The Open Science Fair, a key biannual event in the open science calendar, took place at CERN in September, and was co-organised by OpenAIRE and the CERN Open Science Office. GÉANT and EGI supported the event as official partners and participated with an exhibition booth on behalf of the European e-Infrastructures Assembly, the collaboration of leading e-Infrastructures EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT, OpenAIRE and PRACE. Helen Clare from Jisc, in her capacity as GÉANT representative, and Ilaria Fava from EGI share their reflections on the event.
Rather than giving us simple conclusions, the 2025 edition of the Open Science Fair offered ample food for thought, highlighted important questions and sparked reflection. The event attracted a diverse audience, with many organisations working directly with researchers to progress Open Science, and featured a rich programme, including many themes of direct relevance to infrastructure providers.
Are we measuring what matters?
A recurring theme in many discussions was the challenge of tracking the impact of open science, and whether current approaches are actually measuring the right elements. While the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science – as a negotiated document – reflect a wide range of national perspectives, there’s now a call to develop a global monitoring framework. However, it’s clear that one size won’t fit all, and that monitoring should be co-designed, not imposed. It’s not about punishing or prescribing, it’s about helping communities reflect on what they need and how they’re progressing. In this context, Goodhart’s Law came up: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” A useful reminder.
Advances and challenges in interoperability
Interoperability was described as a global imperative, and several exciting developments are underway to advance towards it. For instance, OpenAIRE is working in collaboration with partners like the Chinese Academy of Sciences to share practices and interoperability frameworks between international research information Graph. CODATA, contributing to the global alignment, has developed a cross-domain interoperability framework that spans organisational, legal, technical, and semantic layers. There is also a growing network of initiatives, including the Global Open Science Cloud and the Open Science Information Infrastructure Sharing Network Alliance. At the same time, several challenges remain: trust, inclusivity, uneven infrastructure, metadata quality, to name a few.
Openness, boundaries and shared values
We greatly appreciated the conversation on how open collaboration continues to evolve. It was recognised that open and commercial models can coexist, especially in the open source world. But we need to be honest about what works and what doesn’t, and that openness doesn’t always mean free, and that’s okay. Shared values matter, but so do practical boundaries. The discussion also touched a sobering point about the cost of openness in a world where research security is becoming a concern. Scientists are exhausted by political debates and often silence themselves. The trust between science and society is increasingly broken — and open infrastructures need to help rebuild it.
Research assessment:
Still a sticking point
A disconnect remains between the Open Science and Research Assessment movements. These are often running in parallel, not in tandem. Researchers won’t adopt new platforms unless they’re rewarded for doing so — and while Responsible Research Assessment (RRA) has made progress (especially in pushing back against the use of journal metrics), there’s still hesitation around rewarding open practices. There needs to be awareness, understanding, and infrastructure.
Final thoughts
The fair closed with reflections on collaborative funding models and how we can make smart investments in open infrastructure. For the e-Infrastructure Assembly organisations, the Open Science Fair provided a great opportunity to raise awareness of our e-infrastructures, services and activities, and build further bridges to open science communities.
Read more about the European e-Infrastructures Assembly: https://about.geant.org/european-e-infrastructures
