Updated 1 April 2025

Open Meeting on 3 September 2025 Hosted by Health Data Research UK (HDR UK)

Thank you to all UK members that applied to host a UK CoARA National Chapter Open Meeting and congratulations to Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) who will host the UK CoARA National Chapter in-person meeting at the Wellcome Trust, London, UK, on 3 September 2025.

UK CoARA National Chapter at RESSH 2025

The UK CoARA National Chapter will be presenting “Organisational barriers to participation in the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment: Lessons from the UK CoARA National Chapter” at RESSH 2025 conference of the European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (ENRESSH), Helsinki, May 19-21, 2025.

Save the Date for Upcoming UK National Chapter Open Meetings!

Please save the dates for upcoming National Chapter Open Meetings & Steering Meetings:

• 4 June 2025 2pm-4pm
• 3 September 2025 10am-3pm
• 4 December 2025 10:30am-12:30pm

Please join our mailing list https://forms.office.com/e/KG7XJjJXVq to find out more.

Updated 1 April 2025

UK CoARA National Chapter Open Meeting 17 March 2025

The UK CoARA National Chapter hosted an Open Meeting on 17 March 2025, which included a deep dive into:

• CoARA Commitment to “avoid the use of rankings of research organizations in research assessment” by Elizabeth Gadd, Loughborough University, and Emma Butler, University of Derby.
• The second round of CoARA Boost Cascade Funding opportunities with first round award holders Steve Johnson, Leeds Trinity University, and Julie North and Lisa Andrews, Health Sciences University.
• Recap from Stuart King, Loughborough University co-lead, who represented the UK CoARA National Chapter at the 2nd CoARA National Chapter Exchange Forum, Bonn, 13-14 March, 2025. Feedback from Stuart was extremely positive, particularly the diversity of Institutions across Europe involved, the range of actions and approaches to reform research assessment, and the interest of non-UK Chapters in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Call for Expression of Interest for Additional Co-Lead for the UK CoARA National Chapter

If you’re interested in becoming a co-lead for the UK CoARA National Chapter, please email co-leads Stuart King at S.King4@lboro.ac.uk, Grace Murkett at grace.murkett@strath.ac.uk, or Anna Seager at a.l.seager@swansea.ac.uk for more information.

Latest Action Plans

Please see the links below to read the latest co-lead CoARA Action Plans from the UK:

• Loughborough University, https://zenodo.org/records/10138254
• Swansea University, https://zenodo.org/records/12734220
• University of Strathclyde, https://zenodo.org/records/10017553

Welcome to the UK CoARA National Chapter

Welcome to the UK National Chapter, Brunel University London, Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (SRUK/CERU), and University of Suffolk, our newest UK CoARA signatories.

Cascade Funding Projects from the UK

Secondly, the UK has had good success with the Cascade funding call during the autumn 2024 – 3 of the 25 projects funded in the first round were from UK organisations:

• Health Sciences University – Catalysing research assessment reform in a small and specialist university: Reimagining our Academic Framework and evaluating its implementation in a revised academic performance review exercise
• Leeds Trinity University – Assessing the quality of ‘non-standard’ research outputs in Business and Management: an institutional pilot study
• Swansea University – Evaluating the Impact of Reformed Research Assessment and the use of Narrative CV’s in Academic Career Promotion at Swansea University.

Congratulations to those successful organisations! We’ll be hoping to have some updates from these projects at a future National Chapter meeting in 2025.

The UK National Chapter provides a forum for UK organisations involved in research to put the CoARA principles into practice. It has two primary objectives:

1. Facilitating meaningful change by supporting member and signatory organisations to reflect on ambitions for reform of research assessment and put principles into practice, e.g. through the development and implementation of action plans.

2. Promoting systemic reform by engaging with those outside of the Coalition and supporting potential UK CoARA members and signatories to understand the implications of signing and/or joining CoARA.

It is anticipated that this initial mission of the Chapter will expand as the number of UK CoARA members/signatories increases. In time and with proper resourcing, the remit of the Chapter could widen to address particular needs in the UK R&D sector. This could include supporting the development of a renewed UK Forum for Responsible Research Assessment
(replacing the previous UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics as recommended in ‘Harnessing the Metric Tide’). There are clear synergies between this and a CoARA National Chapter in terms of providing a forum for consultation, deliberation, advocacy and evidence-informed advice related to responsible research assessment.

• The UK CoARA National Chapter was established on 20 February and had its first Steering Group meeting on 20 March to agree priorities, exchange practice and determine next steps. Moving forward, the UK National Chapter plans to deliver information sessions for potential CoARA members, organise quarterly members’ meetings, coordinate input to CoARA working groups, and engage with other organisations involved in research assessment reform activities.
• The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), a member of the UK National chapter, released a report on 12 March that describes the UK landscape of responsible research assessment, with a particular focus on open research. The report reveals that around three quarters of the 60 institutions that responded to the survey are taking strategic action to reform how they assess researchers, demonstrating the impact of initiatives such as DORA, Leiden and CoARA. More information on the report can be found on the UKRN website.
• Feeding into the first UK National Chapter Steering Group meeting on 20 March, the University of Strathclyde hosted panel discussion on ‘Where next for responsible research assessment?’ involving Stephen Curry, former Chair of DORA, Neil Jacobs, UK Reproducibility Network, and Emma Day, Vitae. A recording of this discussion is available on YouTube.
• In April 2024, a report on ‘Insights from The Festival of Hidden REF’ was published, outlining the experiences and processes underpinning the first Hidden REF exercise in 2021, plus the discussions held at the inaugural Festival of Hidden REF in Bristol, UK, on 21 September 2023. Central to the Hidden REF’s mission is the recognition of the various ways in which high-quality research is disseminated (“non-traditional outputs”) and enabled ( “hidden roles”). This report demonstrates how non-traditional outputs could be better recognised in mainstream research assessment exercises.