This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101131826.

Access to the resources:.Open Science OER Toolkit & Open Research Assessment. COARA Boost2 Cascade.

https://github.com/Digital-Future-Institute/CoARA/tree/main

If you would like to contribute to this project and have guides, case studies, or information to share, please contact Javiera Atenas at j.atenas@uos.ac.uk.

Project Overview
This project aims to develop an Open Educational Resource (OER) toolkit to support a cultural shift in research assessment, aligned with the principles of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). The toolkit is designed to equip early career researchers, principal investigators, and institutional leaders with the knowledge and skills needed to implement responsible research assessment and open science practices across diverse research environments.

At its core, the project promotes the recognition of diverse research contributions and career paths, prioritising qualitative evaluation with peer review as a central practice. It explicitly discourages the inappropriate use of journal- and publication-based metrics, such as the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and h-index, in line with international reform efforts.

These guides are being developed under the principles of Open Science and Open Education by curating, adapting, and translating existing guidance to enrich content and build capacity in Open Science through Open Educational Resources (OER), as promoted in the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021) ' 19-D and the UNESCO OER Dubai Declaration (2024), Area 1: Capacity Building

What the Toolkit Includes
Developed as a collaboration between the University of Suffolk (UK) and the University of Bedfordshire (UK), this OER toolkit provides guides, best practices and complementary resources to support and advance Reforming Research Assessment agendas and open science.

These OERs are designed to build institutional and individual capacity in open science, covering key areas such as:

Open Science principles
Open research cultures
Research data management
Open data practices
FAIR principles
Data stewardship
The OER toolkit is intentionally designed for scalability and adaptability, enabling uptake across different institutional, disciplinary, and national contexts.

Alignment and Impact
COARA
This initiative directly supports CoARA's commitment to reforming research assessment and aligns with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. By fostering responsible, inclusive, and transparent assessment practices, the toolkit contributes to strengthening institutional readiness for open science mandates and long-term research culture change.