The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) works through national chapters that adapt its shared commitments to each country’s own research-assessment system. France’s chapter is one of the coalition’s more institutionally dense chapters, drawing together a dozen universities and most of the country’s major research-funding and evaluation agencies around a shared reform agenda.
What the CoARA France National Chapter Is
The CoARA National Chapter France was established by April 2024, in the period when CoARA’s early wave of national chapters (alongside the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway) began forming to give signatories in each country a forum for coordinating on the CoARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. Fabien Borget, of Aix-Marseille Université, is listed on coara.org as the chapter’s primary contact for membership inquiries.
As with CoARA’s other national chapters, the France chapter is a coordinating layer above individual institutional commitments, not a substitute for them. Each university, funder, or agency signs the CoARA Agreement on its own and typically publishes its own action plan describing how it intends to change its assessment practice; the chapter exists to connect the people doing that work across institutions. For background on what signing actually commits an organisation to, see CASRAI’s dictionary entries on the CoARA Agreement and CoARA signatories.
Stated Priorities and Aims
Per coara.org, the French chapter describes its purpose as creating “a place for exchange on the initiatives and good practices promoting CoARA commitments in universities, research performing organisations, funding agencies, assessment authorities.” Its more specific stated priorities include:
- Discussing evaluation best practices across member organisations
- Sharing information on ongoing research-assessment work within French institutions
- Coordinating an inventory of evaluation uses and practices across the sector
- Promoting CoARA’s action-plan model to organisations that haven’t yet adopted one
- Creating synergy between the people responsible for research assessment and research-assessment coordination at different institutions
This framing is consistent with how other national chapters describe their role — see CASRAI’s guides to Germany’s DFG-led approach to CoARA and Norway’s implementation through NOR-CAM for two other national interpretations of the same underlying agreement.
Who Is Involved: Members and Coordinating Institutions
According to coara.org, the France chapter’s membership includes twelve universities — among them Sorbonne Université, Aix-Marseille Université, and Université de Strasbourg — alongside several of France’s largest public research and funding bodies: the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), CNRS, INSERM, INRAE, IFREMER, INRIA, and the Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (HCERES). That combination — universities alongside the agencies that fund and formally evaluate them — gives the French chapter a structurally different membership profile from a chapter coordinated mainly by universities, such as the UK’s.
Because CoARA membership is institutional rather than national, this list reflects organisations that have individually signed the CoARA Agreement and affiliated with the France chapter specifically; it is not a statement that French research assessment as a whole has adopted CoARA’s commitments. CASRAI recommends checking CoARA’s own France National Chapter page for the current, authoritative membership roster rather than treating any secondary summary, including this one, as permanently up to date.
France’s Research-Evaluation Landscape: HCERES and CoARA
HCERES’s presence in the chapter’s membership matters structurally: HCERES is France’s national authority for evaluating higher-education and research institutions, including research units and doctoral schools, which puts it in a comparable position to national assessment bodies in other CoARA countries. Its participation in the France chapter, rather than CoARA operating alongside it as a separate initiative, is one of the more concrete examples among CoARA’s national chapters of a country’s formal evaluation authority engaging directly with the coalition’s reform agenda.
That engagement has been visible in the chapter’s own activity: in March 2026, the chapter held a “Café” discussion session examining HCERES’s newly revised research-unit evaluation guide and its alignment with CoARA’s commitments toward more qualitative, less metrics-driven assessment. This kind of session — evaluators and evaluated institutions discussing a live national evaluation framework against CoARA’s principles in the same room — is a distinguishing feature of the France chapter relative to chapters where the national evaluation authority isn’t itself a signatory.
Recent Activity: 2026 Milestones
Beyond the March 2026 Café session on HCERES’s evaluation guide, the chapter held a hybrid plenary meeting on 30 April 2026, hosted in Marseille and co-organised with INSERM, the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), and Aix-Marseille Université’s Mission Interdisciplinarité(s). The plenary’s focus was evaluating interdisciplinary research — a persistently difficult case for conventional, discipline-siloed assessment criteria — and included workshops and presentations from CoARA working-group leadership.
The chapter maintains its own website at coara.fr and is active on LinkedIn and Bluesky, which are reasonable places to check for newer events or signatory announcements beyond what’s captured here. As with any actively growing coalition, both the membership roster and the events calendar will keep changing after this page is written.
How France’s Chapter Compares to Other National Chapters
France’s chapter is one of several CoARA national chapters CASRAI covers individually, precisely because each interprets the same underlying CoARA Agreement against a different national funding and evaluation structure. See CASRAI’s guides to the CoARA National Chapter United Kingdom and CoARA implementation in Norway, and to Germany’s DFG-led approach, for chapters built around a different institutional mix. For the underlying commitments every chapter is interpreting, see the DORA vs CoARA comparison and CASRAI’s guide to how DORA and CoARA commitments compare.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the CoARA France national chapter established?
By April 2024, per coara.org’s national chapter listing — placing it among CoARA’s earlier wave of national chapters, alongside the UK, Germany, and Norway chapters CASRAI also covers.
Who leads or coordinates the CoARA France chapter?
Fabien Borget, of Aix-Marseille Université, is listed as the chapter’s primary membership contact on coara.org. Aix-Marseille Université has also hosted chapter events directly, including the April 2026 plenary.
Which French organisations are involved in the chapter?
Per coara.org, twelve universities (including Sorbonne Université, Aix-Marseille Université, and Université de Strasbourg) plus major funding and research agencies — ANR, CNRS, INSERM, INRAE, IFREMER, INRIA — and the national evaluation authority HCERES.
How does HCERES relate to CoARA France?
HCERES, France’s national research and higher-education evaluation authority, is itself a member of the France chapter — meaning the body that formally evaluates French research institutions is directly engaging with CoARA’s reform commitments, rather than the two operating as separate, unconnected initiatives. See CASRAI’s HCERES guide for what HCERES itself evaluates and how.
What has the France chapter done recently?
In 2026, a March “Café” discussion on HCERES’s revised research-unit evaluation guide, and an April 30 hybrid plenary in Marseille on evaluating interdisciplinary research, co-organised with INSERM, IRD, and Aix-Marseille Université’s Mission Interdisciplinarité(s).
This page reflects information published on coara.org and the France chapter’s own channels (coara.fr) as of mid-2026. CoARA membership and chapter activity change continuously — check CoARA’s own France chapter page for the current roster and calendar.
