Research Assessment

VTT believes that enhancing the researcher assessment from publication based impact metrics to broader range of metrics and indicators is a proposal to be supported. However, the content of the CoARA agreement is not representative of all the RPOs because it is mostly based in the way universities operate, and the commercial side of RTOs is not included. Therefore, the signing of the CoARA agreement and committing to those principles and disclosing any change plans should not be mandatory. Education is mentioned but not anything about industry collaboration or IPR matters. As such it has not been agreed by all RPOs. Many RTOs have already broad and balanced assessment frameworks and any major change is not needed. Also many RTOs are private by their legal forms and they cannot disclose their assessment frameworks.
The planned study should include also the organisations outside the CoARA and operating working groups to be representative.

The reform of research and researcher assessment serves several cross-cutting goals related to e.g. attractiveness research careers, equality and inclusiveness, open science and knowledge valorisation. Finland is one of the pioneer countries in the assessment reform. The University of Oulu works actively in all national forums and in CoARA in order to harmonize the new assessment principles. The goal of the University of Oulu is that the assessment of research and researchers recognize all types of research outputs, practices and activities, and take into account different career paths and personal circumstances when assessing the quality and impact of research. The University of Oulu signed the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment and joined the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment in 2022 and was the first university of the signatories to publish a CoARA Action Plan.

As such a reform takes time and is not immediately translated into new practices, we see that the new ERA action is needed to develop and share practices, monitor the progress, identify challenges at different levels and additional support measures that may still be required. In addition to the expected results of ERA Action 3, the University of Oulu wants to highlight the need to harmonize the new assessment principles and methods. Although organizations must have freedom of action, sharing best practices and harmonizing principles is of paramount importance for the success of the reform.

Assessment practices in Finland are already quite responsible, but one notable challenge in the reform is long-established practices and assessment culture which stresses quantity (especially of publications) over quality. In addition, the national funding model for the Finnish universities places an emphasis on the quantity of publications.

Hanken School of Economics as signatory of CoARA is committed to actions required by the agreement. Although individual research organisations have the responsibility of defining their assessment criteria and processes and are in charge of implementing reforms, we could see here a possibility to promote certain actions inside university alliances. Obviously, this initiative is closely tied to attractive and sustainable researcher careers, and synergies between these two should not be forgotten.

ERA Action Research Assessment on hyvin linjassa sen kanssa, mitä Suomessa kansallisestikin jo tehdään. Toimijoiden osalta tekstistä jää hieman epäselväksi, kuka esim kansallisesti monitoroi toimia. National authorities kohdassa viimeisen lauseen rooli on tällä hetekellä Suomessa TSV:llä, sopiiko se National authority toimijan alle?: National authorities play an important role, by helping to develop the policies and legislative framework necessary for, and which encourage and support reforms of research assessment. They also facilitate coordination between stakeholders at national or regional level.
Kohdassa Why do we need this action? CoARA:n määritelmä “CoARA, a coalition of European research funders and research performers” on aika kapea. CoARA on globaali koalitio ja siinä on myös muita tietelliseen tutkimukseen liittyviä yhteisöjä mukana. CoARA itse määrittelee osallistujat näin: research funding organisations, research performing organisations, national/regional assessment authorities and agencies, as well as associations of the above organisations, learned societies and other relevant organisations, signatories of the Agreement.
Tekstissä ei tuoda esille lainkaan, että valmisteluprosessiin on osallistunut yhtä merkittävissä rooleissa EUA ja Science Europe sekä yli 300 organisaatiota valmisteluvaiheessa.

The ERA action text focuses strongly on CoARA to which Turku UAS has committed as CoARA signatory. Nevertheless, as VTT commented, it would be good to have more emphasis on industry collaboration. This can be concretely shown e.g. in supporting diverse research career paths.