What GraspOS project contributes to research assessment reforms

Welcome back: For the filth year, the representatives of OpenAIRE in Greece and Cyprus continue their successful series of webinars! In March, they welcomed Thanasis Vergoulis, lead technical manager of GraspOS project, to inform their local communities about the goals, the activities, and the expected results of the European project working on the area of research assessment. The webinar was attended by 56 participants. 

Supporting research reforms

Thanasis began his presentation by explaining the importance of the research assessment, while highlighting the problems of today's system, such as giving more attention to the research publications instead of other outputs of research activities, and using non-transparent resources and metrics for the analyses that target research assessment. Based on the above, there is the need for responsible assessment following the good practices of Open Science. The aim of GraspOS is to develop, assess and operate a federated infrastructure that supports modifications of current research assessment policies in an "Open- Science- aware" manner. 

The infrastructure is realised into core services for data storage and classification (Data Registry), indexing and discovery of services and tools (Catalogues) powered by the consortium partners' infrastructure, such as OpenAIRE Graph, OPERAS and Open Citations. The whole effort reflects a multidisciplinary approach to designing the functionalities and connecting with the EOSC marketplace. 

A toolkit to choose from

Thanasis went into more details on the main outputs expected to be delivered by the project, particularly highlighting the Open Science Assessment Framework (OSAF) which serves as a living guide in support of research assessment events that follow the Open Science practices. OSAF is a combination of three core tools:

• The scope+i method, a methodology of activities for Responsible Research Assessment and Open Science practices.
• The digital assessment portfolios, a collection of the necessary data, such as indicators, narratives, and supporting evidence, that are needed to portrait the research process.
• The assessment registry, a catalogue that keeps track of the history of past assessment processes in order to inspire and inform future activities.

The project has 9 pilots that use the expected results in their environment and provide feedback to support validation in real life scenarios. 

To support knowledge exchange and capacity building with stakeholders, GraspOS set up a Community of Practice focusing on research assessment. Thanasis encouraged participants to become active members of the Community of Practice pointing to the respective webpage. Furthermore, the links and contributions with CoARA, a coalition supporting organisations in reforming their research assessment, were presented. 

Discussion

The webinar concluded with a Q&A session where participants clarified their queries. Thanasis specified that the results of the GraspOS project, and specifically the OSAF, are adapted by well established services. He provided the example of the BIP! scholar, where researchers and research organisations create their academic profile and can connect it to their ORCID and enrich it with information about their activities, such as publication topics and datasets. Furthermore, he informed that Athena RC recently became the first Greek organisation that is a member of CoARA which is an encouraging step of institutional reforms on research assessment paving the way for other national institutions to follow. 

On behalf of the Greek and Cypriot NOADs 

Other useful links and resources:

GraspOS' website: https://graspos.eu/