Published 25/09/2024
EARMA is the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs). We represent the group of professionals that support and enable research, working closely with and supporting researchers. Our members also have strategic responsibilities including planning and research culture. As such our commitment to CoARA is mainly in enabling, compliance, and advocacy; however we also directly support research into research management, evaluate conference abstract proposals and bestow awards to EARMA members during our conference. Our commitment to CoARA also reflects these aspects.
As a signatory of CoARA, EARMA addresses the ten commitments as follows:
1. Recognise the diversity of contributions to, and careers in, research in accordance with the needs and nature of the research. In addition to valuing all contributions of types of researchers, we are also advocates for the various supporting roles, focussing on research managers and administrators. We will be incorporating the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) into our assessment and publication processes for example in evaluating abstract submissions in our Annual Conference.
2. Base research assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation for which peer review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators. For our own RMA awards and our Annual Conference contributions, we evaluate proposals through peer review informed by a few quantitative indicators.
3. Abandon inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal- and publication-based metrics, in particular inappropriate uses of Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and h-index. We advocate for only using appropriate metrics to support research performance evaluation and in particular debunk metrics that do not measure what is important and those that try to imbue individual information from group averages.
4. Avoid the use of rankings of research organisations in research assessment. We do not use or advocate institutional rankings.
5. Commit resources to reforming research assessment as is needed to achieve the organisational changes committed to Research assessment is a core competence of RMAs, EARMA itself does not need to change in this respect.
6. Review and develop research assessment criteria, tools and processes. Our awards and their evaluation, and our conference contribution selection process, have been developed by a group of RMAs with expertise in this area, an annual review is also undertaken.
7. Raise awareness of research assessment reform and provide transparent communication, guidance, and training on assessment criteria and processes as well as their use. A subset of our trainings and annual conference includes sessions on research assessment, and a number of our members have been involved in the INORMS More Than Our Rank initiative, and the development of the Metric Tide report.
8. Exchange practices and experiences to enable mutual learning within and beyond the Coalition. As above this is core to EARMA, raising the knowledge, skills, and expertise of RMAs around Europe, who in turn can have a positive influence within their institutions.
9. Communicate progress made on adherence to the Principles and implementation of the Commitments. We are committed to improving the research and research support landscape, and communicate the ethos of CoARA widely among members and policy makers in Europe.
10. Evaluate practices, criteria and tools based on solid evidence and the state-of-the- art in research on research, and make data openly available for evidence gathering and research. EARMA is highly active in research on research management, a field related to research on research. We are also partners with the Journal of Research Management and Administration where members can submit articles for peer review and subsequent open access publication.
In summary EARMA is fully aligned with CoARA and we seek to support ethical research assessment and advocate for good practice across Europe in partnership with other national RMA associations, and, through INORMS members, around the world.
All news
