Skip to content
WG News

CoARA Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment (ACA) Releases First Outputs

The Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment (ACA) has released its first series of major outputs, which provide valuable insights into ACA reforms in Europe and beyond. These results stem from a comprehensive mapping exercise on reform initiatives at institutional, national, and international levels, developed by the WG ACA in its first year of operations.

Survey and case studies

The mapping included the development of a survey focusing on organisational level initiatives on ACA, which gathered data from over 200 organisations across 41 countries. The organisations included in the survey were planning, initiating, or implementing a reform process on ACA. Namely, reform processes focused on broadening the criteria and methods for evaluating the outputs and impacts of academic activities for the purposes of recruitment, performance evaluation, and career progression of academic staff.

The WG ACA also compiled 11 case studies that showcase well-established international- and national-level initiatives for reforming research and academic career assessment from Europe and beyond. These include:

  • ANECA – Reforming research and academic careers assessment in Spain
  • CLACSO-FOLEC – Declaration of principles: a new research assessment towards a socially relevant science in Latin America and the Caribbean
  • CoARA – Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA)
  • DORA – The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
  • EU Charter – The European Charter for Researchers
  • Finland – Good practice in researcher evaluation
  • Netherlands – Recognition & Rewards Programme
  • Norway – NOR-CAM – A toolbox for recognition and rewards in academic careers
  • OR4 – Open and Responsible Researcher Reward and Recognition (OR4)
  • UKRI – UKRI People and Teams Action Plan
  • YUFE4Postdocs – YUFE4Postdocs evaluation & selection procedure

Each case study follows a common template, describing the initiatives in a more structured and comparable way. Additionally, the WG ACA has compiled a list of practical tools stemming from these initiatives, all available online.

Rethinking academic career assessment

Based on the outcomes of the survey and case studies, the WG ACA has also released six key lessons and insights to help guide comprehensive and structured reforms ambitions, linking each lesson to specific case studies, survey outcomes and practical tools:

  • Academic organisations across the world are moving towards reform, highlights shared concerns about traditional career assessment practices and the development of a shared direction in reforms, stimulated by international initiatives such as DORA and CoARA.
  • Reform is possible, demonstrating that institutions with different profiles and in diverse contexts – whether highly regulated or enjoying more autonomy – are motivated to enact change one incremental step at a time. This is facilitated by learning from others and building a supportive community of institutions undergoing similar reforms.
  • Academics are the key to success, emphasizing the importance of actively involving academics from all disciplines and all levels of seniority from the outset in reform initiatives.
  • The scope of academic career assessment is expanding, reflecting the shared aim of systematically meriting academic staff for a broader scope of academic activities beyond research to include teaching, leadership, teamwork, and societal engagement.
  • Bibliometrics tell a story, but not the whole story, underscoring the limitations of publication-based metrics in assessing the breadth of academic contributions and the need for balanced frameworks combining quantitative and qualitative criteria.
  • Reform requires an open conversation on the nature of quality and excellence, advocating for inclusive discussions on what excellence entails, and how it can best be evaluated and measured, in the context of academic organisations and their missions, but also more broadly within disciplines and research cultures.

Organisations have already contributed to the translation of the outputs to maximise their impact. To date, the output “Lessons and tools for reform” has been translated to Spanish by CLACSO-FOLEC.

Looking ahead

The WG ACA is currently developing a draft toolbox to further support institutions in implementing reforms in academic career assessment.

Acknowledgments

The WG ACA extends its heartfelt gratitude to all the organisations that participated in the survey and submitted case studies. These valuable contributions are indispensable to making this work possible!

Find Out More!

For more information on the WG: Reforming Academic Career Assessment (ACA), please click here. For any inquiries about the recent outputs, please contact coara.wg.aca@gmail.com.

Contact us