The DIVERSE+ proposal (Advancing Diverse and Qualitative Research Assessment Across Europe) has been awarded as one of the 28 successful applications (out of 130 submissions) of the CoARA Second Boost call. It is a 1-year project with a total funding of € 39.000,00, and it is led by the Łódź University of Technology (Poland), in collaboration with Linköping University (Sweden) and the University of Aveiro (Portugal), all ECIU University members.

DIVERSE+ aims to pilot a structured scheme for exchanging practices among these three ECIU institutions, facilitating mutual learning and mutual improvement for two CoARA core commitments: recognition of diversity of contributions to research, and the research assessment based primarily on qualitative evaluation. The results and outputs will be replicable by the other ECIU partners and provide, at a larger scale, a reinforcement of COARA commitments in a European University alliance.

The participation in this call was endorsed by the ECIU Vice Presidents for Research Group, which has recently decided to set up a CoARA working group with the specific task of promoting knowledge sharing, providing mutual expertise and supporting ECIU institutions that are not proceeding at the same pace concerning the CoARA commitments.

In the proposal authors’ own words, the project sets a course for a stronger collaboration and mutual learning among ECIU members in terms of reforming the assessment of research and researchers.

‘We are very excited about the upcoming opportunity for close collaboration on such important issues for the academic community as the assessment of research quality and researchers,’ says Agnieszka Dybala-Defratyka, the Head of the Research Support Centre at Lodz University of Technology and coordinator of the CoARA project.

‘Each of our institutions brings different experiences to the table, and we hope that this opportunity for open exchange of both good and less successful practices will serve as a starting point for potentially new solutions.’

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