Welcome to the MERIT Portal – the platform for quality-driven, impact-oriented, and future-focused recruitment and project assessment.
Since autumn 2017, the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin has expanded its approach to academic assessment for appointments by introducing new evaluation criteria aimed at capturing a broader spectrum of scientific performance, such as scientific contribution (impact narrative), self-selection of key publications, including description of personal contribution, engagement in Open Science and contribution to Team Science, including relevant collaborations and networks.
These criteria enable applicants to showcase their diverse academic achievements beyond conventional metrics. In addition, the concept of academic age has been introduced to help committees contextualize career progression and productivity.
As part of the Wellcome Trust-funded MERIT Study (2019–2023), the usability and fairness of these new quality-oriented criteria were systematically evaluated. The outcome: the MERIT Portal – a digital tool designed to enhance quality-oriented assessment, transparency, comparability, and reduce bias in academic hiring and project assessment.
On the basis of the MERIT Portal for Appointments at Charité (https://merit-portal.charite.de/) and the Working Paper "Structured project templates with integrated responsible research & innovation (RRI) and open sciences (OS) criteria and corresponding assessment aids for reviewers for (intramural) research funding lines at Charité and BIH", the MERIT Team and the Cluster of Excellence NeuroCure have closely collaborated to develop this version of the MERIT Portal, which is suited to specific NeuroCure calls for applications, with the aim to support fair and transparent recruitment processes that allow diversity in excellence to emerge.
The MERIT Portal supports the entire recruitment process – from application to decision – and includes three core modules:
Application Tool
A structured, narrative-based format that allows you to present your scientific profile with depth, context, and clarity. MERIT Portal for NeuroCure is structured in four parts and entails criteria related to 1) personal information & eligibility, 2) project proposal, 3) scientific profile, and 4) documents for upload e.g. certificates. A template with the full set of criteria and detailed instructions to prepare the application offline can be downloaded after registration.
Assessment Tool
A digital interface for review committees and decision-makers that promotes fair, structured and quality-oriented assessment with integrated bias-reduction strategies.
Management Tool
For the efficient administration of the entire recruitment process.
The MERIT Portal is grounded in evidence from policy analysis, literature reviews, and best practices, and it aligns with leading international frameworks such as:
Our mission is to make scientific excellence visible – in all its breadth, depth, and societal relevance.
Charité and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at Charité have both signed the CoARA recommendations and committed to implement research assessment reforms for quality and impact-oriented assessments. The iterative Action Plan to support the translation of the EU recommendations on research assessment reform (CoARA) into organizational practice at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) 2024-2028 can be found here.
The main goal of MERIT is to support the quality and impact-oriented assessment of research and to increase the robustness and fairness of the decision-making process.
The following principles apply:
The assessment procedure is iterative and entails the following steps:
Step 1: Assessment for Eligibility: PhD, Dissertation or equivalent, Academic Age < 10 years, Quality-oriented assessment of 1-3 research contributions (candidates self-selection), Fit for NeuroCure
--> Selection for
Step 2: Quality and strength of the project proposal and the scientific profile of the candidate. More weight is put on the assessment of the project proposal than the individual scientific profile (approx. 60/40).
--> Selection for
Step 3: Presentation and interview
--> Selection for position
Your feedback is crucial to further improving usability and quality of the MERIT Portal. For questions or suggestions, please contact us:
📩 quest-merit@bih-charite.de
When reporting a technical issue, please use the following template:
Title: Brief description of the issue (e.g., “Work Experience section: data not saved”)
Steps to reproduce: Describe what actions you took before encountering the problem
Expected vs. actual behavior: What did you expect to happen – what actually happened?
Screenshot or screencast: If possible, please attach
Technical details: Your operating system (Windows/Mac/Linux) and browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
The MERIT Portal is an in-house development of the BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research at Charité. A white label version is available for interested organizations and collaborative development.
Contact persons:
Dr. Miriam Kip – Lead, Product Owner
Dr. Sebastian Major - Technical Lead
Dr. Julieta Arancio – Research Fellow & Community Manager
Carolyn Capelouto – Project Manager
MERIT Portal © 2025 by Miriam Kip and Sebastian Major is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0