UL Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment Action Plan

University of Limerick (UL) is a vibrant, research-led university that offers undergraduate and postgraduate programming across four faculties: Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Education and Health Sciences; Science and Engineering; and the Kemmy Business School. It currently hosts an energetic and diverse student body of over 18,000 students, with a high percentage of international students and an Erasmus+ programme that sees over 1,500 students placed in partner universities in 68 countries every year. UL prides itself on the transformational education it provides to its students, offering the largest cooperative education programme of any Irish university and placing over 2000 students a year in work placements. The university’s cutting-edge research includes particular strengths in translational research that frequently builds on relationships with over 220 industrial partners. UL’s Research Strategy 2022-2027, Wisdom for Action, sets out its mission to “build a vibrant community where research excellence is valued, supported, and central to all facets of our organisation”. The core principles on which this mission is built include putting research at the heart of UL, and championing and celebrating the pursuit of research excellence.These principles are, in turn, aligned with four key strategic goals focused on embedding research into all aspects of UL culture; amplifying excellent research and contributing to global challenges; building a change-making UL research community; and focusing on our research talent as our greatest resource and organisational priority. Wisdom for Action acknowledges that achieving the university’s strategic research goals requires appropriate assessment and recognition of research performance and excellence, and the strategy is informed by UL’s commitment to reforming research assessment. UL was one of the first Irish signatories to the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), informed by the European higher-education environment. The commitments detailed in the CoARA agreement complement the recommendations of Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), to which UL is also a signatory, making it one of 16 organisations in Ireland, and over 23,000 institutions worldwide, that have signed up to DORA. UL is committed to ensuring that the impactful and rigorous research for which it is already known is recognised on the basis of the quality of its outputs, through the various forms those outputs take; and further, that the recruitment and retention policies of the University consider that impact and quality appropriately.