YERUN

📣 We are pleased to launch the YERUN Strategy 2026–2030: Thrive Together, marking the start of a new strategic cycle for our network.

🚀 Together with our members, we look forward to turning this Strategy into action, and to continuing to thrive together towards 2030 👇
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Education. Every day.

And today, a little more.

We celebrate it. But we also say clearly: investment in education is more important than ever!

Because education isn’t just nice to have. It’s the foundation everything else is built on.

And young universities are fully standing up for it.

🧱📚🧩

📣 YERUN welcomes the European Commission’s stakeholder consultation on the #ERAAct as a timely opportunity to strengthen and advance the coherence of Europe’s #research systems and highlights 5 key recommendations 👇
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📣🤩 The YERUN Network Grows: Welcome, University of Bath!

🤝 A leading young, comprehensive university, Bath shares YERUN’s commitment to excellence in #research and #education and a strong focus on societal impact.

Read the press release👇
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⏰ Still one week to register!

Join the members-only RESAVER meeting organised by YERUN on Friday 16 January for an overview and exchange of views on this pan-European pension solution.

🔗 Register now 👇
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🔎 YERUN, alongside leading higher education organisations, is calling for an Erasmus+ budget of at least €60 billion for 2028–2034 👇
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🎄🎅 The YERUN Brussels Office extends its warmest wishes to all our members and colleagues across and beyond the network for a joyful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

✨We hope you enjoy a restful break and we look forward to continuing our work together in the new year.

Have the perfect tree, the best lights, and cookies… but Christmas still doesn’t happen without people.🎄🌟
Same with research assessment. Real change comes from people: leaders who set the right incentives, teams that learn from each other, and evaluators who judge fairly.
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Excellence is not a universal size. It’s more like a Christmas jumper: one cut does not fit everyone. 🧶🎄
What “good” looks like depends on mission, discipline, and research culture. So assessment should start by making those values explicit, instead of relying on the usual quick signals.

Today is for everyone who’s ever baked Christmas cookies and thought: “Why are these… flat?” 🎄🍪
That “failed” batch still teaches you something.
Science works the same way. Negative findings stop us from repeating the same dead ends, strengthen what we can trust, and help knowledge rise properly.

Not all “peer” review needs to be done by your academic twins. 🎄👯
Peer review isn’t a same-discipline Secret Santa exchange. Sometimes the most helpful feedback comes from different expertise.
Good review isn’t about sharing the same academic postcode, but about adding value, clarity and context.

impact factor ≠ impact on the ground

Reminder: real-world impact doesn’t come from “top” journals alone.

In biodiversity conservation, research often informs decisions and legislation, and that is frequently published in lower-IF journals because it’s locally anchored and aimed at practice.🌲🎄

AI is already shaping research assessment via search/sort/summaries. Used carefully, it can reveal fuller contributions and patterns. But it can also accelerate unfairness, so we need transparency, checking, and accountability. “The tool said so” isn’t a decision.

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🎄 Spark 10 | Reflections & Christmas Wishes from YERUN 🎄

As we reach the tenth (and final!) edition of #SparksOfYERUN, we’re closing a remarkable first decade of YERUN with both celebration and reflection.

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#YERUN10

⏳ “Narrative evaluations are too time-consuming to be practical.”

Sure, they take longer than ticking boxes.

But so does doing justice to someone’s work.

Explore the YERUN x CoARA Advent Calendar below.

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📣 On 12 December, YERUN Policy Officer Myrto Kourouni took part in the NOVA Science & Innovation Day!

🔎 In her intervention, she highlighted YERUN’s joint work with major university networks to propose a coordinated set of amendments for #FP10.

🔎On 16 January, YERUN will host a members only meeting on the RESAVER Pension Fund, the pan-European pension solution designed to support research organisations and their employees 👇
🔗 us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Christmas is almost here, and while it feels like we’re transcending time… let’s make sure we’re also transcending silos. 🎄🧩

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"Research assessment is solely the responsibility of researchers and evaluators.” ❌

Assessment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It lives in policies, procedures, timelines, and institutional priorities. 🎛️

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“Ranking companies are independent evaluators dedicated to informing the public about university quality.”

It’s a comforting story, and also a profitable one. 💼📊

Ranking organisations aren’t neutral referees. They’re businesses.

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“TDR research can be fairly evaluated at the proposal stage by standard disciplinary review panels.” ❌

A strong proposal review needs experts, but also people with transdisciplinary experience, multidisciplinary generalists and non-academics who can asses relevance & feasibility beyond academia.

“Science is neutral and free of bias.”

If only. Plot twist: science is done by humans, not snowpeople. ☃️

Recognising bias doesn’t mean losing trust in science. It means taking responsibility for how we assess it.

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“Rankings make universities improve.”
Or do they just make everyone really good at… playing the rankings game? 🎲

When energy goes into looking good in a table, it’s not going into being good for students, staff etc. Real improvement comes from changing practices, environments and opportunities. ✨

“Inclusive practices lower the bar”.

Says who?

Usually, the ones who were fine with the bar set at their height.

Inclusive practices don’t lower the bar, but the 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀 to excellence. 🏋️

Today we’re unwrapping how inclusion raises quality, not quotas.

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Citation is one of the first things that comes to mind when we talk about research, but does the count really… count? 1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣

“Highly cited” doesn’t always mean most original or most useful for society, and important work in smaller fields can be overlooked.

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“If evaluations start valuing more than publications, researchers will stop publishing.”

Researchers don’t publish only because they have to. Most publish because they want to share their findings. 📖

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“Students need rankings to choose where to study.”

If that was true, no one could have gone to university before rankings were invented.

Students don’t need rankings. They need good, honest information, and the space to decide what matters most to them.

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“English equals excellence.”

No. That’s just… wrong.

Excellence doesn’t have an accent.

If our assessments can’t see past one language, it’s the assessment that needs improvement, not the research.

Check our advent calendar below!
❄️ Website: lnkd.in/dKzeUFCn
☃️ Calendar: lnkd.in/d2vfPS_u

🎄 It’s Friday, time for a plot… TURN. 😉

Today’s door in YERUN’s Research Assessment Advent Calendar opens onto the world of global league tables.

Open today’s door and keep an eye on the calendar in the following days!
❄️ Website: lnkd.in/dKzeUFCn
☃️ Interactive calendar: lnkd.in/d2vfPS_u

🎄 4 December is for… four-getting the myth of objectivity!

Explore today’s door in YERUN’s Research Assessment Advent Calendar, co-created with several CoARA Working Groups.

❄️ Website: lnkd.in/dTSmdNs4
☃️ Interactive calendar: lnkd.in/d2vfPS_u