Information science’s contributions towards emerging open evaluation practices

The purpose of this paper is to discuss emerging practices in open evaluation, namely, the concept of co-evaluation and how research on evaluation developed within information science can contribute to enhance stakeholders and citizens’ involvement in open science.

A meta-evaluative and transdisciplinary approach – directed toward the intersection between information science, evaluation, competences management, sustainability transitions management and participatory methodologies – provided the basis for the identification and subsequent reflection on the levels of stakeholder participation embedded into ISO 16439’s (2014) methods for assessing the impact of libraries and on the domains and competences to be mobilized for (co)evaluation. The contributions of Engaged 2020 Action Catalogue, as well as several taxonomies of evaluator competences and the Council of Europe’s (2016) conceptual model of competences for a democratic culture were particularly relevant for this (re)construction process.

Two results of the line of research carried out since 2012 at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal) can significantly contribute to improve stakeholders’ participation in Open Science: ISO 16439’s systematization of methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries and the (co-)evaluation competency framework.

This paper presents the transdisciplinary concept of co-evaluation and examines the current epistemological challenges to science by analyzing the general tendency to openness through the lens of research on evaluation and participatory methods developed within information science.