ARMA, EARMA, and INORMS: International Research Management Associations

ARMA, EARMA, and INORMS are the three professional bodies a research manager or administrator working outside the United States is most likely to encounter, and they sit at three different scales of the same profession: national (ARMA), regional (EARMA), and global-federation (INORMS). CASRAI’s Dictionary already documents the equivalent US-focused bodies — see What a Research Administrator Does for NCURA and SRAI — this term covers the international layer above and around them.

ARMA (UK)

ARMA — the Association of Research Managers and Administrators — is the professional association for research management in the United Kingdom. It was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee on 31 May 2006 and today has approximately 3,800 members drawn from research institutions, funders, and charities. ARMA’s core activities include training and professional development, Special Interest Groups for networking around specific research-management topics, an ATHE-accredited Certificate in Research Management (offered at Foundation and Advanced levels), a Research Policy Forum through which members feed into UK research-policy consultations, and an annual conference. ARMA is governed by a Board of Directors of up to nine members.

EARMA (Europe)

EARMA — the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators — is the regional professional association for the same profession across Europe. It was formed in 1994 and its membership spans research managers and administrators working in academia, industry, and the public and private sectors across the continent. EARMA operates alongside, not instead of, national research-management societies in individual European countries (such as ARMA-NL in the Netherlands) — a research manager can hold both a national membership and an EARMA membership at the same time, and many do. EARMA is also a founding member of INORMS, below.

INORMS (global umbrella federation)

INORMS — the International Network of Research Management Societies — was founded in 2001 and is structurally different from ARMA and EARMA: it is a federation whose members are entire research-management societies, not individual practitioners. Its stated objectives are to internationalize knowledge on research management, exchange best practice across national systems, and develop international approaches to supporting the research enterprise. INORMS is governed by a Council made up of the current Presidents or Chairs of its member associations, with overall Council leadership rotating to the association that most recently hosted the INORMS Congress. Member societies include ARMA and EARMA (covered above) and the two major US-based societies CASRAI’s Dictionary already covers elsewhere — NCURA and SRAI — alongside national and regional research-management societies from other parts of the world. INORMS also administers the INORMS Awards for Excellence in Research Management Leadership and runs a biennial INORMS Congress.

How the three relate

The practical relationship is hierarchical by scope, not by authority — INORMS does not govern or set standards for ARMA or EARMA, it convenes them:

• ARMA — national scope (UK), individual membership.
• EARMA — regional scope (Europe), individual membership, and itself an INORMS member society.
• INORMS — global scope, membership open only to research-management societies (including ARMA, EARMA, NCURA, and SRAI), not individuals.

A single research administrator in, say, Germany would typically hold an individual EARMA membership (and possibly a German national society membership) but would never hold an "INORMS membership" in the way they hold an ARMA or EARMA one — INORMS reaches that administrator only indirectly, through the societies they already belong to.

Why this distinction matters for research administration

Confusing these three is a common source of miscommunication in international research-collaboration contexts: a funding call, consortium agreement, or professional-development requirement that references “INORMS accreditation” or “INORMS membership” for an individual is almost certainly describing something INORMS itself does not offer at the individual level, and the more precise reference is likely to ARMA’s Certificate in Research Management, an equivalent national qualification, or straightforward EARMA/national-society membership. For CASRAI’s own audience, the practical takeaway is which body to look to for what: ARMA for UK-specific training, qualifications, and policy engagement; EARMA for pan-European networking, training, and its own professional-development offerings; and INORMS for cross-society initiatives, its biennial Congress, and international benchmarking and awards work that no single national or regional body runs alone.

Related terms

See CASRAI’s What a Research Administrator Does guide for the role overview and the US-based NCURA and SRAI societies, and the Certified Research Administrator (CRA) credential and exam guide for the equivalent US certification pathway to ARMA’s UK-based Certificate in Research Management. See CASRAI’s Grants Management cluster hub for the broader funding-lifecycle and international research-management content this term sits within.