The processes and practices that structure research assessments are key to ensuring and enabling 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, both for funding allocation and career progression.
Science Europe works to ensure that research quality remains the core principle that underpins research assessment systems 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 influences the behaviours and attitudes of the research community. As such, it shapes the way research is conceived, conducted, and communicated, and drives research cultures.
Science Europe’s Member Organisations dedicate significant effort and resources to ensuring 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.
Research assessment is a long-standing priority area for Science Europe. In recent years, Science Europe has taken a leadership role in driving discussions towards global and collective research assessment reform.
Science Europe’s current activities on reforming research assessment aim to support the continued shift from principle to practice. Science Europe has recently contributed to three key resources that provide both practical and strategic guidance on implementing practices and policies that drive the reform of research assessment systems forward.
Science Europe continues to support all its Member Organisations and partners in their activities to continually adapt and improve assessment practices in support of research excellence, knowledge advancement, and broad impact.
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Science Europe has joined a coalition of European research and innovation organisations in publishing a joint statement MSCA: Research Talent is Europe's Strategic Advantage.
Developed by DORA, the Global Research Council Responsible Research Assessment Working Group, and Science Europe, the Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Funding Organizations supports more holistic, inclusive, and context-sensitive approaches to research assessment.
This Position Statement presents a shared vision of aligned assessment systems and open science principles to strengthen research and innovation systems. It makes recommendations to guide a strategic alignment of key actions and interventions by RFOs and RPOs.
Science Europe has responded to the European Commission’s public consultation on the proposed European Research Area (ERA) Act, setting out the collective views of its Member Organisations on how the legislation can effectively strengthen framework conditions for research and innovation, while safeguarding academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and the diversity of national research systems.
As part of the upcoming EU High-Level Conference on Reforming Research Assessment (CERRA2025) on 3-4 December in Copenhagen, CoARA invites its community and interested parties attending the conference in Copenhagen to join the celebration of the third anniversary of the coalition!
This webinar explored the latest initiatives in monitoring and evidence gathering for open science and research assessment reform, and marked the launch of our new scoping review.
Science Europe made excellent progress on its research policy priorities in 2024, delivering key outputs in various areas, including science communication, research assessment, open science, the sustainability of research, international collaboration, and equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Science Europe is working together with CWTS and the Know Center to investigate the links between open science and research cultures.
Science Europe presents ‘A Vision and Framework for Research Cultures’. It synthesises our recent work across numerous policy topics focusing them on the shared objective of R&I systems to advance knowledge and enable the quality and impact of research.
Science Europe launches an invitation to tender for comprehensive desk research into strategic approaches to, and research assessment of, open science. The tender is open until 6 February 2025.