Project role

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) leads ARION’s work on the co-design, implementation and validation of institutional pilots, coordinating real-world experimentation with research assessment reforms and the generation of evidence for their wider adoption. Drawing on its expertise in Open Science, responsible research assessment, meta-research and institutional change, as well as its involvement in CoARA’s Steering Board, UC3M also contributes to implementation pathways, capacity building, communication and community engagement, and other cross-cutting project activities.

The MCAA is the lead beneficiary of Work package WP3 – Empowering Change Agents: Building Skills and Communities. The goal of this work package is to equip all key actors in research assessment reform with the skills, confidence, and peer support needed to integrate ARION’s tools into their contexts. This work package focuses on building individual capacity, strengthening institutional readiness, and embedding a peer-driven culture of reform advocacy that will sustain momentum well beyond the project lifecycle.

Vitae (managed by CRAC) leads Work Package 1, “Groundwork for Change”, which lays the foundation for research assessment reform across the ARION project. Vitae is responsible for assessing institutional readiness for reform, developing evidence-based typologies and implementation pathways, and creating practical guidance to help organisations translate responsible research assessment principles into action. Through this work, Vitae helps ensure that ARION’s tools, pilots and capacity-building activities are tailored to institutional needs and can be adopted effectively across diverse research environments.

The Helmholtz Open Science Office leads ARION’s Work Package 4 (Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation), driving the scaling of pilot results into pan-European adoption. It leads the project’s Early Adopter Programme, contributes to strategic network outreach, and coordinates CoARA National Chapter engagement across Northwest Europe. Bringing experience from responsible research assessment reforms across its Centers and within the German research landscape as well as chairing the CoARA German National Chapter, the Helmholtz Open Science Office acts as a key driver of organisational change.

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya is running one of the pilot programs for the ARION project, focusing on researcher profiles and the Narrative CV.

IReL will contribute to Work Packages (WP 2, 3, 4, and 5). It will provide expertise on research assessment from an Irish perspective and identify the requirements for Responsible Research Assessment (RRA) within the Irish context. IReL will support the co-design and validation of pilot programmes and contribute to the delivery of workshops and focus groups throughout the project.

UEFISCDI, Romania's national research funding organisation and a policy adviser for science, innovation and higher education, is a pilot partner in ARION. As a national RFO, UEFISCDI co-designs and tests the Narrative CV, with a focus on multilinguality, and ensures national outreach via its CoARA National members and RDI community, linking national lessons to the wider European reform agenda. This work builds on UEFISCDI's own experience introducing narrative CV elements into its traditional CV template within its funding instruments.

HEAL-Link joins ARION as one of eight pilot organisations, representing the Greek national research consortium; the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki acts as the executing legal entity. HEAL-Link pilots a Greek-language Narrative CV, inclusive assessment indicators and FAIR research workflows, building on national infrastructure including ARGOS-GR, HARDMIN and the Greek DOI node. It contributes to implementation pathway co-development (WP1), pilot design and delivery (WP2), training and champion-led peer learning networks (WP3), and to scaling through the Early Adopter Programme and outreach to Greek academic libraries and national research assessment authorities (WP4).

University of Technology of Troyes is representing the European University of Technology (EUt+) as one of the pilots of ARION. The pilot focuses on the implementation of the developments from ARION in the context of an alliance of 9 European countries (IT, FR, CY, DE, ES, IE, LV, BG, RO), their 2 pan-European research institutes (European Culture and Technology Laboratory, and European University of Technology Institute of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnologies) and 5 interdisciplinary research groups covering subjects from energy and sustainability to pedagogy and robotics. This multicultural research environment provides ARION with opportunities of replicability in specific context-based situations.

UCY's role in the project will be multifaceted: it will act as a pilot for research assessment reform; it will provide technical and organizational infrastructure, engagement with national stakeholders, and contribution to training and dissemination. It is expected to generate practical evidence, support institutional and national change, and ensure that new assessment practices will be robust, scalable, and aligned with open science principles.UCY has experience from projects such as OPUS, SECURE, OSCAR, TWIN4MERIT, and YUFERING, all of which focused on research assessment reform, open science, and institutional capacity building

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam serves as an institutional pilot site in ARION, testing responsible research assessment practices across Work Packages 2, 3, and 4. Bringing expertise in open science and research reform, VU implements structured narrative CVs, open researcher profiles, and non-traditional evaluation criteria like dataset curation and mentoring. The project acts as a practical execution tool for VU’s Recognition & Rewards framework, bridging policy and practice by converting high-level guidelines into concrete HR workflows, evaluation rubrics, and digital infrastructure aligned with CoARA and DORA.

IIS Biogipuzkoa contributes to ARION as a pilot institution in the life sciences, bringing expertise in responsible research assessment and multidimensional research evaluation. The institute participates in the co-design, implementation and monitoring of the responsible research assessment pilot within its own research community (WP2), contributing to the testing and validation of extended Researcher Profiles, Narrative CVs and Open Science practice indicators in a real institutional setting. It also engages in peer learning and community-building activities (WP3) and contributes to the strategic outreach and long-term sustainability of the project's outcomes (WP4), leveraging its connections with the national health research ecosystem and with key stakeholders in the Spanish science and innovation system

The University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) is pleased to be a partner in the ARION consortium. Through the leadership of Dr. Kelly Cobey, UOHI will lead the integration of CoARA Working Group outputs into ARION’s pilot and Early Adopter institutions, informing the implementation of the four tools tested in alignment with responsible research assessment principles, as well as feeding into ARION resources and outputs. Dr. Cobey provides the technical expertise required, and through her strategic leadership within DORA, will leverage global networks and amplify the dissemination, uptake, and impact of the project outcomes.

DORA brings global expertise in responsible research assessment (RRA), institutional reform, and community engagement to ARION. ARION actively builds upon and promotes DORA’s established guidance and resources, with its capacity-building and training programs aligned with DORA’s Practical Guides. DORA provides high-level policy leadership to ensure the project’s tools align with global RRA principles. DORA amplifies ARION’s outputs by hosting its resources, tools, and institutional change stories on its Resource Library and Reformscape, and leverages its global network of signatories for strategic outreach, promoting the creation, adoption, localization, and long-term sustainability of ARION tools, and recruiting for the Early Adopter Programmes.