The primary targets of the CoARA Boost Cascade Funding Programme are legal entities of the following types:

• Academies, learned societies that implement some form of research assessment;
• National/regional authorities or agencies that implement some form of research assessment;
• Public or private research funding organisations;
• Research centres, research infrastructures;
• Universities;
• Other relevant non-for-profit organisations that implement some form of research assessment.

Applications from faculties of universities are also eligible. However, the university needs to be formally in the name of the university (applicant), and not the faculty.

As the call is meant to support institutions from across the European Research Area (ERA), only legal entities based in the EU Member States and countries associated to the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (see under the heading “Third countries associated to Horizon Europe”) are eligible to apply.

The proposal is submitted by a designated point of contact authorised to do so on behalf of the organisation they are affiliated with.

A maximum of one application per organisation is allowed for all calls.

Consortium members of the CoARA Boost project are not eligible to participate in the call.  In the case of beneficiaries that are umbrella organisations, their member organisations are eligible. Nominating organisations of the CoARA Steering Board members are also eligible, as the Steering Board does not directly participate in the evaluation of the proposals. The Steering Board will not have any role in both the evaluation and selection of winning applications.

To ensure diversity in the allocation of resources, beneficiaries of the first round of the CoARA Boost Cascade Funding are not eligible to apply.

Cascade Funding will be aimed at covering costs that are exclusively considered eligible by the provisions of the WIDERA-2023-ERA-01-07 call.

Further eligibility details can be found as part of the FAQs – Annex 1.

The total budget for the call is up to 2.33 M€, of which 1.12 M€ has been released for the first round and up to 1.22 M € will be released in the second round.

Proposals may be funded up to 30.000-60.000 € each (including indirect costs, see specified below per cost).

25 projects were selected and funded within the first round:

• 3 Teaming Projects,
• 13 Institutional Pilot Projects,
• 9 Institutional Change Projects.

Except for the teaming projects (see below), the cascade funding program is designed for mono beneficiaries (i.e., one organization per application).

In the case of teaming calls, co-applications from max. 3 organisations are welcome. There are no restrictions in place regarding the type or country/countries of these organisations, apart from the basic eligibility criteria specified above.

The CoARA Boost cascading grants are a tool for organisations to implement the 10 commitments are enshrined in the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA) and facilitate institutional change in the context of research assessment.  The activities eligible for support must demonstrate the commitment to a systemic change with medium-term or long-term trajectories and impact.  The grants will support organisations to develop, pilot and implement, assessment criteria, tools and processes; while avoiding contradictions across assessment systems, types and purposes, through continuous dialogue. There is room for diverse starting points and approaches. As part of the first call, three types of projects will be supported. These reflect different stages of an institution’s reform journey, namely:

1. Knowledge exchange (teaming projects),
2. Piloting (institutional pilot projects),
3. Paving the way for a lasting change (institutional change projects).

Their description is provided below.

Organisations are encouraged to share practices and experiences to foster mutual learning and ensure continuous mutual improvement, while respecting organisations’ autonomy. Teaming projects facilitate the transfer and adaptation of experience and practices from a more advanced/experienced organisation to one or more less experienced ones. In addition to knowledge transfer between institutions of the same type, co-piloting innovations across different types of organisations, such as universities and national evaluation agencies or academies and open infrastructure providers, are also welcome to co-apply as a team.

Examples of activities

Projects could involve transferring or benefitting from existing knowledge, testing the feasibility of adapting and implementing solutions that work in another institutional context, enhancing capacity-building or enhancing open infrastructural components of responsible research assessment. These projects could allow the organisation of demonstration sessions, seminars, training as well as short visits. Other examples include the review, transfer and adaptation of documents, procedures and workflows. 

These examples of activities are provided as a source of inspiration: innovative ideas are welcome.

Maximum grant amount: 40 K€ (in total for all the organisations taking part in the teaming project)

Maximum project duration: 1 year

Institutional pilot projects offer an opportunity for institutions to experiment with and evaluate new assessment approaches, procedures, frameworks, and tools in the context of a clearly defined initiative (such as a pilot competitive call in a university or the development of a concept). These projects help institutions develop, pilot, and implement assessment criteria, tools and processes while ensuring consistency across assessment systems, types and purposes. While the institutional change projects will address issues that are relevant for the entire institution’s assessment mechanisms and pave the way towards lasting change, institutional pilot projects target a specific action and should allow grantees to explore new modes of operation. Applications for pilot projects at the level of faculties are eligible if the application is submitted by their institution.

Examples of activities

As institutional pilot projects should respond to specific needs within the organisation, the types of funded activities will vary from one project to another. As an example, they could involve the following: development and deployment of (IT-based) workflows, adoption of qualitative KPIs, adoption of open infrastructure, bringing more diversity to the assessment of research outputs and academic activities, balancing quantitative and qualitative criteria, training, implementing practical ways of recognising diverse research contributions, core narrative CV with different disciplinary expectations, more credit given to research project proposals whether successful or not, more credit for outreach activities, crediting societal impact and knowledge valorisation, valuing institutions contributing to move away from rankings and impact factors i.e. more responsible use of metrics, present alternatives in terms of data used to assess research groups and institutions, integration of Open Science, research data sharing contributions into research(er) assessment, simplifying research evaluation systems of increasing their flexibility  etc.

Applicants are also encouraged to gain inspiration from ‘Annex 4: Toolbox: practical tools and options to consider’ of the Agreement. Projects could involve piloting the implementation of the SCOPE framework within their organisation or testing and implementing practical solutions, such as recommendations, guidelines and tools developed by CoARA Working Groups.

Maximum grant amount: 30 K€

Maximum project duration: 1 year

Institutional change projects provide the means to accelerate change in procedures and process in an organisation. These projects should enable a review of internal assessment processes within the awarded organisation, aiming to align them more closely with the Agreement’s commitments. If the granted organisation does not have a (well-developed) assessment structure, these projects should allow to set up such structures.

Examples of activities

As for the pilot projects above, institutional change projects should respond to specific needs within the organisation and the types of activities funded will vary from one project to another.

All the activities listed under the “Institutional pilot projects” section are welcome, except on a different maturity level and possibly on a different scale.

Maximum grant amount: 60 K€

Maximum project duration: 1 year

All applications will be assessed by a review panel composed of experts in research assessment, set up by the CoARA Secretariat/European Science Foundation (ESF). Reviewers are selected from the contact database of CoARA, from the contact database associated with CoARA’s collaboration history with experts and expert groups in research assessment as well as from a pool referrals from the CoARA Boost consortium and the Steering Board.

In addition to relevance of topical expertise, the CoARA Secretariat will also adhere to diversity measures in terms of geographical coverage (balanced representation of all European regions at least 5% of the reviewers outside of Europe), type of institution in affiliation (proportionate to CoARA membership), gender (no more than 2/3 of the pool of selected reviewers should represent the same gender) and career stage (at least 25% of the pool of selected reviewers should be early career researchers).

The review panels will assess applications submitted to the type of project that fall within their policy and/or research expertise. Each submission will be pre-assessed by 2 panel members: one Lead Reviewer panellist and one Secondary Reviewer panellist who will provide written pre-assessments of each application. The Lead Reviewer panellist will present these pre-assessments when introducing the application during the panel. For equal treatment of applications, all panel members will be asked to read all proposals belonging to their panel prior to the panel discussions.

Following the three themes of the call specified in the call for proposals, one topical panel will be dedicated to each, namely:

P01 – Teaming projects

P02 – Institutional Change project

P03 – Institutional Pilot projects

Further information on diversity measures when compiling the pool of reviewers as well as a detailed description of the evaluation process can be found in document 2: EVALUATION GUIDELINES.

All applicants submitting a Cascade Funding Project proposal will be informed of the outcome of the selection process by 15 July 2025. A brief evaluation report narrative comments from the panel consensus reports will be provided.