action to build a more robust system of research evaluation. The main commitments undertaken upon signing this declaration are:
By signing DORA, the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, a través de su Secretaría de Ciencia, commits to responsible research evaluation grounded in principles of equity, transparency, and social relevance. This action is part of its institutional Open Science framework, which recognizes scientific knowledge as a public good. Based on this principle, the University will promote evaluation practices that value the diversity of knowledge systems, communities, and forms of impact, thereby strengthening the link between academic research and social transformation.
