Cascade Funding Call

Cascade Funding Call

Supporting research organisations in reforming research assessment.

Through the EU-funded CoARA Boost project, the Cascade Funding Programme awarded grants of €30,000 to €60,000 to 53 projects across the European Research Area. These projects test, pilot and implement reforms of research assessment in line with the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. Funding was awarded through two open calls, in 2024 and 2025.

Both calls are now closed

See the selected projectsRead the FAQs

Programme at a glance

€2.33Mtotal funding over two calls
€30K–€60Klump sum per project, depending on project type
53projects funded across the European Research Area
12 monthsmaximum project duration after signature of the Third-Party Project Agreement (TPPA)

The two calls

First Call Second Call
Open 26 April – 26 June 2024 21 February – 23 April 2025
Budget released €1.12M €1.22M
Applications received 72 130+
Projects selected 25 (12 Pilot, 3 Teaming, 10 Change) 28 (11 Pilot, 6 Teaming, 11 Change)
Results announced October 2024 July 2025
Projects started Within 4 months of TPPA signature September 2025
Status Closed Closed
More Call documents · Selected projects Call documents · Selected projects

Why this programme?

Hundreds of research organisations, funders, assessment authorities, professional societies and their associations have signed the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, agreeing on a common direction and principles for reforming the assessment of research, researchers and research organisations, and committing to implement changes within their organisations.

CoARA, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment, offers a platform for collaboration and mutual learning. Given the complexity of the reform process, institutions also need concrete support to test, design and carry out in-depth changes. The CoARA Boost project, funded by the European Union, strengthens CoARA’s operational capacity to meet that need. Its Cascade Funding Programme represents more than half of the project’s overall budget.

The programme aimed to:

  • facilitate the exchange, transfer and adaptation of proven good practices and their adoption in research organisations;
  • catalyse the set-up or transformation of research assessment practices and tools in line with the commitments of the Agreement;
  • support the development and testing of new and innovative research assessment approaches, models and procedures.

By supporting different types of proposals, the programme built a diverse and balanced portfolio of projects that translate the shared vision of the Agreement into tangible, lasting institutional change.

Three types of projects

The programme funded three types of projects, reflecting different stages of an institution’s reform journey: knowledge exchange, piloting, and paving the way for lasting change.

Teaming Projects

Up to €40,000 in total · 12 months

Transfer and adaptation of experience and practices from a more experienced organisation to one or two less experienced ones. Co-piloting innovations across different types of organisations was also welcome.

Up to 3 organisations per project.

Examples of activities

Demonstration sessions, seminars, training and short visits; testing whether solutions that work elsewhere can be adapted to another institutional context; reviewing, transferring and adapting documents, procedures and workflows; capacity-building and open infrastructure components for responsible research assessment.

Institutional Pilot Projects

Up to €30,000 · 12 months

Experimenting with and evaluating new assessment approaches, procedures, frameworks and tools within a clearly defined initiative, such as a pilot competitive call in a university or the development of a concept.

Faculties could take part if the application was submitted by their university.

Examples of activities
  • IT-based workflows, qualitative KPIs, open infrastructure
  • Balancing quantitative and qualitative criteria
  • Recognising diverse research contributions, narrative CVs
  • Crediting outreach, societal impact and knowledge valorisation
  • Responsible use of metrics, moving away from rankings and impact factors
  • Integrating Open Science and data sharing into assessment
  • Piloting the SCOPE framework or tools developed by CoARA Working Groups

Institutional Change Projects

Up to €60,000 · 12 months

Accelerating change in the procedures and processes of an organisation: reviewing internal assessment processes to align them with the Agreement’s commitments, or setting up assessment structures where none existed.

Examples of activities

The same kinds of activities as pilot projects, at a higher level of maturity and possibly on a larger scale, addressing assessment mechanisms across the whole institution.

Eligibility

Who could apply

Legal entities based in an EU Member State or a country associated to Horizon Europe, of the following types:

  • academies and learned societies that implement some form of research assessment;
  • national or regional authorities or agencies that implement some form of research assessment;
  • public or private research funding organisations;
  • research centres and research infrastructures;
  • universities (applications for faculties had to be submitted in the name of the university);
  • other relevant not-for-profit organisations that implement some form of research assessment.
Application rules
  • A maximum of one application per organisation across all calls.
  • Proposals were submitted by a designated point of contact authorised by the organisation.
  • Except for Teaming Projects (up to 3 co-applicants), projects had a single beneficiary.
  • Members of the CoARA Boost consortium were not eligible; member organisations of umbrella beneficiaries were. Nominating organisations of CoARA Steering Board members were eligible, as the Steering Board played no role in evaluation or selection.
Specific to the Second Call: to ensure diversity in the allocation of resources, beneficiaries of the First Call were not eligible to apply.
Eligible costs

Cascade Funding covered only costs considered eligible under the provisions of the Horizon Europe call WIDERA-2023-ERA-01-07. Grants were lump sums of €30,000 to €60,000 including indirect costs. Further details are available in the call documents and the FAQs.

How proposals were evaluated

Review panels

Applications were assessed by review panels of experts in research assessment, set up by the CoARA Secretariat and the European Science Foundation (ESF). One panel was dedicated to each project type:

  • P01 – Teaming Projects
  • P02 – Institutional Change Projects
  • P03 – Institutional Pilot Projects

Each application was pre-assessed by a Lead Reviewer and a Secondary Reviewer, and all panel members read every proposal in their panel before the discussion.

Selection of reviewers

Besides topical expertise, the reviewer pool followed diversity measures: balanced representation of European regions (with at least 5% of reviewers from outside Europe), types of institution proportionate to CoARA membership, gender balance (no more than two thirds of one gender) and career stage (at least 25% early-career researchers). In the Second Call, beneficiaries of the First Call also took part in the review, reinforcing peer learning.

Evaluation stages
  1. Eligibility check by the CoARA Secretariat.
  2. Pre-assessment by a Lead and a Secondary Reviewer, with access to each other’s reviews.
  3. Review panel meetings: each application was presented and discussed, and the panel agreed on a mark and a ranked list.
  4. Panel chairs’ meeting: the chairs merged the panel rankings and made the final selection.
  5. Consensus reports: applicants received narrative comments summarising the panel discussion.

Call documents

Questions?

Answers to the most frequent questions about the programme are collected in the FAQs. For anything else, contact funding@coara.org.

FAQs on Cascade Funding