From pilot to method: the CoARA-ERIP instruments and the road to 2033

Research assessment reform has entered a second act. Its principles are broadly settled, and the argument has shifted from whether to reform to how, and to how the reform itself is to be known. This article argues that the frontier now runs through questions the reform has mostly left implicit: the turn to evidence and its risk of becoming a new ranking; reputation as the hidden basis of assessment, and the personal hubris beneath it; plurality understood as epistemic relevance rather than representation, with the Global South a source and not a recipient of reform; the distinct problems posed by data and by artificial intelligence, and the claim that there is no open science without digital sovereignty; the analysis that precedes judgement; the visibility economy that fuses with reputation; and the proposal of sovereignty by design. It contends that reform cannot begin with the evaluation of another but only with the evaluation of oneself, across scales, and that this requires moral courage. The CoARA-ERIP instruments, piloted through SE4RA, are offered as a way to meet these needs from inside institutions rather than above them.