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!