Atlas of Assessment

Summary

The Atlas of Assessment is a webtool developed as part of the AGORRA project. It aims to collect information on national research assessment systems for all countries across the globe, creating the first global overview of national research assessment exercises. This is an especially critical task for two reasons. First, national systems for research assessment have gained increasing prominence and diversity in recent years. Second, the literature on national research assessment systems has so far been strongly focused on a small selection of countries from the global north.

Launched in May 2025 with information on 13 countries, the team is now engaged in the task of populating the Atlas as far as possible, ultimately enabling a global analysis of what kinds of assessment systems are more/less common, whether we see different kinds of systems in different places and, if so, why.

Project team

• Alex Rushforth, Project lead, CWTS-Leiden and Senior Research Fellow, RoRI
• Peter Kolarz, Head of Programmes, RoRI
• Nino Gogadze, CWTS-Leiden and Research Fellow, RoRI
• Moumita Koley, DST, Indian Institute of Science (ISC), India and Research Fellow, RoRI
• Laura Rovelli, CONICET, Argentina and Research Fellow, RoRI

Partner organisations

The Atlas of Assessment was built and is maintained via the AGORRA project, which has the following funding organisations represented in its steering group:

• Research England/UKRI
• Australian Research Council 
• ANVUR (Agenzia Nazionale Di Valutazione Del Sistema Universitario E Della Ricerca)
• Evaluation Research Centre, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing
• Dutch Research Council (NWO)
• The National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF-SA)
• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
• Swedish Research Council (SRC)
• Research Council of Norway (RCN)
• Ministry of Education and Science, Ukraine
• Volkswagen Foundation

The project in detail

Since the first national research assessment exercises took place 40 years ago, there has been a proliferation of national systems of research assessment. These systems are variously used to allocate institutional research funding, to gather intelligence about a country’s research strengths, and to induce behaviour change in the sector. 

Besides a range of different aims, national research assessment systems also use a range of different methods and approaches and focus on different levels of assessment (e.g. institutions, departments or individuals). As this diversity of systems increases, so does the need to systematically map them at a global level, to track evolution, convergence and divergence, emerging trends, and assess what works, and in what contexts.

Much of the literature on national research assessment focuses only on a small number of countries, typically from the global north. But to fully understand trends, convergences, divergences, and how different systems and contexts have different needs, a far more comprehensive perspective is required. 

The Atlas of Assessment accomplishes this task. The Atlas website went live in May 2025 with 13 initial tester-countries included. The ambition is to populate it with information on as many countries as possible, including countries from the global south, which have been neglected in most existing literature on national research assessment systems.

To aid analysis and also help users navigate and sort through the Atlas, it is structured through an 8-part typology of national assessment systems that has been developed through the AGORRA project and published as a working paper.

Project timeline

The research phase dedicated to populating the Atlas and conducting an initial global; analysis runs from May 2025 until December 2026. The ambition is for the Atlas to become a permanent tool with the fullest possible country-coverage and regular updates to all countries included.

Outputs

This work around the Atlas will produce three main outputs:

1. Atlas of Assessment to be populated to the greatest possible extent. We hope to have information on 50-100 countries included by the end of this workstream (may include countries confirmed not currently to have any national research assessment systems).
2. Aggregate findings report: combining the collected Atlas data and the 8-part typology of assessment systems developed in AGORRA, we will produce a report highlighting trends and patterns in assessment systems. Foremost, this will include overall prevalence of specific system characteristics (e.g. how common is a focus on societal impact? How common are systems that focus on individual researchers vs departments vs institutions?). Where possible, we will also highlight whether different system characteristics appear more commonly in certain types of countries (e.g. global north/global south, large/small, centralised/federated). Depending on the details of the findings, this may take the shape of a short RoRI Insights report, or a more formal extended data report.
3. Working paper: Following the deep-dive on specific countries/systems, we will produce a working paper highlighting the trends and overall global picture noted above, alongside results of the qualitative deepdive. This will include an analysis that will seek to explain why we see different types of systems in different places and contexts. If feasible, we may include theoretical and/or practical frameworks to define and provide advice on what works, where and why.

Additional information

This project is a workstream of the AGORRA project. As it is one of RoRI’s Platforms intended potentially to become permanent (i.e. beyond the end of AGORRA) we present it here as a RoRI activity in its own right.