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Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment

CoARA

TU Dortmund University has been a member of the international CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) initiative since spring 2024. A catalog of measures to promote qualitative research assessment at our university has been developed.

CoARA aims to reverse the trend in the academic system: with the growing availability of bibliometric data, there has been an increasing tendency in recent years to prematurely measure research by quantitative indicators of the publication system, such as the number of articles and citations or indicators such as the Journal Impact Factor and the Hirsch Index. This not only threatens to push the quality of research performance into the background, but also to ignore the diversity of subject-specific performance characteristics.

TU Dortmund University wants to change this by joining the CoARA initiative. The primary goal is to rely heavily on the qualitative judgment of experts, the peer review, when evaluating research and to supplement this with quantitative indicators in a responsible manner. The aim is to adequately take into account research achievements beyond publications such as patents, specialist conferences or partnerships and also to recognize the diversity of career paths.

Over the course of 2025, measures were developed to implement CoARA's goals at TU Dortmund University. These are set out in an action plan adopted by the Rectorate and the Department Conference.

The University Alliance Ruhr is also a member of CoARA.

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