On 25 June 2026, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation published an independent expert study, Implementing Research Assessment Reform, providing the first EU-wide evidence base on how signatories of the Agreement for Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA) are actually translating their commitments into practice. Unlike the country-by-country progress reports CoARA’s national chapters publish themselves, this study is a Commission-commissioned synthesis across the whole signatory base, built specifically to inform EU-level policy rather than any single national programme.
What the study actually analysed
The methodology is unusually granular for a policy-facing report: a quantitative analysis of 263 submitted ARRA action plans, a deeper qualitative analysis of 235 of those plans, and structured interviews with 15 signatory organisations. Action plans are the implementation documents every CoARA signatory commits to producing within roughly two years of signing the ARRA, setting out how the institution intends to reform its own criteria for hiring, promotion, tenure, and funding decisions. Until this study, no one had systematically analysed what a large cross-section of those plans actually says, as opposed to tracking who has signed.
Key findings
The report characterises engagement with CoARA and ARRA as “broad and growing,” and finds that a substantial share of research organisations across Europe are taking concrete steps to move beyond a narrow focus on publication counts and journal-level metrics, toward recognising a wider range of contributions, skills, and career paths — the same shift documented at institutional level in CASRAI’s coverage of how institutions are actually rewriting P&T criteria.
At the same time, the study is explicit that implementation is far from even. Its own framing: progress “remains uneven across countries and institutions, reflecting different contexts and starting points.” That unevenness is consistent with what CASRAI’s national-chapter coverage has already shown at ground level — chapters such as Italy’s 59-institution coalition and the United Kingdom’s chapter show materially different paces and priorities, and the Commission’s aggregate data now confirms that pattern holds across the full 263-plan sample, not just in the handful of countries with the most visible chapter activity.
Notably, the study does not attempt to grade signatories against each other. The Commission is explicit that it “does not aim to assess success or failure,” but instead to capture “a moment of transition in the reform process” — a baseline snapshot rather than a scorecard. For research administrators tracking their own institution’s action-plan commitments, that framing matters: this is diagnostic evidence intended to shape future EU policy and support mechanisms, not a compliance audit with named winners and laggards.
Why this lands now: the ERA Policy Agenda midpoint
The timing is deliberate. The study lands roughly halfway through the European Research Area (ERA) Policy Agenda 2025-2027, and the Commission frames its findings as direct input to two forward-looking decisions: the design of the next ERA Policy Agenda, covering 2027-2029, and programming choices for the next phase of Horizon Europe. In practice, that means the gaps this study surfaces — particularly institutions and countries with weaker starting capacity for assessment reform — are the most likely candidates for additional coordination support or funding-linked incentives in the next policy cycle, rather than a one-off report that disappears into an archive.
What it means for research administrators
For institutions that have already signed the ARRA, the practical implication is straightforward: the Commission now has a Europe-wide reference point for what a credible action plan actually contains, drawn from analysis of 235 real plans rather than the Agreement’s own commitment text alone. Institutions still drafting or revising an action plan can expect that reference point — not just the original ARRA commitments — to shape what reviewers and national chapter coordinators consider sufficient going forward. Institutions evaluating whether to sign at all can use the study’s honest acknowledgement of uneven capacity as a reason to plan resourcing for implementation up front, rather than treating signature as the finish line. CASRAI’s CoARA signatories reference and the DORA vs CoARA comparison remain the starting points for understanding what signing actually commits an organisation to before this next policy cycle begins.
