This proposal is a major effort between SUHF, the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions, and national research funders in Sweden to work together to find common grounds on the definitions and criteria how to assess research in the future. While SUHF and the Swedish Research Council (SRC) have since 2021 arranged annual workshops where the whole sector have been involved in discussions on defining the major obstacles, there is now an emergent need to move forward.

In 2022, SUHF appointed a working group with the task of developing a national framework for merit assessment at Swedish higher education institutions, triggered also by the call for an updated Open Science strategy. Since this work is not only focusing on research merits but university teachers and researchers’ full-ranged achievements, major funders are not actively participating in this work. Thus, there is a need for parallel work focusing more clearly on research merits and promoting the exchange of experiences and models for successful management and implementation of new standards between universities and funders. Therefore, Swedish signatories of CoARA have agreed to work at the national level to identifying common standards for assessment of research. We see advantages in gathering the overall national work together with the National chapter, and we intend to actively contribute our on-going work and implemented “good examples” with the whole CoARA family.