On 2 June, ALLEA, on behalf of CoARA, together with the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and FORCE 11, organised a joint workshop in Singapore, co-located with the FORCE2026 Conference and hosted by Singapore Management University (SMU).
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) have been at the heart of European research excellence for more than three decades, supporting generations of researchers, fostering international collaboration, and strengthening research capacity across all disciplines.
Amid ongoing negotiations on the next Horizon Europe Framework Programme (FP10) and the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), ALLEA has joined a coalition of leading European research and higher education organisations in calling on policymakers to preserve and strengthen the programme’s unique role in developing research talent for the long-term resilience and competitiveness of Europe.
The joint statement, MSCA: Research Talent is Europe’s Strategic Advantage, published on 29 June, argues that MSCA must remain a bottom-up, discipline-agnostic, researcher-driven programme within Pillar I of Horizon Europe. Rather than being redirected with top-down themes towards short-term labour market or industrial priorities, the programme should continue to invest in early- and mid-career researchers (EMCRs) across all scientific fields. This openness has been fundamental to MSCA’s success, enabling scientific breakthroughs, nurturing international networks, and ensuring Europe remains an attractive destination for research talent.
The statement also highlights the growing demand for MSCA funding, noting that many outstanding researchers and projects continue to go underfunded despite the programme’s proven impact. The signatories therefore urge European leaders not to redesign a model that works, but instead to increase investment so that MSCA can be strengthened to cultivate the knowledge, talent, and scientific capabilities on which Europe’s long-term competitiveness depends.
By co-signing this statement alongside fellow European research organisations, ALLEA reaffirms its commitment to protecting excellence-driven research, supporting early- and mid-career researchers, and ensuring that Europe continues to invest in the people whose ideas will shape tomorrow’s scientific and societal breakthroughs.
This is the second joint statement that ALLEA has issued on the MSCA. In June 2025, ALLEA joined 16 European research organisations, led by Coimbra Group, EU-LIFE and YERUN, in issuing a Statement calling on the European Commission and Member States to preserve the bottom-up structure of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), in response to a proposal to introduce directionality in the 2026–2027 Work Programme by steering project calls toward predefined areas.
Other ALLEA Initiatives to Support the MSCA
In May, ALLEA’s Science Policy Standing Committee submitted feedback to the European Commission’s Call for Input on the future development of the MSCA in FP10, reiterating that the core principles of scientific excellence, bottom-up competition, and openness across all disciplines should remain fundamental characteristics of the programme. Some highlights from ALLEA’s reflections on how to strengthen the MSCA include:
On 13 May, in the context of the ongoing consultation on the European Research Area (ERA) Act, ALLEA joined forces with EIFL, IFLA, LIBER, OPERAS, and SPARC Europe to issue a joint Statement calling for renewed political commitment to Open Science as a cornerstone of a strong, competitive, and resilient European Research Area.
The Statement was issued on behalf of thousands of European universities, research-performing organisations, libraries, scholarly infrastructures, and academies of sciences and humanities.
While substantial progress has been made in recent years through initiatives such as the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, the ERA Policy Agenda, and national Open Science strategies, significant barriers continue to hinder equitable participation in, and access to, Open Science across Europe. Financial, linguistic, geographic, and legal inequalities remain major obstacles to the full realisation of an open and inclusive research ecosystem. In the Statement, the signatories emphasised that including targeted legislative measures to support Open Science in the ERA Act would be a necessary, but insufficient, move to create a sustainable open research culture – achieving true openness will require sustained investment in infrastructures, policy alignment, incentives, and community-led initiatives across the European research ecosystem.
The statement highlights Open Science as fundamental to the free circulation of knowledge and essential for strengthening research integrity, transparency, reproducibility, evidence-based policymaking, and European competitiveness. It also emphasises that Open Science is crucial for ensuring Europe’s strategic autonomy and capacity to respond to societal and geopolitical challenges.
The signatories called on European institutions and Member States to seize the opportunity presented by the ERA Act to create the enabling conditions necessary for a research ecosystem that is responsibly open, innovative, inclusive, resilient, and above all, grounded in European values.
Read the full Statement here.
From 8-11 December, ALLEA, represented by its President, Pawel Rowiński, joined members of the global research community at the 2025 IAP Triennial Conference and General Assembly in Cairo, Egypt to debate a wide range of issues concerning science and society, from research assessment reform to the role of science diplomacy in times of geopolitical volatility.
Research assessment has the aim of making well-informed decisions about funding, hiring, and promotion, and remains a core pillar of our research system. However, while current assessment practices provide an important means to support the advancement of knowledge and recognise and reward excellence, they rely heavily on quantitative approaches rather than qualitative evaluation. Likewise, they often fail to acknowledge the diversity of the research outputs and skills that are needed for a thriving research ecosystem.
In October 2023, a consortium of European research stakeholder organisations embarked on a Horizon Europe-funded project in order to bring research assessment beyond its simplistic reliance on quantitative indicators. The three-year-long project has a budget of €5 million and aims to enact a systemic reform of research assessment following the principles and commitments agreed upon by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). ALLEA has been actively involved in the drafting of this European agreement, and was one of the early signatories and members of the coalition.
The “CoARA Boost” project is led by the European Science Foundation (ESF), and includes, alongside ALLEA, leading European network organisations for (early career) researchers, research funders, and universities committed to promoting change. The key objectives of the CoARA Boost Project are to i) strengthen CoARA’s operational capacity, ii) catalyse knowledge development, policy evolution, and institutional change in research assessment, iii) facilitate the collection and exchange of information, and iv) widen the Coalition’s membership in Europe and beyond.
The consortium will convene for a kick-off meeting in Brussels on 7-8 December 2023 to delve into the specifics of the collaboration, which will play a pivotal role in advancing CoARA’s mission.
ALLEA approaches the topic of research assessment through its various working groups and task forces. A complete overview of these activities can be found here.
Working with digital outputs in the humanities? Consider contributing to the ALLEA Working Group E-Humanities draft recommendations by 26 July 2023.
The ALLEA Working Group E-Humanities has launched an open consultation concerning draft recommendations on recognising digital scholarly outputs in the humanities. The goal is to gather broad feedback from active humanities researchers and institutions in order to tailor the recommendations to the community’s needs.
A link to the draft recommendations and instructions for contributing is available here: https://bit.ly/ALLEAehumanities
Open Consultation
The consultation is open to all researchers and practitioners working in disciplines within the humanities, policymakers, and representatives of all public and private organisations active in the field. We are particularly keen to hear from humanities researchers in ALLEA member academies. The consultation is open until 26 July 2023.
Practicalities
1. Suggest changes or leave comments in the document.
2. Types of feedback
3. Recognition. All contributors will be listed in the final report. Please ensure that your comments are properly signed with your name. If you wish to remain anonymous, use private browsing.
4. Contact. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact the WG Chair, Dr Maciej Maryl, directly (maciej.maryl@ibl.waw.pl).
Please note that the final draft will be additionally proofread for language.
On the report
This report proposes recommendations regarding recognition, evaluation, and assessment of innovative scholarly outputs in the humanities.
First, the report focuses on the cross-cutting issues pertinent to digital practices in the humanities, such as (1) linking studies with underlying data, (2) open-ended outputs, (3) collaboration and authorship, (4) training and competence building, and (5) reviewing and evaluating. Next, it discusses particular case studies of innovative outputs where these cross-cutting issues manifest themselves, i.e. (a) digital scholarly editions, (b) extended publications, (c) databases and datasets, infographics, (d) code, (e) blogs, and (f) podcasts. Finally, the conclusion provides some general remarks on recognising and evaluating digital practices in the humanities.
About the ALLEA Working Group E-Humanities
The ALLEA Working Group E-Humanities, composed of experts from across European academies, is committed to identifying and raising awareness for priorities and concerns of the humanities, paying particular attention to current and emerging developments in digital practices. Currently, the Open Science agenda figures highly in research policy and research funder requirements, and is driving changes in research practice. To address this agenda, and facilitate the adoption of Open Science across the humanities, the working group has turned its attention to supporting humanities researchers in their research data management practices.
More information on the ALLEA Working Group E-Humanities and its members can be found here: https://allea.org/e-humanities/
Download the event report here
On 17 November, ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, the Global Young Academy, and STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers) convened a moderated panel discussion about “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Scholarly Peer Review” with four distinguished panelists from the global research and publishers’ communities. The full recording, as well as a short event report that summarizes the main themes that emerged during the discussion, are now available online.
The scholarly peer review system currently does not accurately represent the research community as a whole: women, researchers from the Global South, early career researchers, and non-native English speakers are all among those under-represented. In addition, researchers not affiliated with the traditional well-established institutions often experience a disadvantage when their work is submitted for peer review. Together, these biases directly affect individuals’ career progression and are likely to impact the quality of research outputs and diversification of the research system in general.
The aim of this webinar was to create more awareness of this topic, discuss existing barriers and gather input for possible solutions to overcome the challenge. To set the scene for an informed discussion, the moderator introduced the topic, followed by short opening statements in which each panellist outlined the barriers and possible solutions from their viewpoint. The audience had the opportunity to actively contribute to the discussion by sharing their views via different polls and asking questions to the panellists.
The three organisations have now published a short event report, which summarizes the main themes that emerged during the discussions and identifies areas that can represent a path forward.
The programme for the webinar, detailed information on the speakers, and the complete recording, can be found here.
ALLEA signed today the European Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment and announced in a new statement to further support its Member Academies with developing assessment criteria based on principles of quality, integrity, diversity, and openness. Read the ALLEA Statement here.
The European Agreement was published on 20 July, following a six-month collaborative process involving more than 350 European organisations, and opened for signature to organisations from across the world during the recent European Research and Innovation Days. The Agreement includes the principles, commitments and timeframe for reforms and lays out the framework for a Coalition of organisations willing to work together in implementing the changes.
ALLEA first contributed to the Agreement as part of a core group of 20 research organisations and reemphasizes today its commitment to a more diverse and inclusive academic system by publicly signing the agreement, joining the Coalition, and announcing in a new statement its support to its Member Academies.
ALLEA President Antonio Loprieno says “Rewarding and promoting excellence is a core value of academies. This Agreement is an important step forward towards the equitable and objective assessment of both early career researchers and established researchers, which is of utmost importance in a very highly competitive research landscape.”
ALLEA is committed to using the momentum to explore, jointly with its Member Academies, what can be done to further develop the selection criteria and procedures for academy fellows in line with our shared overarching European values. ALLEA will therefore establish a dedicated task force with the aim to collect, exchange and promote best practices for admitting new Academy fellows, and to contribute to a meaningful cultural change of the research assessment system.
Following a six-month collaborative process involving more than 350 European organisations from over 40 countries, an Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment has been reached and made public today. ALLEA has contributed to the Agreement as part of a core group of 20 research organisations that supported the drafting team throughout the process.
The Agreement summarises a shared vision on how to reform assessment practices for researchers, research projects and research performing organisations, with overarching principles founded on quality, impact, diversity, inclusiveness, and collaboration.
The envisioned reforms are centred around the following four core commitments:
Several additional supporting commitments aim to enable the move towards new research assessment criteria, tools and processes, and to facilitate mutual learning, communicate progress and ensure that new approaches are evidence informed. The Agreement further includes anticipated timeframes for implementing the reforms and evaluating progress and describes the operational structures for a coalition of organisations devoted to working together to implement the changes.
The collection of signatures to join the Coalition supporting the Agreement will be launched on 28 September 2022 at the EU Research and Innovation Days. A General Assembly of Coalition members will further decide on the governance of the Coalition, the strategy guiding the operations and activities of the Coalition as a whole, its annual work-plan and budget. The first General Assembly is expected to take place towards the end of this year.
As a European umbrella organisation of academies of sciences and humanities, ALLEA was able to provide an interdisciplinary perspective based on shared European academic values. ALLEA contributed to the Agreement through its Permanent Working Group on Science & Ethics and the Working Group European Research Area. Previously, ALLEA had also worked with the Global Young Academy on recommendations on the topic.
In a parallel endeavour, the Council of the European Union has recently adopted its Conclusions on Research Assessment and Implementation of Open Science. ALLEA welcomes the principles set out in the Conclusions for designing novel approaches to research assessment and emphasises that there is no “one-size-fits-all” format: any reforms should be driven by researchers taking responsibility for improving research assessment in their communities, following the core concept of self-regulation set out in the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. (Read ALLEA’s full response here)
More information
ALLEA welcomes the adoption of the Conclusions on Research Assessment and Implementation of Open Science by the Council of the European Union on 10 June. See ALLEA’s full response here.
The Conclusions are in agreement with points that ALLEA has made over the years, in particular on the necessity of appropriately implementing and rewarding open science practices and the development of research assessment criteria that follow principles of excellence, research integrity and trustworthy science.
At the same time, ALLEA continues to stress that it matters how we open knowledge, as the push for Open Access publishing has also paved the way for various unethical publishing practices. The inappropriate use of journal- and publication-based metrics in funding, hiring and promotion decisions has been one of the obstacles in the transition to a more open science, and furthermore fails to recognize and reward the diverse set of competencies, activities, and outputs needed for our research ecosystem to flourish.
ALLEA therefore welcomes the principles set out in the Conclusion for designing novel approaches to research assessment, with particular weight on recognizing (1) the critical role for peer review in research assessment and (2) the importance of integrity and ethics in developing criteria focused on quality and impact.
ALLEA underscores that the described reforms are urgently needed and require concerted efforts from the international academic community, supported by infrastructures for exchanging best practices as well as the necessary financial resources to implement these.
