Becoming a CoARA signatory means an institution publicly commits to the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment’s ten reform principles, publishes an implementation action plan within one year, and reports progress at least once before completing a first review cycle within five years. It is not legally binding, but it does require sustained institutional resourcing, not a signature alone.
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) is a European Commission-convened coalition, formalised by the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment finalised on 20 July 2022, through which universities, funders, and research organisations commit to reduce reliance on journal-based metrics and rankings in evaluating research and researchers.
- What is the CoARA Agreement, and who can sign?
- The ten commitments: what signatories actually commit to
- Reporting obligations and the implementation timeline
- Signatory vs member: choosing the right level of commitment
- Common questions from research offices
What is the CoARA Agreement, and who can sign?
CoARA grew out of a 2021 European Commission consultation and was launched with the Agreement’s finalisation on 20 July 2022. Signing is open to any organisation involved in research assessment worldwide — universities, research funders, national evaluation agencies, learned societies, and research infrastructures — not only European institutions.
Signatory status crossed the 500-organisation mark on 29 March 2023, according to CoARA’s own tracking. A 2025 analysis published via RePEc found that 450 European higher education institutions (13% of the sector) had signed by that point, with uptake concentrated among PhD-awarding institutions (27%) and research-intensive universities (52% of that subgroup) — a signal that CoARA’s early adopter base skews toward research-heavy institutions rather than teaching-focused ones.
Real institutional signatories include the University of Suffolk and the University of Exeter, both of which publish their own CoARA implementation pages describing internal governance changes made after signing.
The ten commitments: what signatories actually commit to
Under the CoARA Agreement, every signatory — regardless of size or country — commits to ten commitments covering how it will evaluate research, researchers, and research organisations. These are not aspirational statements; each maps to a concrete practice change an institution is expected to work towards:
- Recognise the diversity of contributions to research and researchers’ careers, beyond publications alone.
- Base assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation, with peer review central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators.
- Abandon inappropriate use of journal- and publication-based metrics, including the Journal Impact Factor and h-index, as proxies for quality.
- Avoid using rankings of research organisations in assessment decisions.
- Commit the resources needed — staff time, budget, governance attention — to deliver reform, not just endorse it.
- Review and develop assessment criteria, tools, and processes used across hiring, promotion, and funding decisions.
- Raise awareness and provide training on responsible assessment for staff involved in evaluation.
- Exchange practices and experiences with other signatories to support mutual learning.
- Communicate progress on implementation transparently, on a defined schedule.
- Evaluate assessment practices, criteria, and tools against evidence, and adjust where they fail.
Two commitments — abandoning inappropriate metrics and avoiding institutional rankings — are the ones that most directly change day-to-day promotion and hiring committee behaviour, and are typically where research offices meet the most internal resistance during rollout.
Reporting obligations and the implementation timeline
Signing triggers a defined, dated sequence rather than an open-ended pledge. Within one year of signing, a signatory must develop and publish an action plan setting out the concrete steps it will take to implement the ten commitments, including which assessment processes it will review first.
Within five years of signing, the institution is expected to have completed at least one full cycle of reviewing and developing its research assessment criteria, tools, and processes against the commitments. Between those two milestones, CoARA expects signatories to communicate progress periodically rather than waiting until the five-year mark to report anything.
| Milestone | Deadline from signing date | What is required |
|---|---|---|
| Action plan published | Within 1 year | Public document setting reform priorities and near-term steps |
| Progress communication | Ongoing, periodic | Transparent reporting on implementation status |
| First review cycle complete | Within 5 years | Assessment criteria, tools, and processes reviewed and revised |
This structure matters for planning: a research office should budget for the action-plan drafting effort in year one, not treat CoARA sign-up as a communications exercise with no near-term deliverable.
Signatory vs member: choosing the right level of commitment
CoARA distinguishes two levels of participation, and institutions weighing whether to sign should decide which one they actually want. A signatory commits to the ten commitments and the reporting timeline above. A full member takes on the same commitments plus governance rights — including voting in CoARA’s General Assemblies and standing for working-group roles. As of 12 June 2026, CoARA listed 840 member organisations, reflecting continued growth in institutions choosing the fuller governance-participation route rather than signatory status alone.
CoARA also operates national and regional chapters, which coordinate implementation support and peer exchange between signatories in a given country or region, between the Coalition’s plenary meetings. For UK research offices, chapter-level exchange is often the most practical channel for benchmarking an action plan against comparable institutions, since chapters convene signatories facing similar national funding and assessment frameworks.
Institutions frequently ask how CoARA relates to the earlier San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA, 2012). DORA is narrower — it focuses specifically on eliminating journal-based metrics from research evaluation — while CoARA is broader, adding a defined action-plan and reporting cadence, formal membership tiers, and a chapter structure. Many UK universities, including Exeter, have signed both, treating DORA as the metrics-specific pledge and CoARA as the wider institutional reform framework.
Common questions from research offices
What are the ten CoARA commitments signatories must sign up to?
Signatories commit to ten principles spanning recognising diverse research contributions, basing assessment primarily on qualitative peer review, abandoning journal-based metrics like the Journal Impact Factor, avoiding institutional rankings, resourcing reform, and reporting progress transparently on a defined schedule.
How long does it take to become a CoARA signatory?
Signing itself takes minutes via an online form on the CoARA website, requiring an authorised representative’s confirmation. The real timeline is what follows: a published action plan within one year, and a completed review cycle within five years of the signing date.
What is the difference between a CoARA signatory and a CoARA member?
Both accept the ten commitments. A full member additionally gains governance rights, including voting at CoARA’s General Assemblies and eligibility for working groups, while a signatory-only organisation commits to the reform agenda without formal voting participation.
Is signing the CoARA agreement legally binding?
No. The CoARA Agreement is a public, non-legally-binding commitment. There is no external enforcement mechanism beyond published action plans and periodic progress reporting, which places the compliance burden on institutional governance and reputational accountability rather than contract law.
For research offices weighing the decision, the practical question is not whether to endorse fairer assessment in principle — few institutions object to that — but whether the office has the standing capacity to draft an action plan within twelve months and sustain a five-year review cycle against promotion, hiring, and funding-assessment practices that are often owned by separate committees. Institutions that under-resource this step tend to publish thin action plans that stall by year two; those that assign a named owner and align the plan with an existing REF-cycle or research-strategy review timeline see steadier progress. As CoARA’s chapter network and membership base continue to grow past 840 organisations, the practical bar for what a credible action plan looks like is also rising, since chapter peers and evaluators increasingly benchmark new signatories against established ones.
