Open Science and Open Innovation Perspectives Towards Research and Innovation Indicators

The Open Science and Open Innovation movement have established new perspectives towards these ways of measuring innovation and research. From the perspective of Open Science and Open Innovation, what is particularly criticized in measuring research and innovation is the focus towards the outcomes of research and development only.

The aim to reward and acknowledge different kinds of scholarly activities is shared by many different initiatives in Open Science and Open Scholarship, not just publishing alone. The Open Science and Open Scholarship perspective towards research and innovation indicators therefore aims at greater acknowledgement for the process of knowledge production and invention.

In the digital transformation of research and innovation, new platforms and infrastructures have been established that allow for interaction, collaboration, and communication, changing how knowledge is produced. Some of these platforms also generate and continuously collect process generated data emerging from such interaction. Thereby, new digital information about the diverse processes of knowledge production becomes available that may be used to complement existing analyses of research and innovation monitoring (Blümel, 2019).

Hence, in the following, additional data sources are introduced and discussed that may provide such information. It should be noted, however, that none of the following services is currently integrated in the official monitoring and reporting initiatives at the national or supranational level in the same way that research and innovation is reported by means of the above mentioned sources (bibliographical databases, patent databases, surveys and so on).

Patent and publication sources have been curated, and the problems with these data are widely discussed among the communities of innovation research and scientometrics (“Handbook of Quantitative Studies of Science and Technology,” 1988; Fagerberg, 2005). The subsequent data types need much more exploration and curation, but may provide interesting future gateways to acknowledge research and innovation activities by also taking Open Science and Open Scholarship perspectives into account.