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In recent years, a diverse range of initiatives to tackle the publish-or-perish rat race have coalesced into a renewed push to improve how careers in academia are assessed. Stefan Penders and Rita Morais explain the origins of the current impulse for change and explore what’s next.
Change is afoot.
As a result of new initiatives, not least the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), academic institutions across Europe are rethinking how they assess research, as well as researchers. Assessment practices are shifting to make room for qualitative assessment methods, and the diversity of academic talents is slowly but surely being recognised and rewarded. Yet with new assessment practices also come new challenges.
Some might say that change was inevitable.
Over the past few decades, we have built a scientific system that expects academics to engage in and be excellent at research, teaching, societal impact, leadership and management. That is not to mention more prosaic day-to-day responsibilities, from peer reviewing papers to mentoring students.
Yet what we actually reward is very different from these diverse expectations. When academic institutions reward their staff, it is usually based almost solely on performance in research, measured through quantitative metrics that focus on impact factors, h-indexes and total number of publications or citations. Pushing academics to stay on top of the publish-or-perish rat race incentivises dubious scientific practices, affects personal well-being and distracts the profession from fulfilling its diverse missions.
To tackle this, there has been a steady flow of initiatives to change the status quo and highlight how rewarding and recognising different skills and competencies shapes academic careers. Some early examples from the academic community, such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Leiden Manifesto, focused mainly on publication cultures.
This was an important start, that national initiatives in several European countries then expanded upon. For example:
But this movement extends far beyond Europe. For example, the Latin American Forum on Research Assessment (CLACSO-FOLEC) has worked extensively on facilitating dialogue across institutions. This has led to the development of responsible research assessment policies and practices across over 50 countries in the region.
All of these efforts provided fertile ground for the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), launched in 2022, which has quickly gained international traction. Through its ten commitments, CoARA asks for change in not only research assessment but also the assessment of academic careers. The Coalition’s large (and growing) membership shows that this need is felt across Europe and beyond.
Tellingly, this pressure for change in academic careers and research assessment frameworks is also mounting where European policies are made. Recent examples include two key recommendations from the Council of the European Union, which represents the governments of EU member states. First, the Council signed off on a European framework to attract and retain research, innovation and entrepreneurial talents in Europe in December 2023. Then in November 2024, ministers adopted a recommendation on attractive and sustainable careers in higher education.
The reform of research assessment, moving towards more comprehensive evaluation approaches, has also been an important part of the past (2022-2024) and current (2025-2027) European Research Area Policy Agendas, in which the European Commission, member states and relevant stakeholders engage in common dialogue and joint work towards shared goals.
Although the emphasis of CoARA is perhaps closer to research assessment than career assessment, the initiative does clearly call upon its members to “[r]ecognise the diversity of contributions to, and careers in, research in accordance with the needs and nature of the research”.
To support its members – and the academic world at large – in achieving this, CoARA established a Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment. With members from some 20 countries, this group has been able to draw from a wide range of international knowledge and experience. As one of its first activities, the working group developed a survey to scope the current status of academic career assessment. With nearly 200 detailed replies from universities and research centres, the survey provides a unique insight into the pace of change in Europe.
One conclusion is already clear: academic career assessment is changing. Many institutions are either considering assessment reform, or already actively implementing changes. When asked about the need to reform, a majority of survey respondents signal a similar concern: an overbearing focus on quantitative research performance at the cost of other areas of academic talent.
Universities and research centres are equally clear on the direction of the reform movement. Whereas research was previously the sole focus of assessment, the academic community envisions a future where the scope has widened to include education, societal impact and leadership. This further highlights the need for academic careers to reflect the diversity of profiles and roles of academics. And this widened scope of talent is furthermore to be assessed through qualitative means – in combination with responsible uses of quantitative metrics.
The movement to reform academic career assessment is on the rise, but it is not without its critics or challenges.
For example, some of our colleagues worry that an expanding scope of career assessment may lead to a new and impossible standard for academics to be good at everything. Likewise, there are concerns that a move away from bibliometric data such as the h-index or the journal impact factor equals less objective and more biased assessment. Leaving aside for now the many objections to the objectivity of bibliometric data, these points of view demonstrate the need to properly contextualise and embed qualitative assessment tools, such as narrative CVs, within organisations.
After all, as much as it is about changing concrete elements of how academic careers are assessed, this movement is also about changing the very culture of assessment in institutions. This is also part of the broader and much needed reflection on how to ensure that academic careers remain attractive and sustainable in the long term, as recently argued in EUA’s ‘Key principles for attractive and sustainable academic careers’. If reform is to be successful and durable, it is important to take challenges and diverging views seriously.
Therefore, any reform of academic career assessment must be carried out in close cooperation and dialogue with academics themselves. This means engaging academics at all seniority levels in the design and implementation of reforms, as well as listening to valid concerns.
Indeed, the use of new, qualitative assessment methodologies leads to larger questions about the nature of excellence. What is ‘outstanding teaching’? Does ‘good research’ mean the same to an economist as it does to a legal scholar? And how do we really measure an academic’s societal impact?
These are fundamental questions that go to the core of academic careers, assessment – and academia as a whole. Even though there are no easy answers, we should not shy away from the challenge. Only by cooperation – across organisations, disciplines, research cultures and borders – can we hope to find answers.
