The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany’s central funder of investigator-led research, is a signatory of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) and leads CoARA’s National Chapter for Germany. This page sets out specifically what DFG has committed to under CoARA, what it has said in its own position papers about metrics and academic publishing, and what is and is not yet verifiable about concrete change at German institutions as a result.
This is a companion to CASRAI’s broader guides on the reform movement itself — see DORA and CoARA: Comparing Research Assessment Reform Commitments and DORA and CoARA in Practice — and to CASRAI’s existing DFG content, including the DFG overview guide and OWID and the DFG Code of Conduct (which covers DFG’s research-integrity system — a distinct topic from research assessment reform, though the two areas share an underlying concern with how research quality is judged).
Why This Matters for Research Administrators
Researchers and administrators preparing DFG proposals, or working at a German institution assessing tenure and promotion cases, increasingly need to know how metrics like the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) or h-index can and cannot be used in DFG-funded evaluation, and how far that expectation has actually reached institutional practice versus remaining a stated commitment. DFG funding decisions and the criteria DFG expects applicant institutions to apply are two different things — this page distinguishes between what DFG has committed to as a funder and reviewer, and what German universities and research organizations have separately committed to as CoARA signatories in their own right.
DFG’s Specific Commitments Under CoARA
DFG is one of the founding-wave signatories of the CoARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, and describes its aim under the coalition as focusing more on the content of research contributions and resorting less to quantitative metrics such as the h-index or the Journal Impact Factor when assessing proposals, applications, and manuscripts. DFG has also stated an intention to recognize a broader range of research contributions beyond subject-specific papers — including the creation of research software and the curation of research data — consistent with CoARA’s wider push to value diverse research outputs, not only journal articles.
DFG leads CoARA’s National Chapter for Germany, the coordination structure CoARA uses to convene signatory organizations within a given country to share practice and align implementation. Because CoARA membership is institutional rather than individual, other German universities, funders, and academies have joined as independent signatories alongside DFG rather than through it — DFG’s own commitments bind DFG’s own funding and review processes, not every German research organization by extension.
DFG’s Position Paper: Academic Publishing as a Foundation for Research Assessment
DFG has published a position paper, welcomed publicly by Science Europe, connecting academic publishing reform to research assessment reform. Its central argument is that because research assessment has historically focused on quantifiable proxies — journal- and author-level metrics that do not capture the substance or quality of the underlying work — reforming publishing practices is a necessary lever for enabling more qualitative, responsible assessment. This mirrors CoARA’s own core commitment that assessment should rely primarily on qualitative, peer-reviewed judgment, supported by quantitative indicators used responsibly and in context rather than as a substitute for actually reading the work — see CASRAI’s CoARA Agreement entry for the coalition’s full set of commitments.
Germany’s CoARA National Chapter
CoARA’s national-chapter structure exists to let signatories within a country coordinate rather than implement commitments in isolation. DFG’s leadership of the German chapter reflects its position as the country’s largest research-funding organization, but the chapter itself is a coordination forum, not a single organization — German universities, including institutions such as TU Braunschweig, maintain their own public CoARA pages describing their individual institutional commitments and implementation steps, distinct from DFG’s. Readers should treat “Germany has implemented CoARA” as shorthand for a distributed set of individual institutional commitments coordinated through the national chapter, not a single national mandate — CoARA itself does not issue binding national mandates; it is a coalition of voluntary signatories.
What Has Concretely Changed at German Institutions
Verifiable, DFG-specific outcomes are narrower than the coalition-level commitments above. What can be stated with reasonable confidence: DFG has publicly committed, as a CoARA signatory, to reducing reliance on the JIF and h-index in its own proposal, application, and manuscript assessment, and has published a position paper arguing for qualitative, publishing-reform-linked assessment. What is harder to verify independently, and should be treated with appropriate caution rather than stated as settled fact: the extent to which this commitment has been translated into specific, documented changes to DFG’s formal review guidelines and reviewer instructions (as opposed to a general orientation already broadly consistent with DFG’s longstanding peer-review culture), and the pace and depth of implementation at the roughly one hundred universities, non-university research institutions, academies, and learned societies that make up DFG’s own membership. Readers needing current, authoritative detail on a specific institution’s implementation status should consult that institution’s own CoARA page or DFG’s own publications directly (dfg.de), since this is an actively moving area and any specific snapshot risks going stale.
How Germany’s Approach Compares to Other National Efforts
CoARA is a European-anchored but internationally open coalition, and implementation is inherently uneven across signatory countries because CoARA sets shared commitments rather than a uniform national rollout plan. Germany’s approach is distinguished less by unique national commitments than by DFG’s dual role: DFG is simultaneously a funder implementing CoARA commitments in its own review processes and the convenor of the national chapter coordinating other German signatories. For the broader landscape of how DORA and CoARA commitments have translated into actual tenure-and-promotion criteria changes across institutions generally, see CASRAI’s DORA and CoARA in Practice guide and the DORA vs CoARA comparison. CASRAI has not yet published country-specific implementation guides for other individual CoARA signatory nations; where those exist in the future, they will be the appropriate comparison point for readers assessing Germany’s approach against, for example, the Nordic countries’ funder-led implementations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is DFG a CoARA signatory?
Yes. DFG has signed the CoARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment and leads CoARA’s National Chapter for Germany, the coordination structure for German signatory organizations.
Does DFG still use the Journal Impact Factor or h-index in funding decisions?
DFG has publicly committed, as a CoARA signatory, to focusing more on the content of research contributions and less on quantitative metrics such as the JIF or h-index when assessing proposals, applications, and manuscripts. This is a stated commitment and general orientation rather than a documented line-by-line rewrite of every DFG review procedure — readers relying on the precise current wording of DFG’s reviewer guidelines for a specific funding line should check dfg.de directly, since guideline text is revised periodically.
Does every German university follow DFG’s CoARA commitments automatically?
No. CoARA membership is institutional and voluntary. DFG’s commitments bind DFG’s own funding and review activity; other German universities, funders, and academies that have separately signed the CoARA Agreement hold their own independent commitments, coordinated (not imposed) through the German national chapter that DFG leads.
What is the difference between DFG’s CoARA-related work and the OWID/DFG Code of Conduct?
They address different problems. The DFG Code of Conduct and OWID govern research integrity and misconduct handling in Germany. DFG’s CoARA commitments concern how research and researchers are evaluated — the criteria and indicators used in assessment — which is a related but distinct governance question.
Where can I read DFG’s position paper directly?
DFG’s position paper on academic publishing and research assessment is published on dfg.de; a summary is also available via Science Europe, which co-published a welcoming statement when the paper was released.
