Survey to CoARA member organizations on multilingualism and gender in research assessment

• You can access the survey HERE
• If you want to take a look at the survey questions or consult colleagues before answering the survey, you can find the questionnaire in Google Doc format in here.

This survey is targeted primarily at member organisations of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). However, also organisations that are not CoARA members are welcome to answer the survey.

This survey is conducted as part of the action plans of the CoARA working group on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment and the CoARA working group TIER, Towards an Inclusive Evaluation of Research. The main goal of the survey is to map how CoARA members are currently dealing with multilingualism and language and other biases in view of reforming research assessment. The data gathered will also contribute to the development of policy advice, guidelines and good practices.

The survey is anonymous and follows the structure of the commitments included in the CoARA agreement on reforming research assessment. Completion of this survey by the institutional CoARA contact person(s) is estimated to require a maximum of 10 minutes. Please submit one answer per organisation, and answer all questions based on your own knowledge of the situation and actions at your organization. The survey is open from 16th of September to 14th of October 2024.

According to the 1st core commitment of the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, changes in assessment practices should enable recognition of the broad diversity of valuable contributions that researchers make to science and for the benefit of society, including diverse outputs beyond journal publications and irrespective of the language in which they are communicated.

A thematic Working Group on Multilingualism and Language Biases in Research Assessment has been established by members of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), which aims:

1. to raise awareness across all fields about the importance of “multilingualism in practice of science, in scientific publications and in academic communications” (UNESCO recommendation on Open Science);
2. to provide institutions with guidelines, toolbox and implementation proposal for recognizing, rewarding and incentivizing research carried out and communicated in all languages, and for addressing language biases in metrics, expert-assessment and rankings.

The survey is carried out by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) in collaboration with WG partners, with the lead of dr. Tim Engels from the University of Antwerp.

For more information or questions about the survey, please contact Tim Engels (tim.engels@uantwerpen.be) or Janne Pölönen (janne.polonen@tsv.fi).