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GraspOS: moving forward to a more responsible research assessment

Mar 14, 2023

Research assessment is not an easy job, particularly when the speed of knowledge and innovation production increases with technology and digitalisation. In previous years, research performance indicators, like the journal impact factor and the h-index, have been extensively used by evaluators in various applications as evaluation “shortcuts" to reduce this burden. However, these old research assessment indicators are failing to satisfy the needs of the research community in multiple ways; for instance, they almost solely focus on publications failing to recognise other types of research activities of equal importance (e.g., dataset and software creation, peer review), they are oblivious of the different roles that researchers have in research activities, and they fail to recognise that Open Science is becoming the new normality on the way research is done. How can we contribute to reforming research assessment?  

GraspOS is a new EU-funded project kicked-off on the 19th and 20th of January in Athens. Its aim is to investigate responsible research assessment approaches and interventions that take into consideration Open Science practices and to build a federated infrastructure that will act as an open data space offering data, indicators, tools, services and guidance to support and enable policy reform for research assessment. The consortium, coordinated by ATHENA RC, consists of 18 partners coming from 10 countries.OpenAIRE leads the federated infrastructure design and delivery and participates in the training and networking activities of the project. 

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"I am excited about the launch of GraspOS and the collaboration with so many experts in research and Open Science! Combining a narrative curriculum and indicators in a tool for EOSC can guide the research community in recruiting researchers, guide policies and investment strategies for Research Performing Organisations and Research Funding Organisations". Giulia Malaguarnera, Engagement and Outreach Officer, OpenAIRE

The services that we aim to build for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) have to address the challenge of monitoring research performance on three levels:  the researcher, the Research Performing Organisations (RPOs), and the country level. Regarding the provision of research assessment data, practices, and indicators, there are many actors in the research community, hence we plan to federate multiple data sources, indicator frameworks, tools, and services in a trusted environment.  The idea is to establish a fluid dataspace where the Community can give feedback, starting from the project pilots that involve Research Performing Organisations (RPO), Research Funding Organisations (RFOs), but also researcher communities from specific fields of science. 
 
We are aware that there are no fit-for-all solutions; hence during the lifetime of GraspOS, we will collect input from existing ongoing projects and experts in stakeholder groups such as CoARA and face the practical realities learning from pilot projects. We are looking forward to stepping up the research assessment and trying to find out new solutions to meet the spirit of this research time.

Are you interested? You can always be up-to-date by following GraspOS’s  Twitter account or by participating in the project's LinkedIn group.