From alignment to adoption: Co-creating pathways to Responsible Research Assessment at OSFair 2025
What does it take to move from principles to practice in reforming research assessment? At the Open Science Fair 2025 in Geneva, our collaborative workshop set out to answer exactly that.
Over the last few years, the global conversation around reforming research assessment has shifted. We are no longer debating why change is necessary but asking the harder question: how can we actually do it? At the heart of this question lies infrastructure, the technical and social systems that underpin how research is evaluated, rewarded, and made visible.
At OSFair 2025, the CoARA Working Group on Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment (OI4RRA), together with Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI), GraspOS, and OpenAIRE, invited participants to take part in a hands-on workshop: “Collaborative Pathways to Responsible Research Assessment via Open Infrastructures.” This session was co-organised with Sarah Lippincott (IOI), Zenia Xenou (OpenAIRE), and Giulia Malaguarnera (GraspOS), whose contributions were central to making the workshop possible.
The focus was the Open Infrastructure Checklist, a practical tool developed by OI4RRA and derived from the framework Open Infrastructures for Responsible Research Assessment: Principles and Characteristics. It is designed to support Research Performing and Funding Organisations in selecting open infrastructures and services to aid their transition towards RRA. The checklist covers four key dimensions: technical robustness, operational excellence, community-led governance, and sustainability and ethics.
We set out to put the checklist to the test, with the ultimate goal of refining it through shared reflection and co-creation practices.
Putting the checklist into practice
Participants were divided into breakout groups and tasked with applying the checklist to three infrastructures and services:
- MyResearchFolio powered by OpenAIRE; a service for showcasing diverse research contributions beyond publications.
- GraspOS Catalogue; a catalogue of data, tools, and templates designed to support open science–aware research assessment.
- IOI Infra Finder; an online discovery tool for open infrastructure and its different infrastructure components used in research, publishing, data management, etc.
Through lively discussions, sticky notes, and structured templates, each group examined how their case measured up to institutional needs. What emerged was a nuanced picture of strengths, barriers, and opportunities.
- MyResearchFolio was praised for its high-quality, transparent data provided by the OpenAIRE Graph and strong interoperability, while participants noted opportunities to strengthen user support and saw room to make data governance processes more visible and user-friendly.
- GraspOS Catalogue was commended as a reliable and trusted resource that facilitates discovery, with participants recommending the addition of further vocabularies, stronger feedback mechanisms, and clearer illustrations of use cases.
- Infra Finder was appreciated for its comprehensive and up-to-date technical information, with participants encouraging the expansion of documentation on ethical markers.
Across the board, participants asked for more practical use cases, adoption evidence, and trust indicators (such as certifications or ethical AI guidelines) to give institutions confidence in adopting these tools.
From alignment to adoption
The workshop didn’t stop at evaluation. In a final plenary, we asked participants to help co-create a collective adoption strategy; how do we move beyond alignment of values to real-world change?
Six priority areas emerged:
- Checklist Outreach & Engagement: raise awareness through active dissemination and stakeholder dialogue.
- Openness Benchmarking: develop indicators such as “How Open Is Your Infra?” to encourage transparency.
- Human Oversight: embed human curation alongside automation in research assessment.
- Evidence & Monitoring: gather and share adoption data to secure institutional and funder commitment.
- Cultural Change & Awareness: shift institutional habits through reflection, awareness, and dialogue.
- Training & Continuity: provide sustained training aligned with institutional systems and policies.
This roadmap reflects not just technical requirements but also the cultural and systemic shifts needed to ensure infrastructures truly serve responsible research assessment.
Why it matters
By the end of the session, one thing was clear: infrastructures are not neutral backdrops. They are active enablers, or blockers, of change. If we want to reform research assessment, we need infrastructures that are transparent, open, interoperable, and accountable to the communities they serve.
The workshop delivered a community-refined version of the checklist, actionable feedback for service providers, and a shared commitment to testing, piloting, and improving infrastructures together. These outcomes will directly feed into the ongoing work of the CoARA OI4RRA WG, informing not only checklist refinement but also future collaborations with funders, research-performing organizations, and infrastructure providers.
What’s next?
The work doesn’t end in Geneva. Over the coming months, OI4RRA WG and partners will integrate this feedback into the checklist, pilot it with institutions, and continue to collect evidence of adoption. The long-term vision is to embed these practices into broader inititatives such as CoARA, DORA, and the Barcelona Declaration, ensuring alignment across the global open science community.
The spirit of the workshop can be summed up in three words: Open Systems. Shared Success. Collective Impact.
Because reforming research assessment is not just about principles, it’s about building the infrastructures that can bring them to life.
