EU CoARA Cascade Funding Program: BIH advances research assessment infrastructure

The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) is awarding the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité nearly €60,000 to advance the development of a transparent and fair infrastructure for evaluating research groups. To this end, BIH researchers are expanding the existing MERIT portal for appointments as part of the new “MERIT BIH Groups” project. BIH is one of only 28 institutes across Europe to receive funding under the competitive CoARA Cascade Funding Program. CoARA supports institutional reform initiatives that promote the transition to fairer and more meaningful research assessment procedures.

The MERIT portal is a web-based tool for the appointment process of new professorships and has already changed Charité's hiring practices thanks to new evaluation criteria with a stronger focus on transparency, fairness, quality, and impact. The acronym MERIT stands for “Mechanisms of Robust and Innovative Research Assessment in Translational Research” and already encompasses a number of successful projects. Now, researchers from the BIH research group “Incentives and Responsible Research,” led by Dr. Miriam Kip, want to extend the successful tool to the evaluation of internal research groups.

The MERIT-BIH-Groups project will develop the improved evaluation criteria and indicators in connection with the BIH's translational ecosystem and integrate the evaluation cycles into the existing reporting systems. In addition to traditional indicators such as publication performance or third-party funding, this also includes whether stakeholders such as patients are involved in the research and how strongly collaborations with other research groups, for example, are established. These evaluation criteria will be expanded and adapted to the different focuses of the working groups at the BIH. In the future, research work will not only be recognized if it is frequently cited within a discipline, but also if it has practical benefits for research or society and contributes to the BIH's mission. Researchers are also developing methods to track the progress of research groups over the long term. Ultimately, the project aims to contribute to the development of common tools and practices in the broader CoARA ecosystem.

National and international impact

The EU's CoARA cascade funding program accounts for more than half of the total budget of the CoARA Boost project and supports at least 50 organizations across Europe in implementing reforms in the field of research evaluation. “The selection of the BIH underscores the institute's leadership role in promoting evidence-based, equitable research evaluation practices”, says Dr. Miriam Kip.

The project has started in September 2025 and will run for one year. The results will serve as a guide for institutional learning, support, and strategy, while also providing valuable insights for the international research evaluation community.