The processes and practices that structure research assessments are key to ensuring the quality of research. There is a need to diversify the activities, outputs, and outcomes that are recognised as part of research assessment processes. Equally, a broader set of skills and competencies must be acknowledged and valued as part of the assessments of researchers.
Science Europe works to ensure that research quality remains the core principle that underpins evaluation processes at all levels.
Research assessment lies at the core of all Science Europe Member Organisations’ activities and is fundamental to the research endeavour. It is used to select projects and researchers for funding, for determining career progression, and to evaluate research units and institutes. It forms the basis for our recognition, rewards, and incentives systems, and therefore influences the behaviours and activities of all members of the research community.
Science Europe’s Member Organisations periodically review how the assessments of research and researchers are designed and implemented. They aim to ensure that their assessment processes are fair, efficient, transparent, and effective.
It is Science Europe’s priority to promote research quality as the most important factor in research assessment.
Research assessment must reward all research contributions and activities, and promote good research practices, reproducibility, and integrity. To that end, it needs to capture the diversity of research outputs and outcomes in a manner that is appropriate to each research field.
Ensuring that research assessment processes are transparent, effective, and fair is of fundamental significance.
Science Europe has worked with its Member Organisations and external stakeholders to carry out a comprehensive study of research assessment practices used by research funding and performing organisations. This has provided an opportunity for members to collectively identify best practices and engage in mutual learning.
In consultation with experts, stakeholders, and the research community, Science Europe developed a set of policy recommendations that represents a best-practice model for research assessment processes.
Science Europe is currently part of a multi-stakeholder initiative that was initiated by the European Commission to reform research assessment. Together with the European University Association and Dr Karen Stroobants, it collected input from more than 350 organisations from over 40 countries to draft an Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. The next step is to launch a coalition, composed of organisations willing to take forward the implementation of the changes recommended, in the second half of 2022.
Science Europe’s activities on Research Assessment between 2019 and 2021 identified the need to develop a holistic perspective of the policies and practices implemented by research organisations that can influence the values, norms, behaviour, and activities of researchers. This led to the establishment of Science Europe’s new strategic priority on Research Culture. As part of this new Research Culture thinking, Science Europe has extensively discussed the role of core values, and has published a shared Values Framework as a reference for policy and practice changes across all research policy topics.
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Science Europe's 2022 Annual Report highlights the most important achievements of 2022 on Science Europe’s priority topics, including research culture, research assessment, open science, EU framework programmes, the green and digital transition, and science communication.
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) held its first General Assembly on 23 June. It provided updates on the association, activities in the coming months, and news on the call for Working Groups and National Chapters.
On Tuesday 30 May, Science Europe & CoARA jointly organised a side event at the Global Research Council Annual Meeting in The Hague, the Netherlands. The event, entitled ‘Making Research Assessment Reform a Global Endeavour’, aimed to provoke a discussion on research assessment reform across all five Global Research Council regions.
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) is now up and running since its official launch on 1st December at the Constitutive Assembly meeting of the Coalition after a year for intense drafting and development where Science Europe played a central role in both the Drafting Team and Interim Secretariat.
The Constitutive Assembly of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) took place on 1 December 2022. The official launch brought together the organisations that had signed the Agreement for Reforming Research Assessment by 17 November and confirmed their membership in the coalition.
Every year, autumn is the period where participants of the Global Research Council (GRC) meet at regional level to prepare the world-wide discussion that takes place the following spring.
The Constitutive Assembly of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) took place on 1 December 2022. The Assembly, which brought together the organisations that signed the Agreement for Reforming Research Assessment by 17 November and have confirmed membership in the coalition, officially launched CoARA and decided on the terms of its governance and operations.
An extensive co-creation exercise throughout the first half of 2022 that gathered the interests and perspectives of +350 organisations from over 40 countries led to the publication of an Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment on 20 July.
This Agreement sets a shared direction for changes in assessment practices for research, researchers, and research performing organisations, with the goal to maximise the quality and impact of research. It includes principles, commitments, and timeframes for reforms and lays out principles for a Coalition of organisations willing to work together in implementing the changes.
Science Europe, the European University Association, and Dr Karen Stroobants, supported by the European Commission, present an agreement on the reform of research assessment, the result of over six months of co-creation with more than 350 organisations from over 40 countries.