Making Impact Visible: How Storytelling Brings Open Science Indicators to Life

At this year's OSFair at CERN, the workshop "Making Impact Visible: Storytelling with Open Science Impact Indicators" invited participants to go beyond numbers and explore the human stories behind Open Science metrics. Instead of treating indicators as technical checkboxes, the session approached them as narrative tools, vehicles for understanding how Open Science practices create real, meaningful change.

The session opened with Tereza Szybisty, who introduced the aims of the workshop: to explore how Open Science impact indicators can be better understood through storytelling and to engage participants in hands-on reflection.

Following this, Ioanna Grypari, Coordinator of the PathOS project, presented the project's main outputs and highlighted the Open Science Impact Indicators Handbook as a key result. She explained how the Handbook serves as a practical resource for identifying and operationalising indicators across academic, societal, and economic dimensions.

Participants then worked in small groups, selecting indicators from the Handbook and developing short stories around them. These stories combined narrative imagination with validation of the indicators, illustrating how each metric could influence behaviour, create ripple effects, and connect back to Open Science values.

The outcome of the workshop was a set of diverse and creative stories showing that indicators are not only technical tools but also powerful narratives that shape how we see and reward Open Science. Overall, the workshop validated the relevance of the PathOS indicators while also demonstrating the value of narrative-driven approaches for making the impact of Open Science visible in real-world contexts.