OSMI Working Group 1 (WG1) has recently published a report “Scoping the needs of Open Science Monitoring”, now available on Zenodo.
WG1 was established within the Open Science Monitoring Initiative to examine the foundations of a globally relevant and equitable Open Science monitoring framework, in alignment with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and the 2025 OSMI Principles of Open Science Monitoring.
The report addresses three core questions:
- who the key stakeholders and beneficiaries of Open Science are;
- what dimensions of OS should be monitored and why; and
- which quantitative and qualitative methods are most appropriate for that purpose.
To answer them, WG1 drew on four plenary meetings, a structured brainstorming exercise mapped against the four UNESCO OS pillars, five subgroup working streams, and a scoping survey of 35 respondents from across the global OS community. The report documents this process and presents the resulting evidence base.
Key findings:
Monitoring is too narrow. Existing practice focuses mainly on Open Access publications and is driven by compliance and reporting. Respondents want monitoring to extend to open and FAIR data, infrastructure sustainability, reproducibility, societal engagement and responsible research assessment.
Incentives and governance matter more than technology. Lack of incentives and recognition was rated a High or Severe barrier by 74% of respondents, ahead of governance gaps (60%), cost and licensing constraints (57%) and metadata quality (54%).
Mixed methods are strongly preferred. 94% of respondents support combining quantitative indicators with qualitative evidence and expert assessment, always or sometimes.
Monitoring should drive change. Improving research quality and increasing transparency and public trust were each selected by 83% of respondents as reasons to monitor, pointing to monitoring that informs decisions and reform rather than just reporting.
Equity must be built in. Respondents most often named well-resourced institutions and Global North countries as the main beneficiaries of Open Science, and the report calls for tiered, adaptable approaches that don’t penalise lower-resourced settings.
If you have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you – please contact the co-chairs of WG1 directly.