I am Assistant Professor at CWTS and Senior Research Fellow at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI), working at the intersections of research evaluation, sociology of science, and science policy. 

More information about Alex Rushforth

I am Assistant Professor at CWTS and Senior Research Fellow at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI), working at the intersections of research evaluation, sociology of science, and science policy. 

My research examines efforts to reform contemporary science. I study initiatives in research assessment, open science, research culture, and research information infrastructures, focusing on how they coordinate collective action, build legitimacy, define success and failure, and encounter established institutional interests and research practices. 

My work combines critical social science with active engagement in science reform. This means I study how research systems are changing while working alongside international organisations seeking to shape those changes. This dual perspective allows me to develop empirical insights, conceptual, evaluative and strategic learning approaches that support more reflexive and effective reform. Recent collaborations include DORA, the Global Research Council, Science Europe, and multiple research funders and national research councils. I currently serve on the advisory board ('regiegroep') of the Dutch Recognition and Rewards program.

Current and forthcoming projects include:

• Principal Investigator, Open Science NL project Mapping the Value of Open Science: Developing an Evaluation Framework for Research Culture Change.
• Work Package Lead, Horizon Europe project REALISE.
• Academic Lead, A Global Observatory of Responsible Research Assessment (AgoRRA), Research on Research Institute (RoRI).

Current areas of research include:

• the role of backbone organisations and reform networks such as CoARA, the Barcelona Declaration, EOSC and cOAlition S in coordinating and sustaining science reform;
• strategic planning, learning and evaluation approaches for collective science reform initiatives;
• power, incumbency and institutional resistance in science reform;
• the unintended effects of evaluation systems and performance indicators;
• the implications of AI and large language models for research assessment, funding systems and the governance of science. 

Other roles:

• Coordinator, undergraduate course (4091SCTS5Y) Science, Technology, and Society, Leiden University.
• University Lecturer appointed under the Dutch Sector Plan for the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), education and child studies theme.
• Co-supervision of PhD candidates Tanya Lee, Nino Gogadze, and Rinze Benedictus.

An up-to-date list of publications is available via ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3352-943X