RRAP (CASRAI)

Responsible Research Assessment Certification — Professional

LevelProfessionalRRARRAP (CASRAI)

Lessons

12 modules

Domains

Exam blueprint

Exam items

Per attempt

70%

Pass mark

Fixed, uncurved

Retake wait

Days

What you earn

The credential itself

Pass the examination and CASRAI issues this certificate and the post-nominal RRAP (CASRAI), signed by the Programme Director and verifiable by anyone, permanently, from the code on its face.

CASRAI Certification

Certificate of Professional Competence

This is to certify that

Dr. Amelia R. Hartley

has completed the prescribed programme of study and passed the examination in

Responsible Research Assessment — Professional

and is admitted to the designationRRAP (CASRAI)

Verify atcasrai.org/verify/CASRAI-RRA-2026-DCDPXR

Specimen. Issued as a signed PDF and as a machine-readable Open Badge; the holder and code shown are illustrative.

How it appears on your CV

Certifications

RRAP (CASRAI) — Responsible Research Assessment, Professional

CASRAI·Issued Mar 2026·Credential ID CASRAI-RRA-2026-DCDPXR

casrai.org/verify/CASRAI-RRA-2026-DCDPXR

Every certificate is issued under the signature of Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD, Programme Director of CASRAI Certification, who sets the syllabus, blueprint and pass mark for this credential.

It certifies that its holder passed the CASRAI examination for this course on the date shown, scored against the blueprint and pass mark published on this page — and anyone can confirm it from the verification code, without an account and without contacting us.

About this credential

What it covers

Body of knowledge

Exam blueprint

The exam is assembled to these weights on every attempt. They are published before purchase because a blueprint you cannot see is not a blueprint.

Domains and weights7 domains · 5 scored items
Domain	Weight	Items
The reform landscape: declarations, manifestos and coalitions1	16%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Indicators in assessment: responsible use, misuse and limits2	15%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Assessment criteria design: outputs, contributions and careers3	16%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Narrative and portfolio-based assessment formats4	12%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Evaluative peer review: panels, bias and process design5	13%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
National and institutional assessment regimes and their behavioural effects6	14%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Implementing, monitoring and evaluating an assessment-reform programme7	14%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Total	100%	5

Item counts are approximate. Each attempt draws a fresh form to the weights above, so the exact number of items per domain varies between attempts.

Syllabus

12 modules, 12 lessons

Every lesson and every learning outcome is listed. The lesson bodies open on enrolment; nothing else about the course is withheld.

12 modules · 12 lessons

Lesson material opens once you are enrolled. The full syllabus and every learning outcome are shown here so you can judge the coverage before you pay.

Module 1
1
1 lesson
1. Locked.Why assessment reform existsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - On completion the candidate can:
  - Describe the historical sequence by which journal-level indicators built for library collection management came to be used for individual assessment.
  - Explain the mechanism linking an assessment rule to individual research behaviour, using Goodhart's law and Campbell's law as framing.
  - Distinguish a critique of an indicator's construction from a critique of its use, and state why almost all of the reform corpus is the latter.
  - Give at least three documented behavioural adaptations to assessment incentives and identify the specific rule each responds to.
Module 2
2
1 lesson
1. Locked.DORA and the Leiden ManifestoLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - State DORA's general recommendation verbatim and identify which of the five addressed groups a given recommendation belongs to.
  - State all ten Leiden principles and apply any one of them to a specific assessment practice.
  - Differentiate what DORA prohibits from what it does not prohibit, correcting the two most common misreadings in each direction.
  - Evaluate an institution's stated DORA compliance against its actual practice and produce a specific, evidenced list of divergences.
Module 3
3
1 lesson
1. Locked.CoARA and the Hong Kong PrinciplesLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - List the ten CoARA commitments and state that they are presented as of equal standing, with no core/supporting division.
  - Translate a given CoARA commitment into a specific, dated, resourced institutional action with a named owner.
  - State the five Hong Kong Principles and explain the integrity argument linking what is rewarded to what is done.
  - Distinguish the four main instruments by purpose and select the appropriate one for a given institutional problem.
Module 4
4
1 lesson
1. Locked.Indicators in assessment: what they can and cannot supportLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Identify the level-of-analysis error in a proposed use of an indicator and state precisely which inference fails.
  - Explain why a journal-level average carries almost no information about an individual article, using the skewness of citation distributions.
  - Distinguish JCR quartiles from SCImago quartiles and explain why "Q1 journal" is an incomplete claim.
  - Construct a defensible evidence package for a given assessment question, including an explicit statement of what the evidence cannot support.
  - Refuse a request for a single composite score and supply a usable alternative.
Module 5
5
1 lesson
1. Locked.Designing assessment criteriaLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Differentiate criterion, indicator and standard, and diagnose documents that conflate them.
  - Rewrite a proxy criterion as a direct statement of the quality intended.
  - Draft a complete criteria set for a named decision, specifying what is valued, how it is evidenced and how it is weighed.
  - Test draft criteria against historical cases and identify which past decisions would have changed.
  - Audit draft criteria for systematic disadvantage by discipline, career pattern, language or region.
Module 6
6
1 lesson
1. Locked.Diverse outputs, team contributions and CRediTLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Specify proportionate evidence of quality for a dataset, a piece of software, a protocol, a registered report and a policy contribution.
  - Interpret a CRediT contributor statement in an assessment context and state what it does and does not license a panel to infer.
  - Design an evidence route for a contribution that is not an authorship.
  - Explain why recognising team contributions requires a contributorship vocabulary, and what happens to CoARA commitment 1 without one.
Module 7
7
1 lesson
1. Locked.Narrative CVs and portfolio assessmentLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Reproduce the four modules of the Royal Society Résumé for Researchers and explain the design pattern they instantiate.
  - Write assessor guidance for reading a narrative CV against published criteria.
  - Predict the failure modes of a narrative format in a specified context and design mitigations.
  - Evaluate whether a narrative format changed decisions, and explain why applicant satisfaction is not that evidence.
Module 8
8
1 lesson
1. Locked.Evaluative peer review and panel designLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Design a panel process end to end: composition, briefing, interests, scoring, calibration, discussion and recording of reasons.
  - Brief a panel to apply published criteria rather than its own.
  - Classify a declared interest as barring, recusal-requiring, or manageable.
  - Analyse panel outcome data for bias patterns and distinguish signal from noise.
  - Construct a feedback and appeals process proportionate to the decision.
Module 9
9
1 lesson
1. Locked.National assessment regimes and behavioural effectsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Trace the transmission mechanism from a national allocation rule to individual research behaviour.
  - Predict gaming and goal-displacement risks in a proposed regime before implementation.
  - Identify the cascade error — an institution converting a unit-level exercise into individual performance thresholds — and advise against it.
  - Explain a regime's design to an audience from a different research system.
Module 10
10
1 lesson
1. Locked.Implementing a reform programmeLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Construct a reform programme with defined scope, sequence, resourcing, governance and mandate.
  - Baseline current assessment practice using at least three distinct methods.
  - Identify the actors whose agreement is required and those with an effective veto.
  - Answer the principal objections to reform on their merits.
Module 11
11
1 lesson
1. Locked.Monitoring and evaluating reformLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Design a monitoring framework with process, output and outcome indicators stated in advance.
  - State, before implementation, what would count as the reform having failed.
  - Report progress publicly in a form that permits external scrutiny.
  - Recommend revision or abandonment of a change on the evidence.
Module 12
12
1 lesson
1. Locked.Capstone: an integrated assessment-policy caseLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Synthesise the full body of knowledge into a coherent recommendation for a complex, contested case.
  - Justify each recommendation against a named source authority.
  - Communicate the recommendation to a non-specialist decision-making body in writing and orally.
  - Acknowledge what the evidence does not support.

Assessment

How the exam works

The exam is closed-book and multiple choice. Each attempt draws a fresh form to the domain weights above, so no two attempts are the same paper and no answer key circulates. The pass mark is 70% and is fixed — there is no curve, no quota and no adjustment by cohort.

Scoring is immediate. You are shown your overall result and, for every item, the option you chose, the correct option and the reasoning behind it — whether you passed or not. A failed attempt may be retaken after 90 days. The wait exists so a retake is a second attempt at the material rather than a second attempt at remembering the paper.

Forms are assembled to the blueprint above or not at all: where a domain cannot yet be sampled to that standard, the exam declines to start rather than issue an unbalanced paper. Your material and progress are never affected, and there is no time limit on when you sit.

Passing candidates are issued a certificate with a verification code. Anyone can check that code on our public verification page without an account and without contacting us.

Certifying authority

Signed by Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD

CASRAI’s certification programme is academically and medically directed by Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD, Programme Director, who sets the syllabus and blueprint for this credential and signs every certificate issued under it.

CASRAI has maintained the terminology and reporting standards of research administration for over a decade. It assumed leadership of the CRediT contributor-roles taxonomy in 2014 and carried it through to adoption as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, now in use by publishers, funders and institutions worldwide. This examination is drawn from that body of work.

What the credential certifies: that its holder passed the CASRAI examination for this course on the date shown, scored against the blueprint and pass mark published above — verifiable by anyone, permanently, from the code on its face.