CoARA Spotlight Series: June 2026 Programme
The CoARA Spotlight series provides a platform for mutual exchange, showcasing presentations from CoARA members driving research assessment reform, followed by a Q&A session. In the spring 2026 edition, the CoARA Spotlight series will feature presentations from CoARA Working Groups and Cascade Funding projects.
The June Spotlight series will explore key topics including:
- Tools to support open infrastructures for responsible research assessment
- Ethical implications of AI in research assessment
- Development of informational videos through the Cascade Funding project CoARA ExPECT across key themes in research assessment reform
Spotlight Series Schedule
- CoARA Spotlight: Tools to Support Open Infrastructures
- Thursday, 4 June 2026 at 15h-16h (CEST)
- Natalia Manola and Angeliki Tzouganatou (OpenAire) will present the main outputs from the CoARA Working Group Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment (WG OI4RRA) that were recently endorsed by the CoARA Steering Board and the CoARA Community. The series of endorsed outputs include strategic recommendations, a checklist for research organisations, and a conceptual architecture for implementing open infrastructures. Together this series of outputs provide robust tools to support institutions to implement open infrastructures for responsible research assessment. For the full library of endorsed outputs, explore the CoARA Collection.
- The presentation will be followed by an interactive Q&A discussion that all participants are invited to join!
- Click here to register
- CoARA Spotlight: Ethical Implications of AI in Research Assessment
- Friday, 12 June 2026 at 15h-16h (CEST)
- Matt Coler (University of Groningen), from the Working Group Ethics and Research Integrity Policy in Responsible Research Assessment for Data and Artificial Intelligence (WG ERIP) will examine the ethics of AI in research assessment from a 2026 vantage point. Building on the ERIP essay, co-authored with Susanne van den Hooff and the October 2025 ERIP whitepaper on AI-driven science futures, the presentation will cover three things that look different in 2026: the new empirical evidence on LLM-assisted peer review from AAAI and NeurIPS, what the EU AI Act’s 2 August 2026 high-risk deadline means for institutions, and the infrastructure CoARA-ERIP is shipping in response.
- A Q&A will follow the presentation, turning to a discussion focused on what the CoARA community should do about all of this in the year ahead.
- Click here to register
- CoARA Spotlight: Cascade Funding Project CoARA ExPECT Video Series
- Monday, 15 June 2026 at 11h-12h (CEST)
- Miki Kallio (University Oulu) and Stefan Riedel (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), from the CoARA ExPECT Teaming Project of Cascade Funding Call 1, will present the main outputs of the project. The CoARA ExPECT project, involving project partners University of Oulu, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and Tampere University, aimed to raise awareness of the need for reform. Through the project a series of 19 informational videos were produced to comprehensively cover key themes including: strategic planning, assessment criteria and tools, evaluator guidelines, the misuse of metrics, and more. The presentation will deep dive into the overall CoARA ExPECT project and outline how and why the videos were developed. The video catalogue has been recently endorsed by the CoARA Steering Board and is available on the CoARA Collection.
- The presentation will be followed by an interactive Q&A discussion that all participants are invited to join!
- Click here to register