Open science and evaluation

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to investigate how open science can influence/support research evaluation and whether and how open science practice can be evaluated in its effort to avoid what is predicted by Goodhart's law (When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure). The enterprise is not simple, as it focus on giving up points of reference that have been part of common practice of hard sciences for years while we are now trying to implement them in humanities and social sciences. We must accept that the internet has changed the way science is produced, disseminated, validated and evaluated and has multiplied its channels of communication. For this reason the traditional bibliometric indicators, which refer to articles published in peer reviewed journals, preferably in English, as the only viable publication channel, become inapplicable. In an open environment, the role of peer review, in particular the idea of blind (single or double) peer review must also radically change.