TIER Survey and Development of Self-Assessment Tool

The TIER survey reached 1,682 researchers and staff from Research Performing and Funding Organisations across Europe. The findings are unambiguous: traditional metrics — publications, citations, H-index — dominate perceived evaluation, while teaching, peer review, data sharing, and open access consistently rank at the bottom. The gap between the two exceeds 1.2 points on a 5-point scale, in both institutional and funding contexts.

Women are more than 3 times more likely than men to perceive gender bias in the definition of excellence — regardless of age, career stage, or role. Women also perceive evaluation as more demanding overall, and the gap is largest precisely for the criteria least rewarded by current systems: open science and broader contributions. 50% of respondents report that non-linear career paths negatively impact evaluation, rising to 60% among women. The most requested reforms are career gap protections, best practice guidelines, and bias detection tools — yet only 25% feel that narrative CVs currently carry real weight in practice.

The conclusion is simple: there is an entire layer of work that holds academia together — and we are not evaluating so valorizing it.

What TIER is building:

The Self-Assessment Toolkit. TIER is finalising a self-assessment toolkit for RPOs and RFOs — a structured, non-judgmental guide to help institutions understand where they stand and what they can do to improve. A dedicated web interface and downloadable PDF outputs will make it practical and accessible. A complementary institutional survey has just concluded data collection. We are also developing, with psychologists, a tool to measure unconscious bias in evaluation — work that will continue beyond our September 2026 deadline.