FWF Publishes CoARA Action Plan

The FWF has been working to improve research assessment for years. The recently published CoARA Action Plan provides an overview of these steps. The aim of CoARA is to make the evaluation of scientific research more transparent, fairer, and more qualitative.
March 26, 2025
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The FWF supports the international CoARA network together with a large number of other scientific organizations. © CoARA

The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has published its CoARA Action Plan, which sets out the ongoing measures and steps the FWF is taking to improve scientific evaluation. The FWF joined the global Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) in 2022. CoARA aims to fundamentally reform research assessment at an international level and is now supported by over 700 organizations.

Improvements in research assessment

The Action Plan gives an overview of the FWF’s developments over the past 20 years and shows that the FWF already implemented many of the key principles introduced by initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which the FWF signed in 2013, and CoARA at an early stage. The FWF is constantly learning from previous experience and continues to promote the further development of transparent, fair, and quality-oriented scientific review in all of its processes.

The Action Plan addresses six key topics:

  • Bias Prevention – avoiding bias in the review process
  • Evaluation Criteria – further development of the review criteria for research proposals
  • Equal Opportunities – promoting equal opportunities in research
  • Open Science – strengthening open access to research results
  • Integrity/Ethics – ensuring academic integrity and ethical standards
  • Cooperation – strengthening international cooperation

The FWF CoARA Action Plan is available for download as a PDF file.

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