CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment)

CoARA (the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) is a multi-stakeholder coalition, launched in 2022, that coordinates the reform of research assessment across universities, funders, and learned societies — primarily in Europe but with a growing global membership. Members commit to a shared CoARA Agreement and, unlike a one-time signature declaration, are expected to follow through with a concrete, published action plan describing how their own assessment practices will change.

What CoARA is

CoARA grew directly out of a 2021-2022 European Commission-facilitated process (building on the earlier Council of the EU conclusions on research assessment) and formally launched in December 2022 with the publication of its Agreement. Membership is institutional, not individual: universities and their associations, national and regional research-funding organisations, academies and learned societies, research infrastructures, and national/regional research-assessment authorities can join; individual researchers and commercial entities cannot. Signatory numbers have grown quickly since launch — roughly 350 organisations at the 2022 consultation stage, 423 at the December 2022 launch, and several hundred more since — and continue to move, so a current count should always be checked directly against coara.eu rather than treated as fixed.

The CoARA Agreement and action plans

Joining CoARA means committing to the Agreement’s shared principles and to a set of ten commitments, the headline ones being to recognise the diversity of research contributions and careers, to base assessment primarily on qualitative judgement supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators, and to abandon the inappropriate use of journal- and publication-based metrics — most visibly, Journal Impact Factor and h-index used as a proxy for quality in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions. Signing is only the first step: each member organisation is expected to develop and publish its own action plan, typically within twelve months of joining, setting out concrete, time-bound steps toward implementing the Agreement’s commitments inside its own institutional practice (recruitment criteria, promotion committees, grant-review guidelines, and so on).

How CoARA differs from DORA

CoARA is frequently discussed alongside the older San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), launched in 2012, and the two are related but structurally different. DORA is a signature-based declaration: an organisation or individual signs on to a set of general recommendations (most prominently, not using Journal Impact Factor as a proxy for the quality of individual research articles) with no follow-on reporting requirement built into the declaration itself. CoARA is a membership coalition built around an implementation cycle — members commit to the Agreement, then must produce and publish an institution-specific action plan, creating an ongoing accountability mechanism DORA’s signature model does not require. In practice, many organisations are signatories to both; they are complementary rather than competing efforts, but they are not interchangeable, and a page or policy that treats “signing CoARA” as equivalent to “signing DORA” is describing two different kinds of commitment. See the dedicated DORA vs. CoARA comparison for a fuller side-by-side.

Why it matters for research administration

For research offices, CoARA membership has direct downstream effects: it can change what a promotion-and-tenure committee is instructed to weigh, what a grant-review panel’s evaluation criteria look like, and what counts as an acceptable “output” on a CV or narrative statement (e.g. datasets, software, or public engagement rather than journal articles alone). An institution that joins CoARA without following through with a real action plan risks the same criticism increasingly levelled at unfollowed DORA signatures — a reputational commitment with no operational change behind it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is CoARA the same thing as DORA?

No. Both target the misuse of journal- and publication-based metrics in research assessment, but DORA is a one-time signature declaration with no built-in follow-up requirement, while CoARA is a membership coalition that requires signatories to publish and act on an institution-specific action plan. See the DORA vs. CoARA comparison for details.

Who can join CoARA?

Membership is institutional only: universities and university associations, research funders, academies and learned societies, research infrastructures, and national or regional research-assessment authorities. Individual researchers and commercial organisations cannot join directly.

What is a CoARA action plan?

A concrete, published document, typically produced within about twelve months of joining, describing the specific steps a member organisation will take to implement the CoARA Agreement’s commitments — for example, changing promotion criteria or grant-evaluation guidelines to reduce reliance on Journal Impact Factor or h-index.

References

• Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment, “The Agreement” and membership pages, coara.eu.
• San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), dora.org.