Key insights from the Second National Chapters Forum: Defining Success

On 13-14 March 2025, National Chapter Co-Chairs joined together in Bonn for a two-day, hybrid event co-hosted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Under the theme, Defining Success, NC Co-Chairs participated in workshops and plenary discussions to reflect on the role of their respective National Chapter within specific regional contexts and in the broader research landscape.

This was a vibrant and energising opportunity for National Chapter Co-Chairs, old and new, to connect with each other and with the CoARA Steering Board to consider what success would look like both nationally and internationally, and how we might work together to get there. Some strong themes emerged including the need to provide a clear narrative linking assessment reform with better research quality and impacts, given the financially and geopolitically challenging times in which we live. We look forward to acting on the learnings from this important meeting.

– Dr. Elizabeth Gadd, CoARA Vice Chair

Key Objectives

The forum focused on three key objectives to support NCs in their efforts:

Developing Theories of Change: Helping NCs map out clear strategies for achieving their goals and identifying roadblocks.
Building a Shared Understanding: Identifying shared challenges within a range of regional contexts, as well as outlining actionable roadmaps that incorporate diverse pathways to impact through consolidation, endorsement, collaboration, and outreach.
Fostering Collaboration: Offering a forum for collaborative discussion to co-define next steps for NCs to accelerate reform on country levels, as well as to identify potential support frameworks for National Chapters on three levels within CoARA:

1. Support from the Steering Board and the Secretariat
2. Support across NCs
3. Potential support on respective national levels

The objective of the meeting was to clearly outline the conditions of success for NCs and to make their – typically implicit – ‘theories of change’ explicit. The discussions that emerged from the meeting were fruitful and, as is often the case with international fora of this kind, the most valuable aspect of the meeting was strengthening the sense of community within CoARA by connecting networks of colleagues working on similar problems in different settings.

– Dr. Matthias Kiesselbach, DFG

During the forum, Co-Chairs reflected on success indicators for NCs over their initial two-year terms and for the broader implementation of the Agreement across a five-year period. As the regional hubs for CoARA, NCs contribute significantly to the reform of research assessment by engaging critical institutions and stakeholders on the national level and building country-level communities of practice.

Across the two-day, hybrid event, NC Co-Chairs reflected on their past and future activities against these diverse impact pathways and jointly outlined support frameworks for National Chapters. NC Chairs from the two newest countries to establish National Chapters, the Netherlands and Slovenia, attended the event to share their objectives and shared vision for their recently founded NCs.

Discussions also included working towards a typology and map of commonalities of research assessment contexts in which NCs operate (centralised vs. decentralised evaluation regimes, cultural and legal aspects etc.), reflections of the reform in the new ERA framework, and mapping strategic activities against a changing geopolitical landscape.

In addition, discussions also highlighted:

Best practices such as translations of the Agreement to local languages, different types of support to action plans or supporting participation at the CoARA Boost Cascade Funding Program.
Instances of Mutual support across NCs, such as Norway and Poland’s recent collaboration as well as
Ongoing studies to assess and analyse the impact of CoARA in certain national contexts (Norway, Finland).

To inspire forward-looking strategies, participants were also encouraged to write These reflections focused on identifying potential accelerators for change, expected outcomes, and the levels at which these changes would manifest.

Key Takeaways:

There has been significant momentum building for National Chapters with only 5 NCs in 2023 to 16 in 2024 and expected to increase to 19 in 2025. NCs play an important role in the national delivery of the Agreement through collective action on a local scale, so it is imperative that NC efforts are further harmonised and supported.
There is a need for more pronounced, more explicit narratives around research excellence and quality improvement of research and research assessment reform by engaging directly with academics and demonstrating how research assessment reform is serving academic excellence and quality improvement.
National Chapters are encouraged to actively support their member organisations further with their action plans.

By facilitating knowledge exchange, the forum reinforced the shared strategic vision to tackle transversal challenges in a wide range of national contexts. Looking forward, proposed support frameworks will ensure that NCs are able to share case studies, enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing, and continue to accelerate change on the national level to further recognise the diversity of research contributions in a wide .

Thanks to the incredible organisation of our co-hosts, DFG, the Second National Chapters Forum in Bonn offered a key opportunity for both online and in-person participants to share best practices and challenges. The forum also solidified the tradition of NC Co-Chairs joining together in community for these fruitful exchanges.

A year ago in Porto we could only hope that what was an amazing opportunity at the time – to convene with National Chapter Co-Chairs and discuss timely strategic matters – would grow into an established tradition for CoARA. We cannot be grateful enough to DFG for being our allies in doing so. DFG has been shaping CoARA from the coalition’s very inception.

– Dr. Erzsebet Toth Czifra, CoARA Secretariat

We are happy to announce that in the spring of 2026, the third National Chapters forum will be hosted in Spain, co-organised by CSISC. We look forward to seeing you there!

To learn more about the the forum, please find the presentations below at the following links: