CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: coara members

  • What Is CoARA? Research Assessment Reform Guide

    CoARA — the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment — is a research-sector coalition, launched in Brussels on 1 December 2022, that commits signatory universities, funders and academies to reform how research and researchers are evaluated. Signatories agree to move away from journal-based metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor and h-index, and toward qualitative peer review supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators, under a ten-commitment Agreement and a mandatory one-year action plan.

    CoARA is coara — the coalition’s name is almost always written and searched as the acronym. It is distinct from, though philosophically aligned with, the earlier US-originated DORA declaration. This guide sets out CoARA’s founding, its principles, how it differs from DORA, and the practical steps an institution takes to join and report progress.

    What is CoARA and why was it created?

    CoARA is a coalition of research funders, universities, national academies, and assessment authorities that have agreed a common Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. The Agreement text was finalised in July 2022 by a working group convened under the impetus of the European Commission, Science Europe and the European University Association, and the coalition was formally launched at a founding event in Brussels on 1 December 2022, with an initial cohort of over 350 signatories.

    CoARA’s stated purpose is to correct research assessment practice that over-relies on publication counts and citation-based metrics, at the expense of recognising open science practices, data stewardship, mentoring, and other contributions. Its secretariat is hosted by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which manages the coalition’s day-to-day operations and coordinates the CoARA Boost Horizon Europe capacity-building project.

    How does CoARA differ from DORA?

    CoARA and DORA share a target — inappropriate use of journal-level metrics in research evaluation — but they are separate initiatives with different origins, scope and mechanisms. DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) was launched in 2013 by the American Society for Cell Biology and asks signatories to stop using Journal Impact Factor as a proxy for the quality of individual articles or researchers. CoARA was launched nearly a decade later, in December 2022, out of a European Commission-adjacent policy process, and goes further by requiring a written, time-bound action plan.

    Feature CoARA DORA
    Launched 1 December 2022 2013
    Origin European Commission / Science Europe / EUA policy process American Society for Cell Biology (San Francisco)
    Secretariat European Science Foundation Independent DORA organisation
    Formal commitments 10 commitments in a signed Agreement Declaration principles, no numbered commitment list
    Action plan required Yes — within 1 year of signing No formal action plan requirement
    Governance tiers Signatory and Member (Member votes in General Assembly) Single signatory tier

    In practice, most CoARA signatories are also DORA signatories — the two agreements are treated as complementary rather than competing, and institutions frequently cite both when describing their responsible-metrics policy.

    What are CoARA’s core commitments and principles?

    The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment sets out ten commitments that every signatory and member accepts. The headline commitments require signatories to:

    • Recognise the diversity of contributions to, and careers in, research in accordance with the needs and nature of the research.
    • Base research assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation, for which peer review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators.
    • Abandon inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal- and publication-based metrics, in particular the Journal Impact Factor and h-index.
    • Avoid the use of rankings of research organisations in research assessment.

    CoARA describes its overarching vision as recognising diverse outputs, practices and activities that maximise the quality and impact of research, with peer review as the essential mechanism, rather than treating metrics as a substitute for judgement.

    How do institutions join CoARA and report progress?

    Joining CoARA has two tiers, and the distinction matters for governance rights. An organisation first becomes a signatory by signing the Agreement, publicly endorsing the ten commitments. A signatory can then apply to upgrade to full Member status, which brings the right to participate in the General Assembly, vote on Steering Board candidates, and take part in collective decision-making. There are no membership fees at either tier.

    Both signatories and members are required to submit an action plan within one year of signing, setting out concrete, time-bound steps to implement the ten commitments locally. Progress is then reported through periodic updates to that action plan rather than a single one-off filing — for example, founding member DARIAH ERIC published a progress report covering 2022–2024 alongside an updated action plan for 2025–2027, documenting achievements against its original milestones.

    1. Review the Agreement text and confirm institutional sign-off.
    2. Sign as a signatory (or apply for Member status if governance participation is needed).
    3. Publish an action plan within 12 months, mapped to the ten commitments.
    4. Join a relevant Working Group or National Chapter to share implementation practice.
    5. Update the action plan periodically and publish progress reports.

    Who are CoARA’s members and working groups?

    CoARA’s signatory base has grown substantially since the December 2022 launch: from an initial cohort of roughly 350 organisations to more than 800 research-performing organisations, funders, assessment authorities, professional societies and their associations by 2026, according to the coalition’s own signatory listing. UNESCO’s Open Science programme separately describes CoARA as convening a comparable population of research-performing entities, research funding institutions, and research infrastructure bodies working on reform in the context of open science.

    Substantive reform work happens through Working Groups (covering topics such as narrative CVs and responsible use of metrics) and National Chapters, regional networks — including a UK National Chapter — that let organisations contextualise reform to local academic systems. CoARA’s first Working Groups and National Chapters were formed in autumn 2023, following an open call to members.

    Frequently asked questions

    What does CoARA stand for?

    CoARA stands for the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment. It is a coalition of research funders, universities, and assessment bodies that have signed an Agreement committing them to reform how research and researchers are evaluated, moving away from metrics-only assessment.

    Is CoARA the same as DORA?

    No. CoARA and DORA are separate initiatives with shared aims. DORA launched in 2013 in the United States and targets journal-metric misuse; CoARA launched in December 2022 from a European policy process and additionally requires signatories to publish a formal action plan.

    What is a CoARA action plan?

    A CoARA action plan is a written, time-bound document that a signatory or member must publish within one year of signing, setting out the concrete steps it will take to implement the Agreement’s ten commitments, followed by periodic progress updates.

    How many organisations have signed the CoARA agreement?

    CoARA’s signatory base has grown from roughly 350 organisations at its December 2022 launch to more than 800 by 2026, spanning universities, funders, national academies and research infrastructure bodies across dozens of countries.

    What this means for research administrators

    For research administration, library, and grants-office teams, CoARA membership is not a symbolic gesture — it is a governance commitment with a deadline. The one-year action-plan requirement forces institutions to audit hiring, promotion, and grant-review criteria for inappropriate metric use, and to document a credible replacement process built on qualitative peer review.

    Institutions already engaged in responsible-metrics work through research administration policy reviews are well placed to convert existing DORA commitments into a CoARA-compliant action plan, since the two frameworks are complementary rather than contradictory. Where an institution has no prior DORA history, the CoARA action plan effectively becomes the first formal audit of assessment criteria across the research lifecycle.

    Outlook: where CoARA reform goes next

    CoARA’s growth from a 350-signatory launch coalition to a body of more than 800 organisations within roughly three and a half years signals that action-plan-based reform, not declaration-only signing, is becoming the expected model for European and internationally-linked research assessment reform. National Chapters and Working Groups are the mechanism through which this scales beyond individual institutional pledges into shared, auditable practice — and institutions evaluating research administration reform should treat the CoARA action plan cycle as a recurring governance obligation, not a one-time compliance exercise.

  • CoARA National Chapters: How Reform Spreads Institution by Institution

    CoARA national chapters are the country-level structures through which the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment turns its 2022 Agreement into local policy. As of mid-2026 there are 20 active chapters across Europe, each translating a shared set of commitments into national funding, hiring, and promotion practice — at very different speeds and with very different levels of traction.

    CoARA is a coalition of more than 800 research organisations, funders, assessment authorities, and professional associations that agreed in July 2022, via the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, to move evaluation away from publication counts and journal-based metrics and toward qualitative, peer-informed judgement. National chapters are the mechanism CoARA built to stop that agreement from staying a Brussels-level document and start it becoming a Warsaw-level, Dublin-level, or Bern-level one.

    What is a CoARA national chapter?

    A CoARA national chapter is a voluntary, member-proposed structure that gives an individual country’s CoARA members a dedicated forum to coordinate reform of research assessment in their own institutional and regulatory context. Chapters are not imposed by the CoARA Secretariat; they are proposed by members from a given country and open to any CoARA member from that country who wants to participate.

    Under CoARA’s own approval guidelines, a national chapter must be inclusive — reaching at least half of the CoARA member organisations in the country concerned — and must put in place mechanisms so that organisations outside CoARA can still contribute to, and benefit from, its work. Chapters commit to producing concrete tasks and outputs within a two-year window, and to feeding lessons learnt back to CoARA’s other national chapters and working groups.

    How many national chapters are there, and where?

    CoARA had 19 established national chapters as of December 2025, according to the Coalition’s own overview booklet published on Zenodo, with the Danish chapter the most recent addition, joining at the end of that year. The live national-chapters listing on coara.org, checked in mid-2026, shows the tally has since reached 20 countries.

    The current roster spans:

    • Andorra, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary and Ireland
    • Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden
    • Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom

    Five chapters launched almost simultaneously in April 2024 — Switzerland (15 April), Spain (17 April), the Netherlands (22 April), Ireland (24 April) and Germany (26 April) — suggesting a coordinated first wave rather than organic, country-by-country emergence. Denmark’s arrival more than eighteen months later shows the model is still expanding, not just consolidating.

    How a chapter gets approved and what it must deliver

    Forming a national chapter requires a formal application submitted through CoARA’s online proposal form, assessed against published approval guidelines. The bar is deliberately structural rather than symbolic: reaching roughly half of a country’s CoARA member base is a materially harder threshold than gathering a handful of enthusiastic early adopters, and the two-year output clock forces chapters to name concrete deliverables rather than issue a statement of intent.

    CoARA also runs cross-chapter accountability mechanisms that go beyond the initial approval step — including a National Chapters Exchange Forum, whose third edition was held in Madrid, and regional forums such as the June 2026 hybrid event in Budapest on research excellence and language bias in assessment. These recurring forums exist specifically to compare what chapters have actually produced, not just to celebrate that they exist.

    What separates real reform from a signing ceremony

    The clearest predictor of a national chapter’s traction is not how long it has existed but whether it is embedded in a pre-existing national reform mechanism or built from scratch as a standalone forum. Chapters that plug into a national instrument that already has regulatory or institutional weight move faster than chapters whose only function, so far, is knowledge exchange between members.

    National chapter Launch signal Core mechanism Reform indicator
    Netherlands 22 April 2024 Extension of the existing national “Recognition & Rewards” programme Embedded in pre-existing reform infrastructure
    Norway Established chapter Shared development of institutional versions of the NORCAM career-assessment framework Embedded in a national assessment tool
    Poland Established chapter Formal review of coherence between CoARA commitments and Polish national regulation Statutory/regulatory alignment function
    Switzerland 15 April 2024 Cross-cantonal, cross-linguistic coordination of universities, universities of applied sciences and funders Structural federated-governance bridge
    Ireland 24 April 2024 Knowledge exchange on peer review, promotion criteria and funder DORA adoption Concrete but not yet statutory
    Denmark Late 2025 New national stakeholder-engagement platform Too early to assess traction

    Poland’s chapter is the sharpest illustration of the distinction. Its stated mission is not simply to discuss CoARA’s principles but to assess whether the Coalition’s agreed solutions are even compatible with existing Polish law, and to propose the national regulatory changes needed to implement them. That is a policy-drafting function, not a discussion group — and it is precisely the kind of concrete, two-year-deliverable output the approval guidelines require but cannot themselves guarantee.

    By contrast, a chapter whose public description is limited to “providing a platform for exchange” carries real signing-ceremony risk until it can point to a specific institutional policy, funder criterion, or promotion-committee rule it changed. Research administrators evaluating whether to lean on a given country’s chapter for benchmarking should ask for that named deliverable before assuming the chapter reflects binding national practice.

    Common questions and what comes next

    What is a CoARA National Chapter?

    A CoARA National Chapter is a country-level, member-proposed group within the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment that coordinates local implementation of the 2022 Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. It must involve at least half of that country’s CoARA member organisations and deliver concrete outputs within two years.

    How many CoARA national chapters are there?

    CoARA confirms 19 established national chapters as of December 2025, with Denmark the most recent addition. The Coalition’s live national-chapters page shows the current total has since reached 20 countries, spanning most of the European Research Area plus Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

    What is the difference between a CoARA signatory and a CoARA member?

    A signatory has endorsed CoARA’s 10 core commitments and agreed to submit an action plan within a year; a full member has additionally joined the Coalition’s governance, gaining voting rights at the General Assembly. Both routes are free, and signatories can upgrade to member status at any time.

    How does an organisation start a CoARA National Chapter?

    A group of CoARA members from the same country applies via CoARA’s online proposal form against published approval guidelines, demonstrating support from at least half of the country’s member organisations. Approved chapters then have two years to produce named, concrete outputs supporting the Agreement’s national implementation.

    The national-chapter model is CoARA’s answer to a structural problem every voluntary standards coalition faces: a shared agreement signed by a research office in Brussels or a funder in Paris changes nothing on its own inside a promotion committee in Kraków or a hiring panel in Bergen. Chapters are the deliberate, two-year-clocked mechanism for closing that gap — and the growing cadence of exchange forums suggests CoARA itself is aware that some chapters will close it faster than others.

    For research administration teams tracking which national frameworks are worth benchmarking against, the practical takeaway is to look past chapter existence and ask what the chapter has actually produced against its two-year commitment — a published criterion, a revised promotion policy, a funder mandate — rather than treating membership in a CoARA national chapter as evidence of reform on its own. Institutions building out their own research administration capacity should watch the chapters embedded in pre-existing national instruments most closely, since those are the ones with the shortest path from commitment to enforceable practice.