Towards an International Reform of Research Assessment: The Action Plan for Implementing CoARA Principles

The University of Bologna has approved the Action Plan for the implementation of CoARA principles.

With over 650 research organizations, funding bodies, policymakers, and research infrastructures from more than 50 countries, CoARA has established the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA), a significant accord for reforming research evaluation. The University of Bologna, together with the CNR, leads the Italian Chapter of the coalition, which currently has 50 participants among the Italian signatories of the ARRA.

The new Action Plan, approved by the university's Governing Bodies, is designed to align the university's research evaluation practices with CoARA principles. Key points include promoting Open Science, recognizing a broader range of research contributions, emphasizing qualitative evaluation, and the need to renew tools, criteria, and processes related to research assessment.

In its initial phase, the Action Plan involves forming a Working Group to gather input from departments, develop a more detailed version of the Action Plan, and oversee its implementation. The university also commits to contributing to the international debate on fundamental research issues such as transparency and reproducibility, interdisciplinarity, and academic freedom, as well as promoting and disseminating Open Science practices. Additionally, it will experiment with new ways to monitor knowledge exchange activities and their societal impact.

The second phase includes a series of training initiatives for young researchers, focusing on the continuous improvement of research quality. There will also be efforts to foster debate on applying CoARA principles in key areas: recruitment committee guidelines, criteria used in the university's research evaluation process, criteria for salary class allocation, and criteria for resource distribution within departments.