Impact of COARA’s planned alternative metrics on research assessment

Determine whether the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (COARA) initiative’s planned establishment of alternative research assessment metrics, as described in the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (RRA), will improve or worsen the integrity and effectiveness of research assessment practices and incentive structures in academia.

Background

The paper discusses resources and initiatives relevant to combating fraudulent publishing and reforming research assessment. In the “Other resources” subsection, the authors reference COARA, an international effort aiming to reform research assessment by moving beyond traditional bibliometrics.

While acknowledging COARA’s plan to introduce alternative metrics that measure diverse scientific contributions, the authors explicitly state uncertainty about whether these changes will have a positive or negative effect on the broader research assessment landscape. This raises a concrete, unresolved question about the net impact of COARA’s proposed metrics.