Science and Research Committee on Dec. 5th, 2024

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

Would you have any further recommendations to make concerning the regrettable, even unacceptable, situation in which francophone institutions have found themselves in the past 20 years?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

I don't have any for the moment, but I can send you a few.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

We would greatly appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

Now we'll turn to Mr. Cannings for two and a half minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I'm just going to turn back to Dr. Andrade and get back to the criteria used in funding research, specifically the traditional impact and output criteria that have caused this kind of runaway freight train with regard to the massive output, the numbers of scientific papers.

I think you touched on DORA, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. That's been presumably taken up by the tri-council. I'm just wondering, from your experience at NSERC, how that is being used and whether it is having any effect. What more do we need to do to get this under control and use better criteria?

[Prof. Maydianne Andrade]

Thanks for that question.

I think we have to encourage more universities to formally sign off on DORA. To be honest, one of the first things I did as vice-dean was create guidelines for the assessment of excellence in teaching, which is different from research. However, it's the same idea. How do you assess excellence? What we did was build in as much flexibility as possible. You are making a case based on what you claim your impact is.

We need to get much closer to doing that with research in general. I think the tri-council shifting to the narrative CV is a critical part of that. There's going to be a lot of groaning about it—the idea that you are going to feature your high-impact work and explain why it's high-impact. Your colleagues have to actually engage with that and try to understand it. This is absolutely where we need to go in every assessment we do.

It's also very important as we start hiring more researchers doing community-engaged work and trying to positively affect things—especially in rural communities, say, where that impact might take a long time. They need to explain what they have done and how that impact is going to happen down the road. You just can't measure that in publication numbers, but it's critically important.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Is there a problem right now with the volume of papers, in terms of finding good reviewers for those papers? It seems researchers spend more time reviewing papers and writing grant applications than doing good science.

[Prof. Maydianne Andrade]

It's a huge problem. We see it with the Killam prizes and the Dorothy Killam fellowships. National Research Council staff run that program. Thousands and thousands of requests go out. They get about a third, or fewer, positive responses. It's a huge amount of effort.

One of the reasons why I think the proportion of high-impact, disruptive papers is going down is that, in the old days, if you had a high-impact thing, it went in Nature or Science. There were two journals. Now there are way too many journals. It's just the proliferation. It's no longer a signal if you have a paper in Nature or Science, because you could be on social media, advertise your awesome paper in The Journal of Immunology and get just as much impact.

It's a whole different way of thinking about things, but we have to get with where the world is now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you so much. That's our time.

I want to thank both of our witnesses today. That was wonderful.

I believe, Ms. Joomun, that you're going to submit something additional for MP Blanchette-Joncas.

Dr. Andrade, I wish so much you'd been here in person. It's good to see you again. I know how, that night at the Shaw Centre, the whole room was very excited about your award. It was so well deserved.

Thank you both for joining us today and for participating in our committee's study. If you have any additional information, you may submit it through the clerk.

The committee is scheduled to meet again next Tuesday, December 10.

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn the meeting?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

The meeting is adjourned.