Action Planning & Timeframe

Action Plan

In the context of the CoARA Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, signatory organisations (this incl. also member organisations) are invited to share with the community how their organisation has started the process of implementing the Core Commitments according to an Action Plan with defined milestones within one year of signing the Agreement *. While organisations have full freedom in the development of their Action Plan, several CoARA signatories have indicated that a light-touch resource would be helpful to support this process.

Available for download: Support for CoARA signatories in the preparation of Action Plans

This document is a resource to support signatories in preparing an Action Plan towards implementing the commitments they have signed up to. The document lists a series of Guiding Questions that can be useful for organisations when designing and defining the different steps they will undertake in this process. These Guiding Questions are meant to:

• Take into account the fact that the organisations are numerous and diverse. The guiding questions for the development of an Action Plan should therefore be inspiring and incentivise reflection for all the different types of organisations in CoARA
• Encourage not only the reflection about the content but mainly about the change approach, involving researchers across all career stages and people working in research and innovation in the broadest possible sense, including research support personnel, in the process and in conducting dialogue

Signatories and CoARA members are not required to use the Guiding Questions, since they do not serve as a rigid template but rather as a mean of guidance with suggestions. Signatories who have already developed an Action Plan are not asked to duplicate efforts.

Sharing Action Plans with the CoARA Community: Zenodo

CoARA signatories and members are invited to share their Action Plans via Zenodo by storing them to a Zenodo community dedicated to CoARA Action Plans. Please send an email to secretariat@coara.eu once you have uploaded your Action Plan to Zenodo. Kindly include in any information the title and DOI of your upload for easy reference.

Please find the collection of CoARA Action Plans on Zenodo here.

The following document includes a step-by-step guide on how to upload an Action Plan to Zenodo:

Available for download: Guidance on how to approve action plans internally and how to share them with the broader CoARA community 

Timeframe Overview

• The signatories of this agreement agree to share with each other and with their community how their organisation has started the process of reviewing or developing criteria, tools and processes in line with the core commitments and according to an Action Plan with defined milestones, by the end of 2023 or within one year of signing the agreement*.
• Signatories of this agreement agree to regularly demonstrate progress towards reviewing, developing and evaluating criteria, tools and processes that fulfil the core commitments, with a touch point at end of 2027 or within five years of signing the agreement, by which time they will have worked through at least one cycle of review and development of their assessment criteria, tools and processes.

Please note: organisations have full freedom in the development of their Action Plan, following the request of several CoARA signatories that a light-touch guide would be helpful to support this process, this has been established. Signatories that are not assessing research projects, researchers, research units or research performing organisations commit to contribute to the reform and share progress with each other and the community respecting the same timeframe.

* In light of certain organisations nearing their first anniversary as signatories at the time of the dissemination of this resource, the CoARA Steering Board suggests that these signatories and members consider extending the timeframe for preparing and publishing their action plans by an additional six months.