CoARA-ERIP proposal to develop three UNESCO Open Science Toolkit contributions on research assessment: Guidance, Factsheet, and Checklist

This is a concept proposal from the CoARA Working Group on Ethics and Research Integrity Policy for Responsible Research Assessment in Data and Artificial Intelligence (CoARA-ERIP) and partners, offered to the UNESCO Open Science Team, to develop three contributions to the UNESCO Open Science Toolkit on responsible research assessment: a Guidance document, a Factsheet, and a Checklist. It is published here by CoARA-ERIP for the public record and for future development. It is a proposal from CoARA-ERIP and partners, not a UNESCO output or a UNESCO-endorsed resource.The proposal centres on the notion that responsible research assessment is an implementation condition for open science. Access policies and technical infrastructure are not enough; unless hiring, promotion, funding, peer review, and institutional recognition reward open, responsible, and ethically grounded practice, open science commitments remain partial. Where assessment continues to reward journal prestige, publication counts, citation aggregates, grant income, rankings, and proprietary indicators, reform stalls. The three proposed resources would help Member States, institutions, funders, infrastructures, publishers, and scientific communities translate open science principles into assessment practice.The Guidance document would set out a structured framework and implementation pathways; the Factsheet would give a concise orientation for advocacy and briefing; and the Checklist would offer a practical self-evaluation tool across governance, recognition of diverse contributions, open science alignment, responsible metrics, open research information, publishing and visibility, responsible artificial intelligence, research integrity, sovereignty and context, capacity-building, self-evaluation, and monitoring. The resources are designed to be practical, globally relevant, and adaptable rather than a single assessment model.The proposal builds on CoARA-ERIP's work, including the Ethics Assessment Alignment Matrix, the Modular Assessment Configurator, and the CoARA-ERIP Research Assessment Observatory, and it integrates SE4RA (Teaming for self-evaluation in research assessment across scales), a UNESCO-endorsed project under the United Nations International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (2024 to 2033), as its methodological engine for self-evaluation across researchers, groups, institutions, funders, and systems. It proposes a twelve-month, co-designed, globally consultative development process, with regional consultation and pilot testing, and it aligns with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information, and the work of the International Science Council Forum on Publishing and Research Assessment.The proposal was submitted to the UNESCO Open Science Team as a concept proposal in April 2026 and is deposited here in the form submitted (version 3.0, 10 April 2026). It remains available for future development with UNESCO and partners.