Action Plan CoARA 2024-2027: ZonMw and NWO

The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and development (ZonMw), a research funding organisation, and the Dutch Research Council (NWO), a research funding and research performing organisation, have been actively working on the reform of their research assessment within the National Recognition and Rewards programme. In December 2019, the position paper ‘Room for Everyone’s Talent: towards a new balance in the recognition and rewards for academics’ was published by the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), the Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW), NWO and ZonMW. To put the priorities from the position paper into practice, a road map was designed at the end of 2023.

The objectives of this national program are:

• Diversification and vitalisation of career paths;
• Achieving balance between individuals and the collective;
• Focusing on quality;
• Stimulating all aspects of open science;
• Encouraging academic leadership.

In 2022 ZonMw and NWO signed the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA) and joined the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment. By signing, our organisations continue their efforts for the reform of Research Assessment in an international context. The goals of this reform movement are largely in line with the goals set in the national Recognition and Rewards programme. This means that we have already made several changes to our research assessment, that help meet the goals set in the CoARA commitments. In this action plan, we outline future practices and activities as well as those that have already been embedded within our organisations. This plan reflects and features the dual role of NWO as both a research funding and research performing organisation (through the ten research institutes that are under the umbrella of the NWO organisation). As our organisations are actively working together, this plan reflects on practices and activities in both our organisations and that are carried out within the four domains (Science, Social Sciences and Humanities, Applied and Engineering Science