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Universities in Norway are now implementing a reform supported by the Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM). Ragnar Lie writes about what the international movement to reform how research and academic careers are assessed can learn from their experience so far.
In under three years, over 700 institutions in Europe and further afield have joined the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). But beyond this impressive international movement, how are reforms of tangible practices playing out on the ground?
In Norway, universities are now implementing a reform supported by the Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM). As a coherent, flexible, useful, simple and holistic tool, NOR-CAM has drawn interest beyond Norway. So, what can our colleagues working in diverse systems around the world learn from our experience in Norway?
First of all, what do we want to achieve with NOR-CAM? Our goals include working to assess and give merit to more diverse careers, exploit synergies between research, education and innovation, recognise teamwork, acknowledge differences between academic fields and promote open research and multilingual practices. Last but not least, we aim to combine the responsible use of quantitative data with qualitative expert assessment when researchers are evaluated.
This reform is a huge and foundational task, that involves the whole knowledge system, including academic culture, governance, research fields, infrastructure, information interoperability and many more. Furthermore, knowledge production is international, and we cannot do this alone. Hence, the reform has a global agenda as well.
On the other hand, let’s not make it too complicated.
NOR-CAM is a career assessment framework that is sufficiently coherent across national and organisational borders, and yet flexible enough to acknowledge a variety of academic fields and institutional profiles. At the same time, it is useful and easy to use, both for individuals and organisations, as well as holistic, covering all main activities at universities with different profiles. Therefore, the matrix is a multi-purpose tool that can be used in different institutional and national contexts.
For individual researchers, NOR-CAM concentrates on key moments in their career, like when they apply for positions and promotions, or need to access internal or external resources. It also serves as a tool for research funders in assessing project managers and participants, as well as for national authorities in evaluating research institutions and research fields.
Importantly, NOR-CAM broadens the perspective of assessment by including all activities, not only research. The matrix specifies six competence areas to be assessed: ‘research output’, ‘research process’, ‘pedagogical competence’, ‘impact and innovation’, ‘leadership’ and ‘other experience’. Traditionally, scientific publications have dominated evaluation, while outputs from other activities have not been systematically assessed. This is despite the fact that these activities are part of universities’ statutory duties.
In Norway, most universities have now developed and adopted their own NOR-CAM versions in line with their institutional profile, facilitated by our national NOR-CAM-network (the Norwegian CoARA National Chapter). The Norwegian Research Council is working on incorporating NOR-CAM/CoARA principles into its assessment system and evaluation guide.
For us, this journey started already in 2019, partly inspired by discussions in EUA’s Expert Group on Open Science. As Universities Norway, we understood early on that reforming how both research and academic careers are evaluated takes time. However, similar processes e.g. in the Netherlands and Finland, told us that we were not alone in our efforts. In 2019, Universities Norway established a working group, and as a result NOR-CAM was born in 2021.
The NOR-CAM recommendations, the matrix and its toolbox were positively received among our member institutions in 2021, so we started to facilitate the development and implementation of versions of NOR-CAM for individual institutions. Since then, we have developed specific versions of the matrix for artistic research, professions and innovation.
As the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment emerged in 2022, we recognised much in common with the principles from NOR-CAM. So, in autumn 2022, we therefore encouraged our institutions to sign the agreement and join CoARA. And in Spring 2023 we converted our NOR-CAM network into Norway’s CoARA National Chapter.
The Norwegian experience is already shared beyond Norway, and both Finland and Sweden are running their own Career Assessment Matrix projects (FIN-CAM and SWE-CAM). It will also be included in the framework of practical tools for reform that is being developed by the CoARA Working Group on Academic Career Assessment. These adaptations demonstrate the tool's versatility and growing acceptance within the academic community, as well as across national contexts.
Meaningful reform of academic career assessment will not happen if it doesn’t go beyond policy documents or institutional leaders. Real change will only manifest when it becomes common practice within our communities. So, what’s next?
A four-year project – New ways of evaluating research and researchers. CoARA in the Norwegian research system (NyEval) – funded by the Norwegian Research Council, will analyse potential changes in evaluation practice among all 11 Norwegian universities, as well as funders. By June of 2025, 20,000 academic staff were invited to respond to a survey, which will be sent again in two years to identify potential changes. Universities Norway is a partner, and the CoARA National Chapter is closely involved. So, stay tuned!
