Thanasis Vergoulis works at the Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies (ATHENA Research Center). ATHENA Research Center conducts research in Informatics and Computational Sciences ensuring it has an impact on society.

Thanasis, what is your role in the GraspOS project? What are your tasks and responsibilities?

I was heavily involved in the proposal preparation and I am the lead technical manager of GraspOS. My work is to ensure the successful completion of the project offering technical leadership and expertise, supervising the technical activities, facilitating the communication among the development teams, and overseeing the quality of the technical outputs.   

What is your background in terms of previous work experience and academic discipline, and which specific perspective(s) does that background contribute to GraspOS? 

I have studied computer engineering and informatics for my bachelor degree and I have completed my PhD in data management. Following the completion of my doctoral studies, I started working at ATHENA Research Center in Greece as a scientific associate. With that role, I had the opportunity to contribute to a variety of challenging EU and national ICT projects focused on big data management, scientific knowledge representation and management, scientometrics, research analytics, and bioinformatics. Since most of the previous fields heavily rely on the availability of scientific knowledge and data, I soon understood the importance of the Open Science movement and became a passionate advocate. Also, from June 2022 onwards, I have the honour to act as the Development & Operations Director of OpenAIRE AMKE, a non-profit organisation committed to support the transition to Open Science in Europe. These experiences have allowed me to gain valuable technical skills and expertise in the field of Open Science. 

Why do you think we need an Open Science-aware research assessment system? What are the challenges to achieving policy reforms?

In my view, Open Science is crucial for advancing scientific progress, however, at least for now, we cannot claim that the scientific community as a whole is close to fully embracing Open Science principles. I believe that reforming research assessment practices to incentivise greater adoption of Open Science can motivate researchers to adopt those principles more widely. At the same time, a wider adoption of the Open Science principles can also facilitate Responsible Research Assessment, making a wealth of data available to extract qualitative evidence and calculate indicators to support the respective evaluation processes.

In other words, there are opportunities for Open Science and Responsible Research Assessment to mutually reinforce each other. However, there are many challenges that should be addressed. For instance, assessing research and researchers in a fair and responsible way is not an easy task. It requires a shift away from over-relying on a small set of quantitative indicators that are usually non-transparently calculated and often misunderstood towards a more comprehensive approach that considers different aspects and merits of research work and incorporates qualitative evidence. Additionally, we should also be mindful of the potential unintended consequences of promoting Open Science in research assessment. For instance, in some fields, researchers may be unable to publish their data because they contain sensitive information (e.g., imagine a precision medicine researcher working with human genomes). This could unfairly disadvantage them during the evaluation process. GraspOS is aiming to address such challenges and to pave the way for the respective policy reforms. 

What are you currently working in the project? 

In addition to coordinating the technical work of the project, I am leading my team at ATHENA RC in the development and extension of BIP! Services to support responsible researcher assessment processes. More specifically, we are improving and extending our prototype researcher profile platform (https://bip.imsi.athenarc.gr/scholar) to support novel concepts (e.g., narrative CVs) and to adopt the recommendations of the GraspOS experts in responsible research assessment.   

What are the aspects you’re most excited about regarding the first developments of the project? 

Since GraspOS is still in its early months, we are currently focused on scoping, landscaping, and designing the first version of our framework and federated architecture. I think it may be early to expect significant developments at this point, but we are working diligently to lay a solid foundation for these developments to come. 

What is the one thing that you desperately need in your daily work routine? 

A cup of coffee :) 

Thanasis, thank you for the interview!

Giulia Malaguarnera works at OpenAIRE, a Non-Profit organisation which aims to ensure a permanent open scholarly communication infrastructure to support European research. Her role in OpenAIRE is to outreach and engage all actors in the Open Science ecosystem to enable them to practice Open Science. 

What is your role in the GraspOS project? What are your tasks and responsibilities?

I have been involved with GraspOS since the proposal writing stage. Currently, I am coordinating WP4, where we are designing a dataspace architecture to serve the needs of Responsible Research Assessment. In the project, I am also responsible for other subtasks, such as Outreach and Engagement activities, and providing support for training. Additionally, I contributed to the writing and coordination of the proposal for a Working Group in CoARA, titled “Towards Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment.” The goal of this group is to promote a broader reflection on Research Infrastructures, their principles, and their sustainability, with the aim of serving the research community beyond the scope of any specific projects.

What is your background in terms of previous work experience and academic discipline, and which specific perspective(s) does that background contribute to GraspOS? 

My background is in Life Sciences: I hold a PhD in Neuropharmacology and an MSc in Pharmacy. Like many PhD holders, my academic career has not been linear, and my research interests have spanned various fields, including translational medicine, pharmacology, biotechnology, and now open science and research on research. I even had the opportunity to work for a start-up through the MSCA-Individual Fellowship (Horizon 2020) for two years before joining OpenAIRE!

One of the most relevant experiences for GraspOS was my Presidency of Eurodoc, the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers, from 2020 to 2021. During that time, the European Commission invited me to provide the Early-Career Researchers' perspective on Open Science and Research Assessment. The results of my interventions and interviews on behalf of Eurodoc were included in the Scoping Report titled "Towards a reform of the research assessment system," which was published in 2021. Before and during my Presidency, I also volunteered for several independent projects that are relevant to GraspOS, including the "Identifying and Documenting Transferable Skills and Competences to Enhance Early Career Researchers Employability and Competitiveness" in 2018, the "Eurodoc input on UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science" that was incorporated into the final document of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, a survey on postdoctoral researchers contributing to the OECD Report on Reducing the precarity of academic research careers, and in surveys on Open Science and Scholarly Communication awareness. Additionally, as part of the Marie Curie Alumni Association and drawing from my experience in the private sector as a PhD, I was interviewed by IDEA for the new release of ESCO, the multilingual classification of European Skills, Competences, and Occupations, which now includes researchers' skills and competences.

All these past experiences, coupled with my passion and vision for Open Science, drive me towards advocating for better Research Assessment and a transformation in the Research Culture, one that recognises and includes the diverse range of expertise among researchers for the betterment of policies, knowledge, innovation, and society.

What is your opinion on the need for an Open Science-aware research assessment system, and what are the challenges to achieving policy reforms?

The Open Science movement began over a decade ago, and gradually, it became evident that sharing research openly and at early stages would reduce academic misconduct stemming from the 'publish or perish' culture. The visionaries and pioneers of the Open Science movement stand as proof that embracing Open Science can enhance research reproducibility and transform the research culture. In such a culture, collaboration and achieving societal, economic, and scientific impact hold greater importance than simply aiming for a high h-index or Journal impact factor. 

Even though the need for Open Science practices and global collaboration became apparent when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, there were many misinterpretations of what Open Science entails and how it should be practised. The research community was unprepared to navigate this paradigm shift without adequate support, both in terms of infrastructure from institutes, awareness, training, and at the policy level. However, policymakers soon realised that Open Science must be prioritised, and that researchers should be rewarded in their career progression based more on the quality and impact of their work (scientific, societal, and economic) rather than the quantity dictated by journal impact factors, h-index, and the prevailing 'publish and perish' culture.

Can you talk to us about the activities you are currently working on in the project? 

We are on the verge of releasing the initial framework of the GraspOS dataspace architecture, which comprises a plethora of services and tools aimed at measuring Open Science activities and practices. This dataspace will significantly enhance support for researchers in crafting their own curricula, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, while also providing valuable insights for Research Performing Organisations and Funders to gauge the progress toward Open Science adoption. Additionally, I am collaborating with colleagues on preparing training sessions and webinars for the project, as well as engaging in dissemination and outreach activities.

What are some of the most exciting aspects regarding the first developments of the project? 

I'm excited about several aspects regarding the first developments of the project. One of the most thrilling aspects is witnessing the transition from a mere vision into a tangible and practical framework. The project is bringing together numerous complementary services that will play a pivotal role in shaping the dataspace for the European Open Science Cloud. I'm hopeful that these services will not only contribute valuable data to the dataspace but also pave the way for exploring effective strategies and principles, especially in collaboration with the CoARA Working Group. This collaboration holds the potential to amplify the impact of our efforts.

Moreover, it's worth noting that while our project is a small pilot, it is part of a much larger and fundamental societal and scientific challenge. This realisation brings a mixture of emotions – both excitement and apprehension. The challenge ahead might seem daunting, but it also presents an incredible opportunity to make a positive impact on the Open Science landscape. Embracing this journey, with all its uncertainties and potential breakthroughs, is both thrilling and humbling. I can't wait to see how our contributions will shape the future of Open Science and its broader implications for society and scientific advancement.

What is the one thing that you desperately need in your daily work routine? 

Since I am Italian, I would typically go for the cliché of coffee, but alas, my Greek colleague Thanasis has already claimed it! So, I must settle for my next favourite thing: listening to music. It helps me keep the rhythm of my job tasks and stay focused throughout the day.

Giulia, thank you for the interview!

Ludo, what is your role in GraspOS?

I am leading the GraspOS team at CWTS, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. We are proud to play a central role in the GraspOS project. At CWTS we are putting a lot of effort into promoting more responsible research assessment practices, in supporting the transition to open science, and in advancing the use of open research information. These are all key elements of GraspOS, making the project very exciting for us.

What is your background in terms of previous work experience and academic discipline, and which specific perspective(s) does that background contribute to GraspOS? 

I have a background both in computer science and in social sciences (economics). In the GraspOS project, I think this mixed background helps me understand both technical discussions about open infrastructures and social science discussions about research assessment practices.

The work I have been doing for more than 15 years in the field of scientometrics, combined with my experience as journal editor, has drawn me into open science. Over time I got increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of transparency in many scientometric analyses, and simultaneously I became more and more concerned about the way scholarly publishing is organised. While we need to acknowledge that open science doesn’t provide a silver bullet to solve all problems, I strongly believe it helps us move towards a better research system.

What is your opinion on the need for an Open Science-aware research assessment system, and what are the challenges to achieving policy reforms?

The Open Science transition can be successful only if research assessment practises co-evolve. It is crucial for assessment systems to become more Open Science aware. Let me give an example to illustrate this.

I believe we need to fundamentally rethink the way scholarly publishing and peer review are organised. Moving towards much more open ways of working, for instance based on open access, preprinting, and open peer review, is crucial. However, this is possible only if we also rethink the criteria based on which researchers are assessed. As long as researchers are assessed primarily based on publications in prestigious journals, it is perfectly understandable that many researchers are hesitant to give full support to the introduction of new approaches to scholarly publishing. Research assessment practices need to change to enable researchers to embrace more open approaches to publishing.

Policy reform of course involves many challenges. Perhaps the biggest one is to get senior researchers on board. Many of these researchers have grown up in systems in which research assessment was organised in a very traditional way, and they are used to this way of working. It is often difficult for them to see the need for change and the opportunities offered by new ways of doing things. Moreover, given their prominent role in the research system, they tend to have a lot of power to slow down policy reforms. Many junior researchers also see them as role models and tend to copy their way of working. While not easy, it is crucial to get senior researchers on board in the transition towards more open and more responsible assessment practices.

Can you talk to us about the activities you are currently working on in the project? 

My current focus, together with the other colleagues in the CWTS team, is on setting up a Community of Practicein which we will bring together a variety of stakeholders that are likely to benefit from the outcomes of GraspOS. We also expect to get important input from these stakeholders. This input is surely going to enrich the work we are doing in the project.

In addition, at a more conceptual level the CWTS team has started to work on designing an Open Science Assessment Framework, a framework that I see as a crucial element of GraspOS. It will bring together the research assessment needs of the pilot partners in the project and the open infrastructures that are being created by the technical partners. While the design of the framework is still in an early stage, I am delighted to see the interesting direction in which we are moving.

What are some of the most exciting aspects regarding the first developments of the project? 

I am very excited that we are bringing together teams with strong technical expertise and teams with expertise primarily in research assessment. It is not always easy to understand each other’s way of thinking, and this is precisely why projects like GraspOS are so important. We need to better understand each other, and the best way to achieve this is by working together towards a common goal!

What is the one thing that you desperately need in your daily work routine? 

I like to do some sports every day. It makes me feel more energised. Unfortunately too often I fail to do my daily exercising, especially on busy working days. Finding the right routine to combine daily exercising with a crowded professional schedule and family life remains a challenge for me. 

Ludo, thank you very much for the interview!

We had the pleasure to chat with Janne  Pölönen from the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (Tieteellisten Seurain Valtuuskunta - TSV) about his activities in GraspOS, the need for an Open-Science-aware Research Assessment system and the current challenges in advancing the reform of research assessment. You can also find him on Twitter, Mastodon, and Linkedin.

Janne works as the Secretary General of Publication Forum at TSV. TSV is active in Open Science activities in Finland and is leading the landscape analysis for an Open Science-aware Responsible Research Assessment (RRA) framework in GraspOS and contributing to the establishment of the Open Science Assessment Framework (OSAF). TSV also contributes in testing the tools and services to support Open Science-aware RRA and in developing related training activities.

JANNE, COULD YOU GIVE US A LITTLE MORE INSIGHT INTO WHAT YOU DO IN GRASPOS?

I lead the TSV team that is responsible for conducting the Work Package 2 landscape analysis, the purpose of which is to support the development of Open Science Assessment Framework (OSAF). The landscape analysis builds on a survey of European organisations and extensive document analysis to identify current OS assessment practices, qualitative and quantitative data priorities, and associated implementation obstacles. The OS-aware RRA approaches landscape report has been made available here.  

CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND, AND HOW YOU GOT INTO OPEN SCIENCE? 

My academic background is twofold. In 1994 I started training in history in Oulu (Northern Finland) and ended up studying ancient Roman law and society for more than ten years in Rome and Paris. I investigated how inherited wealth was divided between men and women, or socio-economic status conditioned access to justice, in the Roman Empire around 50 BC - AD 250. Making sense of very disparate, biassed and sporadic ancient narratives in light of comparative models from other societies was a lesson on the benefits of qualitative and quantitative evidence.   

After returning to Finland, I have worked since 2010 at TSV developing a community-curated classification of peer-reviewed journals and book publishers, which supports the performance-based research funding system of Finnish universities. Since the beginning, our steering-group and expert panels have discussed the evaluation of Open Access journals. I have also closely followed the development of TSV’s OA publishing platform (www.journal.fi), and the challenges of Finnish journals in transitioning to Open Access publishing. Open Science in the broadest sense has been part of my work during the past five years, since the introduction of the National Open Science Coordination at TSV.  

Now in my role as the Secretary General for Publication Forum I am also involved in policy work, such as the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication, the National recommendation for the responsible evaluation of a researcher in Finland, and the Policy for Open Scholarship. Also my recent research is in the fields of bibliometrics, scholarly communication, research assessment, open science and learned societies. 

Desk at the TSV office, photo by Janne Pölönen 

WHY DO YOU THINK WE NEED AN OPEN SCIENCE AWARE RESEARCH ASSESSMENT SYSTEM? WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES TO ACHIEVING POLICY REFORMS?

Research assessment steers research organisations and researchers by creating expectations that certain behaviour will be recognized and rewarded in terms of resources and positions. Open science movement cannot reach its goal to improve the quality and impact of research within and beyond academia if collaboration, transparency and accessibility of research are not properly recognized and rewarded, let alone if incentives are conducive to the opposite direction. For example, Open Science aims “to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone” (UNESCO). Yet assessments may recognize only peer-reviewed articles published in journals indexed in Web of Science (WoS). In order not to be disadvantaged in funding and career opportunities, researchers may avoid effort to publish books or articles in languages not covered in WoS journals. Users needing access to research-based knowledge in those languages are excluded from the benefits of science. According to our survey respondents, the assessment reform has to overcome several challenges: complexity, costs, resistance, implementation, as well as lack of awareness and evidence of benefits. 

WHAT ARE THE ACTIVITIES YOU ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON IN THE PROJECT? 

In the past months TSV team was fully engaged in the drafting of the OS-aware Responsible Research Assessment approaches landscape report, which was one of the first deliverables of the project. It has been one of my tasks to analyse the results of the landscape survey. The questionnaire was structured based on CoARA core-commitments and principles that set a shared direction for changes in assessment practices for over 500 organisations that have signed the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment. A total of 54 full responses were received from organisations from 19 different European countries. We are grateful that so many respondents took the time to answer the questionnaire and contributed to the overview of the state-of-the-art assessment practices, priorities and challenges. Another task I am also working on is an analysis and summary of over 800 statements concerning responsible assessment we have collected from over 80 policies, initiatives and recommendations.

WHAT ARE THE ASPECTS YOU’RE MOST EXCITED ABOUT REGARDING THE FIRST DEVELOPMENTS OF THE PROJECT? 

To kick-start the project in January, it was exciting to meet in Athens the representatives of 18 partner organisations from 10 countries who collaborate in GraspOS for the common goal of offering data, indicators, tools, services and guidance to support the implementation of Open Science-aware responsible research assessment approaches. It has been really great also to see the early alignment and synergies between GraspOS and OPUS EU projects, as well as the collaboration among the partners and many other CoARA members who joined forces to propose CoARA Working Groups to address key reform challenges. Naturally, I am also excited about seeing our landscape report come to materialise thanks to the great effort by the whole TSV team - Anna-Kaisa, Dragan, Elina and Marita - and the GraspOS colleagues!

FINAL QUESTION, WHAT IS THE ONE THING THAT YOU DESPERATELY NEED IN YOUR DAILY WORK ROUTINE? 

This was a tough question, because at first glance it seemed that the only regular feature of my daily work is that I do not have many routines. Then I figured that one routine I most desperately need is the lunch break at a restaurant. Bon appetit! 

Sami Syrjämäki (left) and Janne Pölönen at lunch, photo by Janne Pölönen

Thank you for the interview, Janne!

Photo in the top image: Janne Pölönen profile picture, photo by Henriikka Mustajoki 

This month, WP6 Leader Francesca Di Donato answered our questions about what is going on in GraspOS and the need for an Open Science-aware Research Assessment system. Francesca works at the Institute for Computational Linguistics at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). You can also find her on Twitter, Mastodon, and Linkedin.

Francesca, can you tell us about your role and activities in GraspOS?

In the GraspOS project I am leading Work Package 6, which deals with Communication, engagement and exploitation of the project results. This means coordinating the various communication activities of the project, but also thinking about the involvement of external stakeholders and supervising the training activities that have been planned. The work of the GraspOS Community of Practice, for instance, which has recently started involving more than 150 people - a third of whom are actively involved - who share their experiences, difficulties and wishes in the reform processes, is part of WP6 activities. WP6 is an important and strategic Work package, which must be aware of everything the project is doing and study how to communicate it in the best way.

What is your academic and professional background? when did you first hear about Open science in your career, and how did you get into it? 

Thanks for this question! I have a background in History of Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy, and at an earlier stage of my career my research was focused on Immanuel Kant's Political thought.

I have been working on open knowledge models and systems for about twenty years. In particular, at the beginning I was interested in understanding how the “architectonic” of the Internet and the web - i.e. their foundational principles - influenced scientific communication, and I studied the movements and principles for free software, and actively followed the evolution and spread of open access to scientific publications. I must say that I experienced all this with a personal interest and commitment: doing Open Science gave meaning to my profession as a researcher. And then, in parallel, Open Science also became my research and teaching topic.

What is your view on the need for an Open Science-aware research assessment system? What are some of the challenges to achieving policy reforms?

Open science is simply science done well, that is, in the correct way: for this reason the evaluation system must be able to highlight those elements that characterise it. 

The current evaluation system has created distortions, and it is now clear to everyone that it needs to be rethought. However, the difficulties and challenges to be faced are many: consolidated interests and behaviours, but also the fact that the traditional system, based on quantitative indicators, is represented as objective. We know that this is not the case at all, but this idea remains in academia. Thus, a reform needs a cultural change, and a cultural change needs several elements to happen, among which proper training and education is essential. Then, there is the problem that in different European states we have different assessment systems, and that the reform often has to go through regulatory reforms. In short, the challenges are many.

What are the activities you are currently working on in the project? 

In addition to the activities of WP6, I am involved in the pilot of the Italian National Research Council, which has the aim of analysing the criteria used in the selections for the career progression of researchers and technologists working in the institution to see if, and to what extent, Open Science practices are recognised, evaluated and valorised. It is a work in progress, from which I am learning a lot, also through comparison with the experiences of other bodies and stakeholders involved in the other pilots of the project.

What are the aspects you’re most excited about regarding the first developments of the project? 

This is a difficult question, it is really difficult to choose something in particular. However, I think that the work of and in the pilots is the aspect that I find most stimulating for my research on Open Science and on the assessment reform. I am particularly interested in this task both for the comparison with different experiences, and above all for the methodology we are using, which is itself is part of the paradigm shift that we would like to see implemented.

One last, question, what is the one thing that you desperately need in your daily work routine? 

A lot of Italian coffee :-D!

Thank you for your time Francesca!

We had the pleasure to chat with Silvio Peroni, Associate Professor at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, University of Bologna, where he teaches Basic Informatics, Computational Thinking and Programming, Data Science and Open Science. You can also find him on Twitter, Mastodon and Linkedin. 

Silvio, can you tell us about your work and centres of interest?

I am an expert in document markup and semantic descriptions of bibliographic entities using Semantic Web technologies (see the SPAR Ontologies), and I am the Director (with David Shotton) of OpenCitations, an independent not-for-profit infrastructure organisation for open scholarship dedicated to the publication of open bibliographic and citation data.

My works concern theoretical studies and technical implementation of tools to foster semantic interoperability of Open Science services and infrastructures, the empirical analysis of the nature of scholarly citations, bibliometrics and scientometrics studies, visualisation and browsing interfaces for semantic data, and the development of ontologies to manage, integrate and query bibliographic information.

What is your role in GraspOS, and what are you currently working on?

I am the Local Unit Coordinator at the University of Bologna. We work on the development of a tool to extract citations from scholarly articles available in PDF format and then characterise them with their meaning, i.e. the reason why authors cite other works. Indeed, authors’ reasons for citing another contribution can vary, from reusing a method introduced in a previous work to recalling the conclusion of a prior study or extending an existing research, etc. Characterising the semantics of these citations would allow, in principle, the creation of tools for studying the evolution of science or for facilitating the search for relevant information (for instance, while preparing a literature review).

The exciting news about our research is that the tool we are developing for retrieving such reasons for citing will also be tested in a few GraspOS case studies involving real users! That will provide us with real testbeds for its application and usefulness and enable us to understand which features to consider for extending the tool.

Can you tell us about the first time you heard about Open Science, and what prompted you to get involved? 

The first time I heard about Open Science as a concept was in 2010 when I was doing my PhD internship abroad at the University of Oxford in the Image Bioinformatics Research Group at the Department of Zoology. I was already acquainted with related concepts such as Open Source, being a Computer Scientist by training, and Open Access, having followed a few seminars about it when I was attending my Master's Degree. However, in Oxford, I had the chance to work with David Shotton – my internship supervisor at the time, now one of my dearest friends and colleagues with whom I direct OpenCitations – on a project aimed at creating an online database for openly sharing bibliographic and citation data of scholarly articles. In explaining that project to me, David introduced the rationale for providing all these data as openly available material to maximise their reuse, and in doing that he introduced me, for the very first time, to the concept of Open Science and the reason why it was the way to go.

Then, when I was back at the University of Bologna after my internship, I had the chance to follow a few seminars held by Open Science advocates. In particular, I remember starting to be more involved in the Open Science endeavour after a wonderful talk by Elena Giglia – who, I think, has taught Open Access and Open Science matters to the majority of today’s Italian advocates. 

what are some of the main challenges you foresee in the reform process, and how can GraspOS support the movement for reform? 

The movements that aim to reform research assessment are just a consequence of the broader goal of sharing and teaching an Open Science culture. In the past years, we have faced challenges in adopting the basic Open Science building blocks, mainly due to the scholarly system's inefficiency in creating incentives to foster such adoption. Several experts and Open Science advocates have claimed, in the past few years, that the only way to spread an Open Science culture to a large scholarly audience would be to force its adoption by including it in the dimensions related to the career advancement of researchers, such as in the procedure to obtain a research grant and, even more prominently, in the assessment processes of scholars and institutions.

The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has been, so far, one of the biggest catalysers (with the European Union and UNESCO) for the adoption of an Open Science culture. However, such a reform comes with several challenges that must be addressed to reach such a final goal. First, because CoARA just started and, even if there has been a huge involvement of research-performing organisations and research assessment agencies, we do not yet have clear evidence on how such a reform will effectively be implemented by all of its signatories – something we will be able to catch in four years. Second, there is an urgent need to go beyond the usual metrics used so far for research assessment purposes and to consider as proper support for peer-reviewed assessment procedures the use of new appropriate metrics and indicators that measure, to some extent, the various dimensions that characterise Open Science – at personal, institutional, national, and international level.

GraspOS has the unique chance of being one of the best well-informed testbeds for developing and testing such new metrics, thanks to the brightness of all the researchers and experts involved in the project, whose expertise covers many different disciplinary domains.

Thank you Silvio! Is there a specific activity that you enjoy doing to relax after work that you would like to share with us?

There is not one activity in particular. I would say enjoy my family, playing videogames with my kids (huge fans of Super Mario), playing chess (but I am honestly not good at it), reading books (every kind of book: fiction, essays, comics, etc.), and listening to music (jazz and classical music preferably).

Thank you for your time, Silvio!

This month, Natalia Manola answered our questions on Open Science and the reform of research assessment, and the role GraspOS can play to support the reform. Natalia is CEO of OpenAIRE, a non-profit membership organisation in Europe with a mission to promote open scholarship and improve discoverability, accessibility, shareability, reusability, and monitoring of data-driven research results, globally. 

Natalia, can you tell us more about your work and centres of interest?

I am highly enthusiastic about the practical ways of making open science work, on how to incorporate practices into research and that it becomes an instinctive part of research workflows. I am interested in understanding the impact of AI, and specifically Large Language Models enabled technologies, on the research process and its methods of evaluation. I am fascinated by the manifestation of meta-research in R&I policy, as it frequently serves as the primary motivating factor for all.

What is your role in GraspOS? If you could highlight one aspect of the project, what would it be, and why?

My role in GraspOS is to ensure the vision of openness stays intact. From its inception, GraspOS was designed from the beginning to include two forms of openness: Open Infrastructures for research assessment and research assessment that incorporates evaluation or metrics on openness. In order to achieve the first objective, it is necessary for us to address the issue on a global level. The establishment of Open Infrastructures necessitates a collaborative spirit from all parties involved, which is the most intriguing aspect.  

Developing the researcher's openness profile is currently the most enjoyable aspect, as it involves us to relate with the researcher to understand their ways of thinking. Upon reviewing the profile we have prepared, I am confident that many individuals will reassess their perspectives, as they will realise that attaining the desired outcome is not as challenging as they initially believed. 

when was the first time you heard about Open Science, and how did you get involved? 

In 2005, I took on the role of project manager for an EU-funded initiative called DRIVER, where we established the first open access repository network in Europe. This got me started with Open Science. From that point on, I was an integral part of every OpenAIRE EU-funded project and eventually became CEO of the OpenAIRE AMKE corporation. What kept me in? The passion of the people involved and working for a public good. After coming from the industry, this has been quite revitalising!

In your opinion, what are some of the main challenges to reforming research assessment and how can GraspOS support the reform process? 

There's one too many. This well-established system is, first and foremost, familiar to the researchers. They know it well, they trust it and are strongly committed to their ways. The paradox is that the current infrastructure is insufficient to measure performance in a data-intensive R&I ecosystem, which is driven towards more transparency and inclusiveness and progressing beyond the current infrastructure's focus on publications.

These very aspects are being addressed by GraspOS: First, we need to establish an Open Infrastructure that can track various forms of research outputs, including citations and their interconnections, and determine how they impact researcher profiles. Second, we need to design profiles that capture researchers' openness through both their research outcomes and their open science practices. Such examples can be on how to measure the impact of researchers being a part of an open source community project, or how their contribution in engaging the public in  citizen science initiatives accelerate scientific methodologies or knowledge.

Thank you natalia, one last question, Can you share with us your go-to activity for relaxing after a busy week at work?

Being with family and friends, taking weekend non-work related trips. Or going over the designs of renovating parts of my house.

Thank you for your time, Natalia!

This time we welcomed Carol Delmazo, Service Marketing and Community Outreach Officer at OPERAS Research Infrastructure, to discuss about Open Science, current challenges in the ongoing research assessment reform, and why we should listen to the voices of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) researchers community.

You can also follow Carol on X @caroldelmazo and Linkedin. 

Hello Carol, can you tell us more about yourself?

I am a versatile person who approaches life, including work, with enthusiasm and passion! My background is in journalism and science communication. I have experience working in a variety of contexts, from newsrooms to Academia. A few years ago, Open Science crossed my path and it quickly became one of my main areas of interest. This led me to my current position as Service Marketing and Community Outreach Officer at OPERAS Research Infrastructure, where I am responsible for promoting OPERAS services, contributing to OPERAS' visibility and growth, as well as integrating communication, community outreach, and training strategies in diverse European projects such as GraspOS.

What is your role in GraspOS, and what are the activities you are currently working on?

I am one of the representatives of OPERAS in GraspOS. We have two roles: as a technical partner, offering some of the OPERAS services as part of the framework we are building in the project, and as the leader of the pilot focused on the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH).

For the first part, I relish the challenge of examining our own services to identify the best approach for utilising them in the context of research assessment.

Concerning the pilot, together with my colleague Fotis Mystakopoulos, we have just finished a round of consultation workshops with the SSH community. It was key for the pilot to engage them in the discussion about an Open Science-aware research assessment reform which should value diverse outputs and practices that are important for SSH researchers. I am excited about this community outreach process because I believe that the path to a better evaluation system must include the evaluated and their experiences. Their voices must be heard.

WHEN was the first time you came across Open Science, and what motivated you to get involved? 

I had heard about it before, but participating in the Bootcamp “Training for Trainers in Open Science and Responsible Research and Innovation”, in September 2020, organised by the FIT4RRI project, and led by our colleagues from the University of Minho (Portugal), was my real entrée into the Open Science world.

Once I had finished the training and become a trainer, I got in touch with other colleagues from the University of Coimbra (where I was working at the time) and proposed a bottom-top initiative to organise training sessions on Open Science there. The University welcomed our initiative and, a couple of months later, I was providing training for a first group of PhD students. This is how it started!

From your perspective, what are some of the key challenges in the research assessment reform, and how can GraspOS contribute to overcoming them?

I have heard it several times during the SSH consultation workshops we organised, and indeed it is one of the main challenges: we cannot be another initiative that simply proposes new metrics to replace the old ones, without contributing to significant changes in the evaluation system itself.

It is not easy to go beyond quantitative metrics, how to measure quality? Perhaps we should say how to evaluate quality. How to value the various processes that take place in the research cycle and not just a few outputs?

I believe that GraspOS can contribute to this by adapting the tools and services available, and by proposing guidelines to highlight the different roles of researchers, their involvement in Open Science practices, taking into account the different contexts in which the evaluation takes place. One of the participants in the consultation workshops questioned if we needed a revolution instead of a reform. Whether it is a reform or a revolution, we need to take steps. GraspOS can lead to some of those steps.

Thank you Carol, as a FINAL question, Could you share with us your favourite way to unwind after a busy week at work?

You will probably find me in the rocks around Lisbon or defying gravity in a bouldering gym. I am passionate about climbing and there is nothing that relaxes me more. A hobby, a sport, a therapy, a deep meditation, climbing is it all!

Carol out climbing (credits: Carol Delmazo)

Thank you so much for your time, Carol!

This month, we had a chat with Chiara Di Giambattista, a Research Fellow at the University of Bologna and the Communications Director & Community Development Manager at OpenCitations, an Open Science Infrastructure organisation managed by the Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata at UNIBO. In this Chat, Chiara tells us about the innovative tools her team is developing, some of the main challenges she foresees in reforming research assessment, and how projects and initiatives like GraspOS and OpenCitations contribute to the broader Open Science movement.

You can also follow Chiara on X, Mastodon and LinkedIn

Hello Chiara, Please tell us a bit more about yourself, what are your centres of interest?

I’ve always been interested in literature and art, and passionate about the adaptive potential of language in all its forms, from linguistics​​ to visual semiotics. I graduated in Classics and Visual Arts at the University of Bologna, and have been working in web editing and blogging since then. Within OpenCitations, I’ve started focusing on “communicating the scholarly communication”, by finding ways of promoting our values and mission to make what we do understandable to the research community. 

What is your role in GraspOS? If you could highlight one specific aspect of the project that you feel particularly excited about, what would it be?

I’m part of the University of Bologna personnel working in GraspOS. OpenCitations is one of the Data Asset Sources in GraspOS, and our team is contributing to GraspOS by developing a tool for extracting citation data from PDFs through the implementation of machine-learning systems. One of the most exciting aspects of the tool we are developing, which has already been highlighted by OpenCitations Director and Local Unit Coordinator Silvio Peroni in a previous GraspOS Chat, is that it will characterise the extracted citations with their meaning, i.e. the reason why authors cite other works, and that this function will be tested on real users!

I’m currently involved in GraspOS Work Package 6, focusing on the communication and dissemination of the outcomes of the project. Being part of this group is inspirational for the impact that the sharing of ideas and strategies on how to communicate effectively the activities and achievements have on the communication management of the partners, such as OpenCitations. Also, I’m amazed by the network of dissemination that GraspOS is creating by making visible the events and initiatives organised by the partners. For instance, GraspOS promotion is proving to be priceless in announcing the Workshop on Open Citations and Open Scholarly Metadata 2025, an event organised by OpenCitations and the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information which will be held in Bologna on May 28-29, 2025, where we hope to welcome many representatives from OpenCitations network of collaborators, including GraspOS, to reflect and discuss on the theme of Open Research Information.

Can you tell us about the first time you heard about Open Science, and what prompted you to get involved? 

My first “encounter” with Open Science coincided with the first time I heard about OpenCitations. I had just got my master's degree, and while I was looking around figuring out what to do with the freshly-earned academic title, one of my closest friends who had just started her PhD at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies mentioned one of the projects that were hosted by the Department: OpenCitations. I was immediately surprised by the interdisciplinarity of the project, but above all by its value proposition concerning the Open Science principles, which were kind of new for me as a concept, but seemed something worth being aware of while moving my first steps in the after-degree world. I needed to learn more. So I started doing some research online and stumbled on the recordings of the online seminar “Digital WHOmanities” which was organised in 2020 by the students from the course in Digital Humanities and Digital Knowledge at UNIBO. The talk presenting OpenCitations' work and mission, also mentioning its role in the context of Open Science, blew my mind. The talk was given by Silvio Peroni, who now happens to be my boss, and whose guidance in the first months working in OpenCitations, back in 2021, was fundamental to giving me the right instruments and perspective to learn more about Open Science. Indeed, OpenCitations’ original motto is “OpenCitations for Open Science”, and while I was studying how to communicate our services, I was also learning about the relevance and impact of Open Science and the ways Open Science can be embraced by researchers and institutions. 

In your opinion, what are some of the main challenges to reforming research assessment and how can GraspOS support the reform process? 

Already in 2013, in an article published in “Nature”, OpenCitations’ Founder David Shotton defined it as a “scandal” that reference lists are not readily and freely available for all scholars. The reproducibility of research is limited by a lack of access to open data and an overall lack of transparency of the methods used and, in particular, the adoption of closed citation data is a threat to transparency, replicability and verifiability of research assessment exercises. Over the years, the community has been striving to set principles to be followed for institutions and researchers to overcome the “replication crisis” which affects Research Information. However, nothing will change deeply until the Open Science practices are adopted as the norm and integrated into the assessment process of researchers and institutions. This transition needs practical steps to be undertaken, and in this perspective, it is fundamental to collectively coordinate the effort towards a common mission, like it is happening in the CoARA Working Group: Towards Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment (OI4RRA), and through the commitment from the supporters and signatories of the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information.

GraspOS is part of this change as a potential hub of experts collaborating in the development of new tools and innovative metric approaches to research assessment. 

Thank you Chiara, Lastly, Do YOU HAVE A go-to activity for relaxing after a busy week at work THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH US?

I’m lucky to live in Bologna, a city in Italy with a vibrant cultural life. During the weekend I enjoy attending vernissages at local art galleries and exhibitions or visiting other art cities in the area. Also, I’m a kind of foodie, and I like trying new restaurants and wineries with my friends. Also, I love attending stand-up comedy shows featuring both Italian and international comedians: there’s always space for a heartfelt laugh after a busy week!

Thank you so much for your time, Chiara!