On Tuesday 13 June the UnILiON Open Talk held at Wales House focused on the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) with a presentation from Dr James Morris, Senior Policy Office at Science Europe.
James outlined how the CoARA initiative has developed from calls to reform research assessment in recent years with reports published by the European University Association (EUA) and the European Commission focusing on this area leading to a Commission scoping report in 2021. During 2022 Science Europe and the EUA with support from the European Commission worked to draft an agreement on research assessment reform informed by discussions with representatives from national organisations, research organisations and others. The agreement was published in July 2022 and the Coalition came into formal existence in December 2022 with the election of a Steering Board drawn from a mix of research funders, universities and other organisations across Europe.
The introduction to the agreement outlines the rationale for this work: ‘There is broad agreement among the research community that research assessment practices need to be reformed.
This is due to a variety of interconnected underlying reasons, including:
- to allow research assessment to support positive research cultures.
- to ensure assessment practices stay relevant as research processes and the expectations of research evolve.
- to live up to the increasing demands placed on research by the many societal, environmental, democratic, and economic challenges we face.
While the motivations behind this process may differ, they all point in the same direction: reform is needed, primarily to further support the quality of research.
The Agreement has four main commitments:
‘Two commitments to enable better recognition of the diverse practices and activities that maximise th quality of research
Two commitments to enable a move away from the inappropriate uses of metrics
- Recognise the diversity of contributions to, and careers in, research in accordance with the needs and the nature of the research
- Base research assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation for which peer-review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators
- Abandon the inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal- and publication-based metrics, in particular the inappropriate uses of journal impact factor (JIF) and h-index
- Avoid the use of rankings of research organisations in research assessment’
Over the last six months work has been undertaken to develop a work programme and develop ideas for working groups in a range of different areas as well as national level activities. There are now just over 500 member organisations of the coalition. The CoARA General Assembly will be taking place in Brussels on 23 June and there will be more opportunities to participate and engage through webinars and conferences over the next few years.
For UnILiON members it was suggested that they should consider, if their university was not already a member or signatory, whether their university should engage and participate in relevant national and European discussions. UnILiON looks forward to further engagement with the initiative as it develops.
For further information and to follow CoARA developments –
@CoARAssessment