On August 25, 2025, an EU-funded project OPUS – Open and Universal Science (No. 101058471), whose main objective was to develop coordination and support measures to reform the assessment of research(ers), is nearing completion. The Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius University was one of the 18 partners in this project. The experience of project participants, especially organisations that have piloted various practices for evaluating scientific results using open science criteria, shows that open science dimensions can be integrated into the context of both research-performing and research-funding organisations.
Assoc. Prof. Aurelija Novelskaitė and Assoc. Prof. Raminta Pučėtaitė, the researchers implementing the project at the Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius University, had the task of offering pilot organisations indicators that would contribute to ensuring gender equality in science by implementing open science promotion processes. In practice, this was not easy, as each organisation had different gender equality and open science policies and implementation plans and differed in the specifics of their activities. Moreover, not all partners wanted to integrate these two areas, even though they are related.
As part of the OPUS project, the representatives of the Kaunas Faculty, in cooperation with a UNESCO representative, organised remote training sessions (webinars) to discuss the links between gender equality and open science with representatives of institutions actively involved in open science processes. The researchers also surveyed training participants, showing that open-access article publishing and data-sharing practices are already well-known and widely used in the international academic community. However, the surveyed participants are much less involved in shaping open science policy or developing open science tools.
It is hoped that the policy recommendations to the European Commission based on the project results will contribute to a fairer evaluation of researchers and research results.
More information about the OPUS project can be found here.
Information about the OPUS project closing event can be found here.