Accreditation is a subjective process, based on the idea of the peer-reviewers, with which the status of every university is evaluated in comparison with other universities. This is an external evaluation which is done by the peer-reviewers chosen by an accreditation body. It should be noted that these accreditation bodies should be recognized by authorities in a national and international level.

Accreditation is a voluntary process which begins with completing the application form and sending it to the accreditation body, and if the accreditation body accepts, the process of accreditation starts. In this stage, the accreditation body announces the required documents and the university should send the required documents to the accreditation body along with completing the forms. The required documents by most accreditation bodies are similar and in 10- 20% of the cases they differ. This information is divided in 5 different sections, Educational Affairs, Research Affairs, Student Affairs, Management Development and International Affairs. Completing and sending the accreditation application forms are activities that are done before the main evaluation. The main evaluation in accreditation starts with the self-assessment of the university. To do so, the university can choose its self-assessment forms or take advantage of the forms prepared by the accreditation body.

Then, the documents should be sent to the accreditation body. The accreditation body inspects the documents and the self-assessments in its committee in order to check the credibility of the self-assessments. To confirm the credibility of the self-assessments, the accreditation body pays a site-visit to the university at a time arranged with Target University beforehand interviews directors, students, faculty members and staff. In the end, with a report prepared from the interviews and assessments by accreditation peer-review team, the accreditation decision will be made and this decision will be announced to the university. During the period that accreditation body has paid a site visit to the university and is making the decision, there is another chance for the university to pay more attention to the advices received and the weaknesses discovered by accreditation peer-reviewers, remove them and declare its readiness for the second site-visit. It should be noted that accreditation is a continuous and ongoing process and includes all the dimensions and units of the university.

Therefore, in order to coordinate, cooperate and define every unit’s responsibility (Educational Affairs, Research Affairs, Student Affairs, International Affairs and Management Development and Resource Planning), defining a protocol for implementing the accreditation process is considered crucial.