ANECA presents the latest findings from its experiments on academic assessment to the international community

ANECA’s project “Pilot Experiments for Innovative Academic Assessment under ANECA’s CoARA Action Plan” (PEI3AC) was selected in July 2025, from among more than 130 projects, to receive funding in CoARA’s second call for Cascade funding. This program has funded a total of 53 projects across the two calls, including 20 in the “institutional change” category, under which ANECA’s initiative was submitted; the project aimed to explore, evaluate, and validate innovative academic assessment methodologies. 

The PEI3AC project focused on the new national accreditation procedure for admission to the university faculty ranks of tenured professors and full professors, regulated by Royal Decree 678/2023. Within this framework, ANECA began implementing the reform in April 2024, under which more than 7,000 applications have already been evaluated. The project’s objective is to help strengthen and refine evaluation practices based on empirical evidence and shared reflection. Through experiments involving narrative curricula, a balance between qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the mitigation of unconscious biases, the project aims to generate insights, tools, and recommendations to consolidate new forms of evaluation.

The study involved 47 evaluators from the accreditation program who participated in the pilot experiments, where they assessed different curriculum variants. The sample was selected based on heterogeneity criteria, incorporating a wide range of disciplinary, institutional, and geographic diversity, as well as profiles with varying degrees of experience, including individuals who had participated in the previous system and others who had joined the new model.
Representing ANECA, Irene Ramos Vielba, an advisory member, shared with the international community—in two forums—some progress made in the development of the experiments, focusing on how different curriculum variants might shape the perceptions and practices of evaluators.

At the annual EU-SPRI conference, held June 10–12 at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the paper “Transformative Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning in Research Assessment Reform: Experimental Insights from the Spanish Context” was presented to the international academic community specializing in science and innovation policy. The presentation outlined the development of the PEI3AC project’s experiments in the context of assessment reform in Spain and addressed the role of monitoring and learning as methodological tools to analyze the reform’s implementation, generate evidence on new evaluation practices, and facilitate institutional improvement processes.

Furthermore, as part of the CoARA Cascade Funding Knowledge Exchange Event 2, ANECA participated in the online session held on June 29 on “Actors of Research Assessment Reform,” which focused on the importance of the various stakeholders involved in research assessment reform. The event provided an opportunity to share lessons learned with other European institutions leading change initiatives in this area. The presentations addressed issues such as the roles, behaviors, and responsibilities of these stakeholders, methods of engagement, and initial results observed. Emphasis was placed on stakeholder participation in the different phases of the reform process to foster deliberative dynamics and to support methodological changes with clear criteria and guidelines that promote their effective implementation.

In this vein, on July 14, ANECA will host an in-person workshop at its headquarters to disseminate and discuss the preliminary results of PEI3AC with the participating evaluators. The meeting will aim to present the main lessons learned and observations derived from the pilot sessions, as well as to provide a space for exchange and joint reflection on their implications and opportunities. 
From a practical perspective, the project’s results are expected to contribute to improving evaluation processes and advancing the reform that ANECA has been promoting since 2023.