Discussions involving a panel of senior scientific staff* took place in 2024 and 2025 as part of plans to make organizational and operational changes to the COMESP (Committee for the Assessment of Staff Scientific Activities). In addition to these meetings, which involved around fifteen representatives from each sector, consultations were held with all senior scientific staff present on the Institut Pasteur campus through questionnaires on the assessment process (assessment frequency, COMESP composition, value of the interview with the rapporteur, names of the subcommittees, etc.).

Following these discussions and to meet the expectations of permanent staff within the "Research" and "Research Engineering" sectors assessed by the COMESP, the project was discussed and approved by the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) in July 2025 and will be applied in 2026.

The main changes are as follows:

• An increase in the number of internal and external members,
   
• A new definition of COMESP subcommittees,
   
• A new procedure for hiring senior staff within the "Research Engineering" sector,
   
• A change to the series of criteria and forms to be completed in accordance with the European HRS4R certification and DORA (San Francisco Declaration On Research Assessment), signed by the Institut Pasteur in December 2024.

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*Panel of scientists, scientists who do not head a unit, engineers working in various settings (research units, technology core facilities, National Reference Centers or the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Hub), heads of groups or units/core facilities and/or former or current members of the COMESP and CSE.