The Steering Board is responsible for the overall oversight, strategy, work plan and sustainability of the CoARA. The Steering Board acts and decides on input from the CoARA members and other Coalition bodies. Members of the Steering Board originate from a diverse set of organisation types.
The CoARA Steering Board is made of a total of maximum 11 members, including a Chair and up to two Vice-Chairs. The Steering Board is a collegial body that aims to take its decisions by consensus, otherwise the Chair may organise votes.
Chair
“I am grateful for the opportunity to serve as Chair of CoARA during this pivotal phase in the Coalition’s development. With CoARA’s communities now established, we will build upon solid foundations to ensure the future prosperity and sustainability of CoARA. Leveraging my experience in both research and leadership of knowledge institutions, I am committed to supporting the vision of CoARA and its growing communities by driving actionable change.“
Vice-Chair
“It is generally agreed that we get what we measure. It’s therefore critical that we measure what matters and in meaningful and responsible ways. I am committed to reforming research assessment to improve research culture for the sake of all who support research activity and ultimately all those who benefit from it.”
Vice-Chair
Marie Curie Alumni Association
The way in which we define success, and who and what we value, drives our behaviours and culture. It’s time to broaden narrow definitions of success to ensure we recognise the full breadth of contributions to and roles in research. If we go about it purposefully, this broader recognition will not only improve research quality but also be a lever to improve research culture.
Federation of Finnish Learned Societies
“CoARA offers a unique platform for promoting healthy and inclusive research culture, which requires valuing the broad range of academic work and addressing biases in assessment practices. One of my goals, as a co-founder of the Helsinki Initiative, is that researchers are recognized and rewarded for the quality and impact of their contributions to science and society regardless of the language of communication. In Finland, Europe and globally, learned societies can and should be more strategically engaged in the advancement of responsible research and assessment practices.”
Instituto de Medicina Experimental, CONICET
“Under current academic assessment systems, the advancement of scientific careers around the world is not necessarily aligned with the resolution of local challenges. As a mid-career researcher working in Argentina and a member of the Global Young Academy, I am devoted in promoting open science and improving the incentive systems, and especially to raising awareness of their impact on the careers of young researchers. CoARA offers us a powerful platform to drive these changes.”
“In research assessment the difficult part often comes when conclusions of general discussions have to be implemented in procedures used in practice. The toolbox approach can be useful to cope with diversity of legal systems, disciplines and traditions found in the academic world.”
Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA)
“CoARA promotes a shared vision for an inclusive research culture by fostering dialogue, collaboration, and collective efforts to value the diversity of scientific ecosystems. This creates an opportunity to strengthen connections between science, policy, and society, driving meaningful reform in research assessment.”
Jagiellonian University
“Through my experiences in research and higher education, I have seen first-hand the need to improve research assessment practices. By striking a balance between a robust approach to peer-review and the responsible use of quantitative indicators, the nuanced evaluation needs of researchers and institutions may be more fully recognised. As the coordinator of the Polish National Chapter, I am also dedicated to reform on the national level, taking into account the views of different institutions through mutual exchange and by sharing best practices between international and local communities.”
Curtin University
“Reforming research assessment is one of the key levers for making positive change in knowledge production. Getting it right is crucial. CoARA is at the centre of that process building shared values, expertise and systems that will help us to make progress towards inclusive knowledge production systems for global communities.”
NWO Dutch Research Council
“The transition to open science requires rethinking research assessment and career evaluation systems. This in turn requires transforming research culture. Research funding organisations can play an important role in changing what is recognized and rewarded. But they must collaborate with research performing organizations to prevent conflicting policies that burden researchers. CoARA offers a unique platform to align policies and share best practices among organizations internationally.”
European Alliance for SSH
“We evaluate research for many reasons: knowledge development, influencing our societies and their economic and social progress, reward the accomplishments of bright individuals of all ages, who also educate our future generations. In my role as Director of the EASSH, I recognisethe fundamental role that CoARA is playing in Europe and beyond to harmonise a responsible approach to research evaluation.”
Previous Steering Board members served from 2022-2024 and played an essential role in the coalition’s foundational structure in the first phase of CoARA in their time as members.
1st Chair of CoARA
In order to guarantee a positive research culture in which the diversity of research practices is acknowledged based on important principles such as integrity, openness, collaboration and inclusiveness, a fundamental reform of research assessment is crucial. COARA aims to do just that.
“Research assessment systems need to be updated to help maximise the quality and impact of research. These updates should enable better recognition of diverse research activities, practices, and outputs, and bring research and society closer together. These changes should be made whilst fully embedding core scholarly values such as scientific rigour, autonomy, integrity, openness, and inclusiveness.”
“CoARA comes at a crucial time as there is a growing consensus that the assessment of research, and academic careers more broadly, requires rethinking. At Swansea University, we have embarked on a review of our academic career pathways and are committed to designing a system that recognises the broad contribution that colleagues make.”
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
” We all agree that we need to change the way we measure Science, why we don’t do it? – This was my statement in the Open Science Conference in April 2016, under the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU. Six years later, I think exactly the same. The WWW and the digital transformation changed our world, but we continue performing, funding and assessing research as we did in the last century. We need better science to address societal challenges and a different research system is not only possible but necessary. I am thrilled to continue the work initiated as chair of the Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP), now as a member of the CoARA Steering Board, I look forward to working with the rest of the CoARA SB members on the key challenges ahead.”
French National Centre for Scientific Research – CNRS
“It is crucial to change our practices in research assessment, both for improving the quality of research and for the achievement of open science. Promoting a diversity of profiles in research and taking into account a greater diversity of open access products from scientific activities is part of the required changes. Now we have to align our modification of practices for individual assessment among all organisations both inside Europe and all over the world.”
University of Vienna
“To have a successful career, most researchers are expected to publish in certain journals, and the most prestigious ones are usually in private hands. The research community has sleepwalked into a situation where decisions on who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who gets funded are effectively outsourced to corporations who use non-transparent and questionable means to increase the metrics that are so captivating to us. Changing entrenched mindsets is always hard, but CoARA is a real chance to remake assessment to serve researchers and to end the dysfunctional prestige game.”
University College Cork
“My main interest in the reform is the impact on early career researchers and improving inclusion, diversity, equality and access in research institutions.”
Max-Weber-Institut für Soziologie – Heidelberg University
“As a science-driven, bottom-up and inclusive coalition, CoARA offers tremendous opportunities for strengthening practices of research assessment that focus on the quality of research content while acknowledging a wide range of research outputs.”
“The development of this new research assessment system has the impact of research at its core and I appreciate that the initiative aims to extend globally by involving all continents. I am particularly interested in the biomedical area and in the development of a new system to assess all research related activities in this field in a broad sense, considering all aspects, from basic to translation research to policy-making and taking into account life sciences but also social sciences and humanities. To this aim, “research on research” and “research on research assessment”, with the development of indicators or activities that can assess the impact of research, is central. Finally, as the main results and impact of the reform will be seen in the future, PhD students being the future generation of Scientists, must be involved in all discussions and decisions.”
