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Working Group: Reforming Academic Career Assessment

Recent Activities

Updated 26 March 2025:

On 18–19 March, the CoARA – Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment held a hybrid meeting in Oslo, generously hosted by Universities Norway and the University of Oslo.

The meeting kicked off with engaging presentations:

🔹 University of South-Eastern Norway & NMBU – Norwegian University of Life Sciences – sharing their experience implementing NOR-CAM
🔹 NIFU – Nordic institute for studies in Innovation, Research and Education – introducing NY Eval, a new research project on CoARA implementation in Norway
🔹 Federation of Finnish Learned Societies – presenting the new FIN-CAM
🔹 UiO RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion – sharing how CoARA principles are applied in practice

📺 All presentations are available on the CoARA YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/Vm8OAIS3M60 

🛠️ The meeting continued with fruitful discussions on the development of the Academic Career Assessment (ACA) toolbox.

🙌 A big thank you to all participants for the inspiring contributions!

Click here for the PDF of the presentations!

Latest Resources

Updated 13 January 2025:

Recent outputs from ACA:

Contact Us!

Interested in joining the WG or have an inquiry about our activities? Please email the contact below.

Contact: coara.wg.aca@gmail.com

WG Objectives

The Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment (ACA) is based on the premise that ACA systems should adequately reflect the different tasks, functions and roles academics fulfil over the course of their career. The aim is to broaden the reflection on research assessment to ACA, taking into account the full range of work conducted by academics in research, teaching
and learning, innovation, management/leadership and service to society.

The WG brings together a critical mass of academic stakeholders to 1) define the objectives and principles of reforming ACA, from the perspectives of institutions and academic staff being assessed, and to 2) develop an adaptable toolbox for ACA, considering all university missions and the broad scope of activities, skills and competences of academic staff at different stages of their career. The toolbox will be flexible, sustainable and cater for different institutional profiles and national contexts. It will also provide room for a diversity of career focuses and trajectories.

This WG allows for comprehensive and systematic dialogue on the objectives and principles of reforming ACA, with a large number of organisations with different profiles, from different countries, with varying degrees of autonomy and at different stages in their career assessment reform. The group comprises over 30 members representing the diversity of stakeholders involved in reforming ACA (e.g. national and European university associations, individual universities, researchers’ organisations, learned societies, research centres, agencies for the evaluation of universities, research institutes). This WG is a collegial and safe environment for organisations to share experiences, best practices, challenges and unexpected outcomes when reforming ACA.

The Working Group is co-chair by the European University Association (EUA) and the Young Academy of Europe (YAE).

Activities

Updated 4 September 2024:

  • The Working Group held a workshop on 25 June 2024 to present the key outcomes from its large-scale survey and case studies on both organisational and broader national and international initiatives aimed at reforming academic career assessment. In this workshop, participants also had the opportunity to provide further input to the Working Group on potential lessons learned, as well as share experiences from reforms in their own context. Please click here for the recording of the webinar.
  • The Working Group is currently extracting the lessons learned from its survey and case studies outcomes. The lessons learned, case studies and survey data will be released after the summer period. The Working Group will then initiate the co-design process for a toolbox for academic career assessment addressed to higher education institutions. 
  • Workshop ‘Reforming Academic Career Assessment: current insights and future directions’, held on 25 June 2024. Please click here for the recording.

 

Previous workshops:

  • The Working Group held a webinar on 4 March 2024 to present its goals and ongoing activities. The webinar also included a reflection from different organisations on their reform processes. The recording of the webinar is available in CoARA’s YouTube channel. 
  • The Working Group has recently conducted a survey on existing initiatives of reviewing academic career assessment addressed to universities and research organisations worldwide. Case studies on national and international level initiatives of reforming academic career assessment are also being collected. These activities will inform the development of an online repository of case studies on academic career assessment and a collection of lessons learned. 
  • The Working Group organised a workshop on 25 June, 15.00-17.00 CEST, titled “Reforming Academic Career Assessment: current insights and future directions”. The replay is available on CoARA’s YouTube channel. The presentation can be downloaded here.
Download the Presentation

Affiliated organisations

 

  • European University Association (EUA) – Europe
  • Young Academy of Europe (YAE) – Europe
University associations/networks
  • Alliance of Rhine-Main Universities – Germany
  • Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (SUHF) – Sweden
  • Berlin University Alliance – Germany
  • Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland (CRASP) – Poland
  • Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (Crue) – Spain
  • European University Association-Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) – Europe
  • Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR) – Belgium
  • France Universités – France
  • Hungarian Rectors’ Conference (HRC) – Hungary
  • Lithuanian University Rectors’ Conference – Lithuania
  • swissuniversities – Switzerland
  • Universities Norway – Norway
  • Universities of The Netherlands (UNL) – Netherlands
  • Young European Research Universities Network (YERUN) – Europe
Individual universities
  • Nicolaus Copernicus University – Poland
  • NOVA University Lisbon – Portugal
  • South East Technological University – Ireland
  • Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje – North Macedonia
  • Technical University of Braunschweig – Germany
  • Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA) – France
  • University Medical Center Groningen – Netherlands
  • University of Graz – Austria
  • University of Rijeka (UNIRI) – Croatia
  • University of Ferrara – Italy
  • University of Messina – Italy
  • University of Padua – Italy
  • Masaryk Univerzity – Czechia
  • Corvinus University of Budapest – Hungary
  • University of Strathclyde – United Kingdom
 
Associations of research centres
  • EU-LIFE, alliance of leading research institutes in the life sciences in Europe – Europe
Associations of researchers
  • European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc) – Europe
  • European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) – Europe
  • Global Young Academy (GYA) – Global
Learned societies
  • Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) – Finland
National/regional authorities
  • Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR) – Italy
Not-for-profit organisations
  • CRAC-Vitae – Global
  • UK Reproducibility Network
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