Open science is about ensuring that the benefits of science are shared across the world and that all communities can contribute to scientific development. While digital tools and infrastructure can greatly facilitate access to scientific knowledge, open science also includes broad stakeholders and society’s engagement and dialogue with other knowledge systems.

Reform of research assessment is increasingly framed as a condition for open science rather than a parallel agenda. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science calls for barriers to open science to be removed, particularly those arising from research and career evaluation and award systems, and states that assessment rewarding good open science practices is “needed for operationalization of open science”.

This Futures Dialogue focuses on how research assessment reform can enable open science, and what it would take to move from commitment to practice. Panel experts and members of UNESCO Chairs, UNITWIN Networks, National Commissions, and other experts will address the following questions:

1. Which contributions to research go unrecognized in assessment today, and what place should they have in the future of research assessment and science policies?
2. How do current assessment practices influence what researchers publish, and with what consequences for researchers in different science systems?
3. Whose research, and what kinds of knowledge, do current assessment systems leave out?
4. Which reforms have changed practices, and which have stayed on paper? How would we know whether research assessment reforms are enabling open science?