The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) operates through national and regional chapters that coordinate how signatories in a given country interpret and implement the CoARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. Italy’s chapter, CoARA National Chapter Italy (NC Italy), is one of the coalition’s most active, and it entered a new phase in early 2026 with the launch of a dedicated 2025-27 work programme. This guide explains what the chapter is, who coordinates and belongs to it, what the 2025-27 Programme actually commits participating institutions to, and how it fits into CoARA’s broader national-chapter structure alongside chapters such as France and the United Kingdom.
What CoARA National Chapter Italy Is
NC Italy is the country-level coordination body for Italian organisations that have signed the CoARA Agreement. Like other national chapters, it does not itself hold signatory status separately from its member institutions and does not set binding national policy — each university, research institute, or agency that signs the CoARA Agreement commits individually to developing and publishing its own institutional action plan within the agreed timeframe. The chapter’s function is to give those individually-committed institutions a shared forum: exchanging practice, coordinating with CoARA’s international thematic Working Groups, and presenting a collective Italian voice within the coalition.
The chapter is co-chaired by Monica Di Luca (University of Milan, UNIMI) and Giuliana Rubbia (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV), who lead the current 2025-27 mandate. Earlier phases of the chapter’s development involved coordination centred on the University of Bologna and Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), reflecting how leadership of Italian CoARA coordination has rotated across major research organisations as the chapter has matured since its formation in 2024.
The 59-Institution Coalition
As of the chapter’s most recent published roster, NC Italy represents 59 Italian organisations — a mix of universities, public research bodies, and research-adjacent associations. Named members include major universities such as the University of Milan, University of Bologna, and Politecnico di Torino, alongside national research institutes including CNR, INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), and IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), plus specialised networks such as the Italian Reproducibility Network. This breadth — spanning comprehensive universities, discipline-specific research institutes, and grassroots practice networks — is one of the larger national-chapter rosters within CoARA, and it reflects Italy’s relatively fast, broad-based uptake of the CoARA Agreement relative to some other national chapters.
As with every CoARA national chapter, the 59-institution figure describes chapter affiliation, not a guarantee that all 59 have completed or published a compliant institutional action plan on the same timeline — each signer works through implementation individually, and roster figures change over time as new institutions join. Readers who need the current, authoritative count and full member list should check coara.org’s Italy chapter page directly rather than treating any single published figure as permanently fixed.
The 2025-27 Programme
NC Italy launched its 2025-27 work programme at a meeting hosted by the University of Milan on 4 February 2026, drawing roughly one hundred participants both in person and online. The programme builds on the chapter’s first three years of activity and is organised around several linked priorities:
- Action plan development. Promoting and supporting the development of institutional action plans by all participating organisations — the core individual commitment every CoARA signatory makes.
- Progress monitoring. Tracking how member institutions are progressing against their action plans, rather than treating the initial commitment as the end point.
- Alignment with international Working Groups. Supporting Italian institutions in connecting their local reform work to CoARA’s thematic Working Groups (which cover areas such as open science indicators, research careers assessment, and narrative CVs) so Italian practice stays consistent with coalition-wide standards rather than developing in isolation.
- Cross-chapter exchange. Strengthening exchange with other national chapters, part of a broader pattern across CoARA where chapters increasingly compare notes rather than developing reform approaches purely domestically.
- Dissemination of best practice. Sharing what works across the Italian research-assessment community, and extending engagement toward relevant government ministries so that national evaluation and funding policy stays aligned with what institutions are actually committing to.
That last point is a meaningful distinction from some other national chapters: NC Italy’s stated programme explicitly includes outreach toward the ministries responsible for national research evaluation and funding frameworks, not just peer-to-peer institutional coordination. This matters in Italy specifically because national evaluation exercises and funding-linked assessment criteria (of the kind CoARA signatories are meant to be reforming away from indicator-only approaches) are set at a national policy level, so institutional-only reform has limited reach without some engagement at that level.
Recent Activity
Beyond the February 2026 programme launch, NC Italy representatives have participated in CoARA’s cross-chapter coordination events, including the 3rd National Chapter Exchange Forum held in Madrid on 19-20 March 2026, where national chapters compare implementation approaches and discuss common challenges. This kind of inter-chapter exchange is a recurring feature of CoARA’s structure — the France and UK chapters engage in similar forums, and the format is designed to prevent each national chapter from re-solving the same implementation questions independently.
How NC Italy Compares to Other National Chapters
Italy’s chapter is notable within CoARA for the size of its institutional roster and for launching a structured, multi-year (2025-27) work programme with named, published priorities rather than more informal ongoing coordination. For comparison, CASRAI has separate guides covering the France chapter (coordinated with agencies including ANR, CNRS, and INSERM alongside universities and HCERES), the United Kingdom chapter, and the Norwegian implementation model built around the Research Council of Norway and the NOR-CAM framework. Germany’s approach, coordinated through the DFG, is covered in a separate guide. Each national chapter reflects its own country’s research-governance structure — Italy’s explicit inclusion of ministry-level engagement in its 2025-27 Programme is a distinguishing feature relative to chapters that focus primarily on institution-to-institution coordination.
For the underlying reform commitments every CoARA signatory institution makes regardless of national chapter, see CASRAI’s guides on DORA and CoARA reform commitments compared and how institutions are rewriting promotion and tenure criteria under both frameworks, plus the direct DORA vs CoARA comparison.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was CoARA National Chapter Italy formed?
The chapter traces back to 2024, in the period following CoARA’s own December 2022 launch, and has continued operating and expanding its institutional roster since. Its current 2025-27 work programme was formally launched in February 2026.
How many institutions belong to CoARA National Chapter Italy?
The chapter’s published roster lists 59 Italian organisations — universities, public research institutes, and research-related associations. This figure can change as new organisations sign the CoARA Agreement and join; check coara.org’s Italy chapter page for the current count.
Who coordinates the chapter?
The 2025-27 mandate is co-chaired by Monica Di Luca (University of Milan) and Giuliana Rubbia (INGV). Earlier coordination involved the University of Bologna and CNR.
What does the 2025-27 Programme actually commit institutions to?
It is a chapter-level work programme, not an additional binding commitment beyond the CoARA Agreement itself. It focuses on supporting institutions’ individual action-plan development and monitoring, aligning Italian practice with CoARA’s international Working Groups, exchanging practice with other national chapters, and engaging Italian government ministries on evaluation and funding policy alignment.
Does joining NC Italy mean an institution has completed CoARA implementation?
No. Chapter membership reflects that an institution has signed the CoARA Agreement and participates in the national coordination forum; it does not by itself indicate a completed or published action plan. Each signatory institution progresses through implementation on its own timeline, which is one reason the 2025-27 Programme places explicit emphasis on progress monitoring.
How does NC Italy relate to other CoARA national chapters?
All CoARA national chapters share the same basic function — coordinating a country’s signatory institutions and connecting them to CoARA’s international structure — but each reflects its own national research-governance context. NC Italy’s programme is distinguished by its scale (59 institutions) and its explicit ministry-engagement priority; see CASRAI’s guides on the France, UK, Norway, and Germany chapters for comparison.
Last reviewed: July 2026. Figures such as the institutional roster count and named coordinators reflect the most recently published information at the time of writing and may change; consult coara.org’s Italy chapter page for the current, authoritative status.
