News

PathOS activities and representation has been in full swing the last few months with partners reporting and presenting the first results in European & international events and below you can find the summary of the most recent events we attended, the EIRO Forum in Paris, France and the Open Repositories 2023 Conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Open Repositories 2023

PathOS was represented during the 18th International Open Repositories Conference (OR23) in June 2023, this year taking place in Stellenbosch South Africa.

Our project partner Ron Dekker from Technopolis joined the conference as a speaker and delivered a presentation on Designing and Assessing the Life Cycle of Research Infrastructures in the context of repositioning repositories. The PathOS Impact Analysis was introduced during this presentation and its meaning and significance for Research Infrastructure evaluations. PathOS focuses on the policy organisations front that are aimed to evaluate research infrastructures (including Open Repositories).

Feedback received during the presentation highlighted the importance of conducting policy impact analysis on an institutional level to gain the necessary insights of the data and indicators that can and should be collected during the operational stage. As a result, complex and tedious work at the time of the evaluation can be avoided.

EIRO forum Economics of Big Science workshop 

On 24 May 2023, CSIL was invited to join the 2nd Edition of the EIRO forum Economics of Big Science workshop. Organised by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with CERN and hosted by the ESA’s headquarters in Paris, the workshop addressed the socio-economic impact of Big Science and discussed different approaches and experiences of conducting an Impact Assessment Exercise of Research Infrastructures. The event provided an ideal platform to present the ambitious research agenda of the PathOS project. 

During her presentation, Silvia Vignetti emphasised the importance of tracing and measuring the impact pathways of science within the new Open Science paradigm. She highlighted some findings from the project’s literature review regarding Open Science’s academic, societal, and economic impacts: 

✅ It has been shown that Open and FAIR Data lead to data reuse and citation advantages for associated research papers. 

✅ Open Code and Software enhance software development efficiency and may increase citations. 

✅ Citizen Science improves data collection efficiency and scope, but data quality remains a consideration. 

✅ Open peer review shows neutral to positive effects on review quality. 

✅ Open Access has demonstrated societal benefits such as public engagement, policy-making support, and health-related outcomes. 

✅ More limited evidence is available for the economic impact of Open Science, with interesting examples in the biopharma industry.

Read our full scoping review of Open Science impact here.

Curious to find out more about PathOS results? Check out our Zenodo community for all publications.

The PathOS project is committed to advancing its research agenda and understanding the impacts of Open Science. Follow us on our recently launched LinkedIn page and twitter to stay up to date.

Recap written by István Kárász, Technopolis Group, Lennart Stoy, Technopolis Group & Ioanna Grypari, Athena RC

In May 2023, PathOS hosted an invitation-only co-creation workshop to facilitate meaningful discussions around the development of impact pathways for Open Science. Key topics included the need for comprehensive impact indicators to capture the influence of Open Science, the potential of these indicators in guiding policy decisions and monitoring, especially in the EU funding context, and the necessity to monitor the implementation of UNESCO recommendations on Open Science.

The workshop brought forward diverse perspectives on the impacts of Open Science. It underscored the significant economic effects of Open Science, with examples citing policies in African countries. Participants also shed light on the transformative influence of Open Science on equity, participation, and respect for indigenous knowledge. Stakeholders highlighted that the objectives for implementing Open Science practices can vary based on context. National policies look more towards creating guidelines for long-term impacts while Research Infrastructures concentrate on direct societal or economic benefits.

Further, the workshop explored the potential of Open Science in enhancing the efficiency of the science ecosystem, promoting societal engagement, and fostering transparent governance. Participants recognized its potential in building public trust through open research, facilitating global collaborations, and driving economic and scientific advancements. They stressed potential benefits of Open Science practice on social justice, inclusion, and multilingualism while warning about risks of marginalisation and decreasing equity due to disparate Open Science implementations. The roles of public-private partnerships, fair public funding distribution, and international policies in furthering Open Science were underscored.

Participants concurred that measuring the impact(s) of Open Science policies is very challenging. New assessment methods and policy adjustments based on systematic overviews and sound evidence are urgently needed. An improved understanding of the impacts could also help communicating the benefit of Open Science for researchers and counteract perceptions of Open Science practices as an obligation with little benefits for the individual researcher. The resistance encountered in implementing Open Science, especially regarding research assessment practices, was recognized.

Against this background, the participants emphasised that the PathOS conceptual framework should permit a nuanced consideration of contexts, feedback loops, and assumptions in its further development. Additionally, participants underlined the significance of evaluating overlapping impacts across themes from both global and regional perspectives.

Participants displayed a strong interest to sustaining the momentum of this dialogue, with a specific emphasis on future research, regional variations, identification of negative impacts for potential policy interventions, and the conduct of evidence-based research, underscoring a shared goal of effectively navigating the challenges and advancing the principles and practices of Open Science.

Conclusions and looking ahead 

In conclusion, the workshop served as a crucial first step for discussing the intricacies of impact pathways and the findings from the PathOS project with stakeholders. This workshop is part of an ongoing series of engagements by PathOS with global experts, highlighting the commitment to align project developments with the needs and insights of the broader Open Science community. The feedback from these interactions, including the outcomes of this workshop, will be instrumental in refining the PathOS work, ensuring its continued relevance, practicality, and impact.

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Introduction 

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a significant challenge to global society, necessitating rapid advancements in research and the creation of effective treatments and vaccines. Open Science, which fosters transparency, accessibility, reproducibility, and collaboration among researchers, has the potential to expedite scientific progress while enhancing public trust in the scientific process and its results. The PathOS project aims to investigate and measure the influence of Open Science on hastening COVID-19-related scientific breakthroughs and evaluate the subsequent benefits to society.

Why was this particular study selected and how does it contribute to the testing and operationalization of Open Science indicators?   

The severity of COVID-19 has placed Open Science practices in the spotlight, as it could potentially accelerate the research and development of treatments and vaccines. This study aims to quantify the effects of Open Science on the speed and scientific impact of developments for COVID-19, as well as the increase of collaborations between researchers. These indicators can be then used to evaluate the efficacy of Open Science practices and inform policy decisions on their implementation. 

Why do you think this is study is important for the broader Open Science context?  

This study provides insights on the benefits of Open Science practices during a global crisis. Its results can perhaps serve as proof of concept for the benefits of Open Science and the efficacy of its different instruments, e.g., various routes to open access for publications – green, gold, etc.- and different FAIR aspects. The COVID-19 situation is exceptional in terms of both its worldwide scale and urgency, and the scientific community's commitment to Open Science. While this case study is designed to offer tangible insights specific to this context, it is anticipated that it will reveal aspects of impact pathways that can be applied in other scenarios as well. Additionally, this study can serve as a guide for policy makers and other stakeholders to better understand the potential of Open Science to address global challenges.

How will this study contribute to the main aims of the project?   

This investigation will contribute significantly to the primary objectives of the project by assessing and evaluating the influence of Open Science on COVID-19 research, as well as the broader implications for society during a global health emergency. Furthermore, the case study will generate data, methods and indicators to identify the most successful routes for achieving the desired results and consequences. Like all case studies within the project, there will be a reciprocal connection between the project's progress and a chosen group of experts participating in the COVID-19 focus group. This expert-in-the-loop approach aims to promote and organize inclusive engagement from all relevant stakeholders.

What kind of impact is expected to be generated by the results/outcomes of the study for different stakeholder groups? 

The anticipated effects of this research are multifaceted and are expected to benefit various stakeholders. Firstly, the findings will offer valuable insights to funding organizations regarding the impact of their investment in projects related to COVID-19. Researchers, on the other hand, will gain an understanding of how effectively their work is being utilized. Moreover, this study is designed to furnish government bodies with the scientific evidence needed for informed policy-making and decision-making processes. Finally, the general public stands to benefit as well, as the study will demonstrate the role of public funding in COVID-19 response efforts, fostering greater trust in the development of the COVID-19 vaccine through transparency in scientific endeavors.

What are some of the biggest challenges you foresee in measuring the influence of Open Science on COVID-19-related scientific breakthroughs, and how do you plan to address them? 

The biggest challenge in measuring the influence of Open Science on COVID-19-related scientific breakthroughs is identifying causality. To address this, we plan to leverage the large size of scholarly output available to identify appropriate treatment and control groups. We will use quantitative methods to control for potential confounding factors and seek input from experts to ensure our methods are appropriate. Despite this, it can still be challenging to attribute which aspects of scientific progress are affected by Open Science practices, given the complex context of the pandemic. 

The ATHENA RC team

Petros Stavropoulos, Research Associate, ATHENA RC

Petros Stavropoulos holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Military Science and Technology (2015) from the Hellenic Army Academy, a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (2019) and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science (2020) from Athens University of Economics and Business. Since 2019, he has been working for the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) at the Athena Research Centre (ATHENA RC) as a Research Associate, involved in National and European projects “KRIPIS”, “Be Open” and “IntelComp”. He has worked in many areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP), such as Entity Extraction and Named Entity Recognition, Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining, Event Analysis and Event Extraction, using Machine Learning and Deep Learning tools, methods and techniques. He has also organized and supported labs for the postgraduate courses of “Natural Language Processing” and “Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing and Language Resource Processing and Management” at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Ioanna Grypari, Project Coordinator of PathOS, ATHENA RC

Dr. Ioanna Grypari is a technical project manager and data product owner at Athena Research and Innovation Center, with a background in applied microeconomics. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota, as well as an M.Sc. in Econometrics from the London School of Economics and a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University. In her academic career, Dr. Grypari had focused on political economy issues with emphasis on the identification of causal effects. At ATHENA RC, she leads the development of big data KPIs and interactive data visualization platforms, contributing to European initiatives such as OpenAIRE, IntelComp, and Data4Impact. Dr. Grypari has also taught a range of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in economics.

Haris Papageorgiou, Research Director, ATHENA RC

Dr. Haris Papageorgiou is Research Director at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) of Athena Research and Innovation Center (ARC) and co-founder of one of the ARC spinoff companies, OPIX, active in the field of AI-driven Policy Intelligence. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering. Haris is responsible for building advanced content analytics and language technology for scalable systems and big data infrastructures. He was the Coordinator of the Technical Committee and Technical Responsible of operating the clarin:el shared distributed infrastructure, which is the Greek part of the European CLARIN infrastructure, making language resources, technology and expertise available to the humanities and social sciences research communities at large. He has held Chief Scientist positions in more than 30 European and national projects in the area of multilingual, multimodal and multimedia processing. His research interests focus on language and speech technology, knowledge discovery and representation, machine/deep learning, web mining and information retrieval for several fields including computational social and life sciences where he has published more than 120 scientific papers.

Introduction 

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) use public-funded open bioinformatics resources (e.g., databases, software, tools, workflows, standards, ontologies, cloud computing, etc) as business models but also, to create innovative added-value products and services that they proceed to sell to larger industry clients. As a result, socioeconomic and societal benefits are generated following impact pathways. PathOS aims to unravel the totality of the impact pathways and shed light on effect of ELIXIR’s activities on fostering innovation in the industry sector, and how this then translates to socioeconomic and societal benefits. A big challenge for the project will be to successfully identify and quantify these benefits!

Why was this particular study selected and how does it contribute to the testing and operationalization of Open Science indicators? 

Open Science is a founding principle of ELIXIR – you could say that, as an organisation, we live and breathe Open Science. In practice, it means that the >400 bioinformatics resourcesunder the ELIXIR umbrella can be freely used by almost anyone and anywhere, with an internet connection and the relevant skillset.

Why do you think this is study is important for the broader Open Science context?

Whilst Open Science is often associated to the academic sector, this case study represents a valuable opportunity to look at its effects in an industry context and how the science produced under Open Science principles contributes to innovative solutions with benefits for society and the economy. Practicing and enabling Open Science takes effort, hence it’s important that positive effects are highlighted. 

How will this study contribute to the main aims of the project? 

Bioinformatics applications have significant societal and economic benefits – these are found in health (e.g., personalised medicine, epidemics monitoring, development of treatments and vaccines), food security (e.g., aquaculture, crop development) and the environment (e.g., biodiversity management, pollution remediation), to name a few. The case study will hence directly contribute to providing evidence to support a better understanding of the implications of Open Science for science, economy and society. 

Who are the main actors involved and why are they important within the R&I ecosystem represented in this study? 

ELIXIR is among just a few international research infrastructures with a formal industry engagement portfolio that spans all its member countries, and unique in the European landscape with such an extensive set of freely accessible bioinformatics resources. The case study will actively engage, and co-create, with those in ELIXIR who develop and operate bioinformatics resources, industry end-users of these resources, as well as a range of open science and innovation experts within and beyond the project consortium. Strategic engagement with these actors provides crucial information on the impact created by the open nature of ELIXIR resources.

What kind of impact is expected to be generated by the results/outcomes of the study?

Whilst policy-makers and ELIXIR’s public funders generally agree that Open Science is the right approach, they remain keen to better understand how impacts develop and how they can help. This case study will contribute answers to these needs, with an industry angle. Although there is a cost to tax-payers for ELIXIR to develop and operate its bioinformatics resources, which are free at the point of use (even for commercial purposes), we are keen to build a body of evidence showing that the socio-economic and societal benefits far outweigh the costs.

How aware of Open Science is the bioinformatics industry sector? How can they benefit from it?

In the attempt to understand the contribution of Open Data in life sciences’ innovation, ELIXIR performed a study which showed that up to 76% of studied SMEs within the bioinformatics sector would not be able to offer their product without accessing data and other such resources shared on open repositories. This and other studies indicate that industry puts a lot of value on being able to access bioinformatics resources that are open, and the results can really benefit society. A concrete example of the open science value derives from the COVID-19 pandemic, where the first ever approved mRNA-based vaccine for usage in healthy humans was developed by Pfizer and BioNTech (Polack, 2020). In this case, the publicly available viral sequence in the European Nucleotide Archive with the sequence number MN908947.3 was used to evaluate the safety, tolerability, immunogenicity, and efficacy of RNA vaccine candidates against COVID-19 in healthy individuals (BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc., 2020). Nevertheless, as mentioned in the BY-COVID Industry map report, it is important to understand the players in creating innovative solutions and moving beyond the boundaries of a pharmaceutical company since public health agencies, academic researchers, data infrastructure providers, and public funders are playing an essential role We believe that the multi-stakeholder approach of this project will broaden the bioinformatics industry approach to open science.

The ELIXIR team 

Despoina Sousoni, ELIXIR Industry Officer

Despoina joined ELIXIR in 2022 and leads on the industry portfolio by managing a range of engagement activities based on ELIXIR members' needs and EU-funded projects. These activities include support on the Industry Advisory Committee, management of Industry and Innovation Forums and a Knowledge Exchange Scheme between ELIXIR members and industry. Also, among her responsibilities are the enrichment of ELIXIR's industry network, match-making based on related interests, collection of industry use cases and contributions to open innovation.

Erika Balsyte, ELIXIR External Relations Officer

Erika joined ELIXIR in August 2022 and actively contributes to the industry and impact portfolios. Erika supports the operation of the ELIXIR Focus Groups (Impact, Innovation and Industry) managed by the ELIXIR External Relations team. Additionally, she contributes to the ELIXIR’s work to demonstrate its value and impact through the range of indicators. Erika also provides the team with administrative and organisational support while implementing outreach activities to key stakeholders, notably partners from 220+ institutes within ELIXIR, scientists and partners outside the ELIXIR. Her role includes supporting the team on several EU-funded projects, including PathOS.

Corinne Martin, ELIXIR Senior Impact Officer

Corinne joined ELIXIR in 2018 and leads on two portfolios: impact and international relations. In particular, she works to empower Member countries of ELIXIR in evaluating and communicating the public value of their bioinformatics resources and underlying research infrastructure, in support of long-term sustainability. She also coordinates international relations for France, Australia and the USA, as well as contributing to the organisation’s positioning and visibility with funders, policy-makers and other stakeholders of research infrastructures.