The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) operates through national chapters that adapt its shared principles to local research systems. The United Kingdom’s chapter is one of the most active, coordinating a growing list of universities, funders, and sector bodies around a common goal: rewriting how UK institutions define and reward research excellence.
What the UK CoARA National Chapter is
The CoARA National Chapter United Kingdom was established in February 2024. It is co-led by four universities — the University of Strathclyde, Swansea University, Loughborough University, and the University of Bristol — who coordinate the chapter’s activities on behalf of a wider membership of UK institutions, funders, and research-sector organisations.
National chapters exist because CoARA’s core commitment — the CoARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment — is deliberately broad, so that it can be signed by research systems as different as Germany’s or Norway’s without prescribing a single implementation model. See CASRAI’s guides to how Germany’s DFG has approached CoARA and how Norway’s Research Council has implemented CoARA through NOR-CAM for two other national approaches to the same agreement. Chapters give signatories in a given country a forum to interpret those principles against national funding structures, promotion criteria, and — in the UK’s case — REF-shaped assessment culture, and to share what is and isn’t working in practice.
According to the chapter’s own page on coara.org, the UK National Chapter has two stated aims:
- Facilitating meaningful change — supporting member and signatory organisations to develop and implement action plans that reflect their own ambitions for reform, rather than a single prescribed template.
- Promoting systemic reform — engaging organisations that haven’t yet signed, to raise awareness of CoARA’s principles and encourage broader alignment across the UK research sector.
Who is involved: the co-leading institutions and the wider membership
Strathclyde, Swansea, Loughborough, and Bristol coordinate the chapter, but the UK National Chapter’s actual membership is considerably larger — coara.org lists more than two dozen affiliated organisations spanning universities, funders, and professional/sector bodies, including bodies such as the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) UK, the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), Jisc, Health Data Research UK, and the Software Sustainability Institute, alongside a growing roster of universities.
Because CoARA membership is institutional rather than national — there is no single “UK signs CoARA” moment — each university, funder, or organisation signs the CoARA Agreement individually and then, typically, publishes its own action plan setting out how it intends to change its own assessment practice (recruitment, promotion, and funding criteria are the most common targets). The national chapter is the coordinating layer above those individual commitments, not a substitute for them. For background on what a CoARA signatory actually commits to, see CASRAI’s dictionary entries on CoARA signatories and the CoARA Agreement, and the comparison of DORA vs CoARA commitments.
2026 signatories: who has recently joined
The UK chapter’s membership has continued to grow through 2026. Six universities recently signed the CoARA Agreement and joined the chapter’s list of signatories:
- University of Manchester
- Liverpool John Moores University
- Liverpool Hope University
- University of the West of Scotland
- University of Chester
- Robert Gordon University
The Society of Research Software Engineering has also published its own action plan through the chapter. As with any actively growing coalition, this list will keep changing — CASRAI recommends checking CoARA’s own UK National Chapter page for the current signatory roster rather than treating any single published list, including this one, as permanently current.
Recent activity: Knowledge Exchange events and Cascade Funding
A significant part of the UK chapter’s recent activity has run through CoARA’s Cascade Funding programme — small grants CoARA distributes, via its coordinating body the European Science Foundation, to member organisations running pilot projects on responsible research assessment, knowledge exchange, and institutional reform.
UK-based projects funded through Cascade Funding presented progress at Knowledge Exchange events held on 25 and 27 February 2026. Three UK Cascade Funding beneficiaries presented, including projects led by the University of Edinburgh and a collaborative project between the University of Bedfordshire and the University of Suffolk. These events are part of CoARA’s broader model of using cascade-funded pilots as a mechanism for practical knowledge transfer between institutions, rather than treating action plans as a purely paper exercise.
Earlier chapter activity included an in-person and hybrid open meeting in London on 3 September 2025, titled “Moving Principles into Practice, Together,” which brought chapter members together to discuss how action-plan commitments were translating into actual changes to hiring, promotion, and evaluation practice.
How the UK chapter fits into the wider CoARA and DORA landscape
The UK chapter is one of a growing number of CoARA national chapters — alongside chapters such as Germany’s (led by the DFG) and Norway’s (coordinated via Universities Norway and linked to the NOR-CAM framework) — each adapting the same underlying agreement to a different national research-assessment context. For readers newer to this area, CASRAI’s guide to DORA and CoARA commitments and the guide on how institutions are actually rewriting promotion and tenure criteria under both frameworks give the broader context this UK-specific activity sits within. See also CASRAI’s dictionary entries on DORA and DORA signatory status, and the direct comparison of DORA vs CoARA for readers weighing the two frameworks against each other.
Because UK research assessment has historically been shaped heavily by the Research Excellence Framework (REF), UK CoARA action plans frequently address how REF-adjacent practices — narrative CVs, panel criteria, internal promotion cases — interact with CoARA’s commitment to move away from inappropriate use of journal-based metrics and simple output counts. The chapter does not set REF policy itself; it is a forum for signatories to align their own internal practice with CoARA principles alongside, not instead of, REF requirements.
Frequently asked questions
When was the UK CoARA National Chapter established?
February 2024, co-led by the University of Strathclyde, Swansea University, Loughborough University, and the University of Bristol.
Do UK universities have to sign both DORA and CoARA?
No. DORA and CoARA are separate, though closely related, commitments — an institution can sign one, both, or neither. Many UK signatories have signed both over time, since CoARA’s agreement builds on and extends principles DORA established earlier. See CASRAI’s DORA vs CoARA comparison for how the two differ in scope and governance.
What is Cascade Funding and who can apply?
Cascade Funding is a CoARA grant scheme, administered through the European Science Foundation, that funds small-scale pilot projects run by CoARA member organisations on topics such as responsible assessment practice and knowledge exchange between institutions. UK-based projects have been among the funded beneficiaries presenting at chapter Knowledge Exchange events.
Is chapter membership the same as having signed the CoARA Agreement?
Not automatically. Chapter membership brings an organisation into the UK coordinating network, but the substantive commitment is signing the CoARA Agreement itself and publishing an action plan; the national chapter is where UK signatories then coordinate and share progress on those individual commitments.
This page reflects the UK CoARA National Chapter’s published information as of mid-2026, verified against coara.org’s own UK chapter page. Chapter membership, signatory lists, and event schedules change regularly — check CoARA’s UK chapter page directly for the current status.
