18 Feb 2026
CoARA launches community-owned library of tools for reform
On 18 February 2026, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) launched the 'CoARA Collection', a community-owned library of tools for reform. CoARA regards this as a milestone in its development moving from shared principles towards concrete, actionable reform.
As a coalition built on collective action and mutual learning, CoARA’s key communities, including Working Groups, National Chapters, and Cascade Funding beneficiaries, have been developing tools and resources over the past three years. These resources serve as the foundation for the CoARA Collection. This community-owned resource library consolidates tools to support institutions in their reform journeys, putting CoARA Commitments into action.
First presented to members at the CoARA General Assembly in December 2025, the Collection is now open to the wider research community. It brings together the first outputs developed by CoARA Working Groups, alongside foundational third-party resources that informed the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA). The Collection will also feature outputs produced by CoARA National Chapters and Cascade Funding beneficiaries.
The CoARA Collection is a streamlined, openly accessible resource library that consolidates outputs endorsed either by the CoARA Steering Board or by the wider CoARA Community.
The Endorsement Framework recognises that reform requires different kinds of resources for different purposes. As such, the Collection includes two main categories of endorsed outputs:
- Actionable policy documents
These documents provide concrete, practical pathways to implement reform. They may include frameworks, guidelines, recommendations, or tools designed to be directly used by institutions, funders, or other research actors. They are endorsed by the CoARA Steering Board. Their purpose is to provide actionable steps for the implementation of reform. They can be used for institutional policy reform, assessment redesign, operational guidance.
2. Evidence-based review documents
These outputs provide context, analysis, and insight into why reform is needed and how it can be approached. They may include surveys, landscape analyses, guiding principles, conceptual frameworks, or reflective reports. These documents are endorsed by the CoARA community. Their purpose is to inform discussion, learning, and reflection to strengthen the shared understanding of the need for reform. They can be used for surveys, guiding principles, or literature reviews.
Outputs in the CoARA Collection are categorised by the type of output, the relevant CoARA community that produced the output (i.e., Working Group, National Chapter, and third parties such as Cascade Funding beneficiaries), and by the relevant commitments that the outputs address. As such, the Collection aims to provide pathways for reform for the wider research community to transform the CoARA Commitments into collective action.
For more information: