The CAR approves the new criteria for the accreditation of associate professors and full professors
The Research Assessment Commission has updated the criteria to adapt them to the Organic Law of the University System (LOSU).

The Research Assessment Commission (CAR) met yesterday at the headquarters of AQU Catalunya to hold its first meeting of 2025. At the meeting, the commission members approved the new accreditation criteria for associate professors and full professors, which needed to be updated following the entry into force of Organic Law 2/2023 of the University System (LOSU).
The new criteria include, as the main new features, the assessment of the teaching activity of the teaching staff and also their professional activity. In addition, the criteria and the contributions evaluated, and their typology are expanded, made more plural, and contextualised in relation to each field of knowledge. It also introduces elements of qualitative assessment for teaching skills, and where appropriate, of knowledge transfer. Finally, the Research Assessment explicitly recognises local relevance, linguistic pluralism, open access to data and scientific publications, and interdisciplinarity.
The new accreditation criteria for associate professors and full professors represent a proposal that brings together diverse perspectives and reflections based on the experience of 20 years in the field of assessment at AQU Catalunya and also on the Agency's knowledge of the scientific and academic reality of university teaching staff, which are added to the observations gathered in the context of some ad hoc consultations made during the criteria renewal process. Specifically, the Research Assessment Commission has received contributions from the University Teaching Policy Committee of the Inter-University Council of Catalonia, from the Academic Staff Committee of the Inter-University Council of Catalonia, from the trade union organisations represented on the AQU Catalunya Governing Board (CCOO and UGT) and from the AQU Catalunya Governing Board.
Additionally, the newly approved criteria were made available to Catalan university professors through a public consultation that took place between September and October 2024 and which gathered more than 170 contributions. During this period, AQU Catalunya collected comments from all interested parties to ensure that the accreditation criteria finally approved were best suited to the particular needs of the Catalan Higher Education System and, at the same time, to the diverse reality of each field of knowledge.
Besides welcoming three new members, the CAR meeting also approved a modification to the commission's regulations that empowers the CAR presidency to make operational decisions.
Chaired by Maria Pau Ginebra, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the CAR is made up of four people appointed by the Governing Board at the request of the councillor of the department responsible for universities and sixteen people appointed by the Governing Board at the request of the president of the Commission. The CAR's responsibilities include issuing research and advanced research accreditations, assessing the activity carried out by researchers, assessing the individual research merits of teaching and research staff, both permanent and contracted, and assessing the research activity of teaching and research staff at private universities.