A successful and promising project! On December 2, the final conference of the TRUST2COARA project, funded by the European Union's CoARA Coalition, was held. About fifty researchers, research managers, and policymakers discussed research evaluation practices and the challenges related to promoting equity, inclusivity, and transparency in order to improve quality and impact.
This project is a collaborative initiative between the University of Carthage and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) in Barcelona. The project team held dozens of meetings and has already organized three workshops in Tunis and Barcelona, and presented their work in webinars several times at the end of 2024 and in 2025.
A survey, in which hundreds of researchers participated, revealed the need to give more weight to qualitative research evaluation criteria, such as the societal impact of research, multidisciplinary experience, collaboration with socio-economic stakeholders, and pedagogical innovation, as well as metric criteria related to scientific publications.
This approach will help position scientific research at the heart of the innovation process.
A big thank you to the project team, the University of Carthage, the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), CoARA, and everyone who contributed to the success of this project.
