OpenCon 2016

Research funders, institutions and others enable open science by providing crucial infrastructure and financial support, and introducing supportive policies. They are choosing to do this because they believe that more open science is better for both science and society. However, they need to know whether the investments they make and policies they introduce are bringing about positive change. One way to gather this evidence is by identifying indicators or metrics and tracking them over time to monitor changes. While such metrics are undeniably useful, the science community has previously seen how the misuse of metrics can have serious unintended consequences.
In this session, I will briefly describe how my colleagues and I selected indicators as part of our work developing a monitor for open science for the European Commission. We will then discuss what it means to measure open science and what the consequences of doing so could be, including possible consequences of the particular indicators we are developing.