Reflections from Pisa on Open Science, assessment reform, and the future shaped by GraspOS

On 12–13 November 2025, around 140 people—some onsite at the CNR headquarters in Pisa, others joining online—gathered for Opening Research Assessment, the final conference of the GraspOS project. The event marked the end of three years of work on rethinking how Europe evaluates research—and the beginning of a broader movement to make assessment more transparent, humane, and aligned with Open Science.

From the start, the tone was set by a simple truth: we are living in a research world where meaning often gets lost, either in the silences of the past or in the overload of the present.

Newton, whose unpublished notes remained hidden for years because dissemination was slow and expensive, would probably struggle in today’s environment for opposite reasons. Instead of ideas locked in drawers, we have ideas buried under a flood of publications, metrics, and dashboards. Today, the situation is inverted compared to a decade ago. Research publications are abundant, but the final goal of these productions are career and metric-oriented. Yet the very abundance generates noise. Groundbreaking work can drown in a sea of papers. The silence of the past has become the overload of the present. And so, the conference opened with a question that shaped the entire discussion: what kind of research assessment system helps us find meaning rather than noise?

GraspOS and a shared infrastructure for the future

Supporting Open Science–aligned reforms and Europe’s future EOSC ecosystem

Rather than ending with a report, GraspOS has created a solid, reusable foundation for responsible research assessment. Its work produced a federated and open assessment infrastructure; a catalogue of contextualised indicators; narrative CV templates co-designed with research institutions; pilots across universities, funders, and national initiatives; and practical guidelines for implementing Open Science–aligned reforms.

These resources now form a shared toolbox for researchers, RPOs, RFOs, national services, and research infrastructures, offering a roadmap for those navigating CoARA commitments and preparing to align with future EOSC standards. GraspOS leaves not a legacy but a living infrastructure—one designed to grow with the community.

Open Science as the lens that reveals real contributions

Why open infrastructures matter in today’s research assessment ecosystem

In her talk, Giulia Malaguarnera explored the shift from noise to clarity. 
Traditional evaluation systems rely heavily on proprietary databases and citation metrics originally designed for bibliometrics—not for shaping careers or guiding funding decisions. Used mechanically, these metrics have contributed to a culture of hyper-production, ranking pressure, and burnout.

Open infrastructures offer a different path. 
The OpenAIRE Graph, enriched through ORCID, ROR, and community-driven contributions, provides transparent and reproducible metadata that make diverse research practices visible—data stewardship, software development, interdisciplinary collaborations, community engagement, early dissemination. OpenCitations, as mentioned by Silvio Peroni, alongside the OpenAIRE Graph, represents an essential alternative to proprietary citation databases, helping prevent misuse of citation indicators and offering a more open foundation for analysis.

Together, they create an ecosystem where evaluation is grounded in openness and context, not in opaque metrics or closed systems.

OpenAIRE MONITOR complements this by offering institutions and funders a way to follow their Open Science strategies using verifiable evidence, while MyResearchFolio introduces narrative elements that help researchers explain the reasoning, evolution, and impact behind their work—without sacrificing structure or comparability.

What the community asked for: clarity, guidance, and trustworthy foundations

How institutions navigate the shift toward more responsible assessment

Participants from Research Performing and Funding Organisations (RPOs and RFOs) across Europe converged around a similar set of challenges. They want to embrace responsible research assessment, but need guidance on fair narrative CVs, on how to contextualise indicators, and on how to build internal workflows aligned with CoARA commitments.

When real MyResearchFolio profiles were shown—connected to ORCID and the OpenAIRE Graph—the response was immediate. Institutions saw a path to adopting narrative CVs in a way that is structured, interoperable, and meaningful.

Similarly, OpenAIRE MONITOR attracted the audience’s interest for its capacity to track Open Access and Open Science practices using open, reproducible data—avoiding the biases of proprietary sources and supporting evidence-based policy.One participant distilled the mood: “We don’t need more indicators. We need indicators we can trust and understand.”

A shared lesson: context is the new currency of evaluation

Why responsible research assessment depends on openness, interoperability, and co-creation

By the end of the event, an important consensus had taken shape: responsible assessment is neither metric-free nor metric-led—it is context-led. 
Indicators without interpretation mislead. Narrative alone is insufficient. 
Interoperability—between identifiers, metadata sources, infrastructures—is essential to ensure that meaning travels across systems, committees, and countries.

“If we want research assessment to be fair, transparent, and future-proof, we must build it on open infrastructures and co-create it with the communities who will use it.” -Giulia Malaguarnera, OpenAIRE

How OpenAIRE supports researchers, RPOs, and RFOs in research assessment reform 

Looking ahead: from overload to understanding

The Pisa conference made one thing evident: Europe is not only revising its research assessment systems—it is redefining the purpose of evaluation itself. OpenAIRE will continue strengthening its infrastructures, expanding pilots, and supporting national and institutional strategies, helping organisations move from policy commitments to day-to-day practice.

The goal is not to measure more, but to understand better, ensuring that excellent research—whether once trapped in Newton’s notebooks or now buried under today’s publication overflow—finally becomes visible.

If you are an RPO or RFO and you wish to discover the possibilities for your institution to adopt any of the OpenAIRE Services, contact Giulia Malaguarnera via helpdesk@openaire.eu.