A methodological approach to modelling career progression assessment: toward comparative analysis and service design

A methodological approach to modelling career progression assessment: toward comparative analysis and service design Fabrizio Pecoraro 1[0000-0001-5718-4240] 1 Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, Rome 00185, Italy Abstract. This work presents a UML-based methodology to model research assessment processes for career progression. By formalizing actor-system interactions, it enables comparison across institutions and highlights gaps in data collection and evaluation practices. The approach supports the design of digital services and contributes to more transparent, efficient, and comparable assessment systems aligned with responsible research evaluation principles. Conference Themes: Transparency and Inclusivity of Assessment Processes Keywords: Research assessment, Career progression, UML modelling, Institutional comparison, Digital research infrastructure. 1 Objective and Context This contribution proposes a methodological framework to model the internal research assessment process for career progression, with the goal of enabling comparative analysis across institutions and supporting the design of digital services for data collection and processing. The work is based on the case study of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), developed within the context of a national pilot project (WP5), and focuses on the individual evaluation process triggered by a public competition notice. 2 Methodology The methodology adopts Unified Modelling Language (UML) as a formalism to describe both the structural and dynamic dimensions of the process: it combines use case, activity, and sequence diagrams, to map interactions between actors (e.g., applicants, evaluators, institutional units) and systems (e.g., institutional repositories, application platforms, external data sources). It provides a conceptual framework to identify the data points, responsibilities, and decision rules embedded in institutional procedures. Such formalization is essential for institutions seeking to analyze their own procedures, compare them with other practices, and evaluate alignment with emerging principles of responsible research assessment. 2 Fabrizio Pecoraro 3 Findings and Implications In particular, the model reveals where institutional systems support structured data (e.g., repositories of research products) and where gaps remain (e.g., unstructured narratives, manual entry of responsibilities, lack of interfaces for activity reporting) and can help in the development of information systems that can better support applicants and evaluators, improve process efficiency, and ensure transparency and traceability of assessment criteria and outcomes. By applying this methodology across institutions, it becomes possible to compare how different research organizations define eligibility, structure applications, assign evaluation criteria, and manage interactions between people and platforms. This, in turn, supports evidence-based policy making, fosters interoperability of research information systems, and contributes to a shared understanding of fair and effective evaluation practices. Disclosure of Interests. The author has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.