| Story | At VU Amsterdam university library, we started to move to open research information (ORI) already some years ago, but only now are we starting to see its full benefits. At first, we mostly used ORI as a drop-in replacement for proprietary data sources, arguing that this would improve transparency and our ability to replicate our bibliometric analyses, and that this fit well with the library's stated commitment to open science. But we mostly did with open data what we did before with proprietary data, using it as a source for research impact analyses, and as one additional source of information for our research information system. Our stakeholders mostly tended to agree with our ideological arguments ('open data is better than closed data'), but benefits were not clear and tangible. That has recently started to change.
As we continued to work with open sources, we found new and more innovative applications for them. For example, we are now using open data from OpenAlex to build tools that help institutional policy officers make decisions about issues related to knowledge security. Our tools help these policy officers to prioritise decisions by flagging possible risks, and by visualizing in which departments risks are concentrated. Open data provides the flexibility to structure and visualise the information in ways that are most useful for us.
Another example is that we are working with researchers to use data from OpenAIRE to construct a metric that can be used in the process for researcher assessment. At first, this open metric will be used to replace an existing proprietary one. This alone would be an important achievement. But since the metric is open and '*do it yourself*', it is relatively easy to adapt to future developments. It would for example be possible to adjust the relative importance of specific output types or research activities. This flexibility is relevant for research managers working on assessments.
The common theme in these examples is that the use of open research information allows us to make tools and metrics that cater specifically to our university's strategy, policies and use cases. Proprietary platforms often offer similar versions of such tools. These *off the shelf* tools mostly do a good job, but always have a blind spot for a few specific cases that are particular to VU Amsterdam.
Although the switch to open sources was a deliberate decision, starting the projects mentioned here was not. The ideas developed through discussions with colleagues in our network, and we were lucky to come across these ideas (although having previous expertise with open data certainly helped). Working on the projects did help us to discover benefits of ORI that we did not fully foresee when we decided to switch. And with current pressures to find new ways to assess research and researchers, together with developments in artificial intelligence, we expect that the flexibility of open research information will bring further benefits in the future. |