Policy Briefs: Transitioning from Closed Proprietary Systems to Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment, for Research-Performing & Research-Funding Organizations

These pre-endorsed policy briefs were prepared by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Working Group “Towards Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment” (OI4RRA) and complement the companion report Conceptual Architecture for the Implementation of a Responsible Research Assessment Framework Built on Open Infrastructures. They translate that four-tier reference model into concise, actionable guidance that helps Research-Performing Organisations and research-funding Organisations move from closed, proprietary, citation-centric tools to transparent, interoperable assessment systems grounded in open infrastructures, persistent identifiers, shared metadata standards, open repositories, trusted aggregators and contextualised indicator services. The briefs cover: aligning institutional and funder policies with the CoARA principles; investing strategically in each tier of the open infrastructure stack; embedding responsible, qualitative-plus-quantitative indicators in evaluation workflows; governing, funding and sustaining community-driven services; and building internal capacity through training and stakeholder engagement Together, they provide a practical roadmap for institutions and funders to implement the conceptual architecture and realise a fairer, more transparent and globally interoperable research-assessment ecosystem.