The concept of Open Science (OS) is transforming the landscape of scientific research by promoting collaboration, transparency, and innovation. Acknowledged by policymakers and international organisations, OS is integrated into policy agendas recognising its potential to shape the future of research. Despite significant progress, Open Science faces challenges in showing economic impacts, which undermines its maximal adoption. Empirical evidence on positive economic outcomes, such as cost savings and the emergence of new products and collaborations, exist, but there is a scarcity of comprehensive economic impact studies comparing open and closed science. This article advocates for the use of Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA) as an analytical tool to systematically assess the advantages and disadvantages of OS. CBA, traditionally applied to sectors like transport and health, can provide a structured framework for mapping and evaluating the costs and benefits of OS, contributing to a more informed understanding of its societal desirability.

Sound causal inference is crucial for advancing the study of science. Incorrectly interpreting predictive effects as causal might be ineffective or even detrimental to policy recommendations. Many publications in science studies lack appropriate methods to substantiate their causal claims. We here provide an introduction to structural causal models.

PathOS is a Horizon Europe project that aims to gather evidence of the effects of Open Science by studying impact pathways (context, resources, activities, outputs, outcomes and impacts), conducting an extensive literature review, studying causal effects, drawing up an Open Science Indicator Handbook and applying the selected indicators to six case studies, four of which are based on publication repositories, data repositories and open infrastructures.  The aim of this article is to detail the indicators selected for these case studies and their operationalization within the scope of the project.

Current implementations of Open Access (OA) publishing frequently involve article processing charges (APCs). Increasing evidence has emerged that APCs impede researchers with fewer resources in publishing their research as OA. We analyzed 1.5 million scientific articles from journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals to assess average APCs and their determinants for a comprehensive set of journal publications across scientific disciplines, world regions, and through time.

This paper summarised a comprehensive scoping review of the economic impact of Open Science (OS), examining empirical evidence from 2000 to 2023. It focuses on Open Access (OA), Open/FAIR Data (OFD), Open Source Software (OSS), and Open Methods, assessing their contributions to efficiency gains in research production, innovation enhancement, and economic growth. Evidence, although limited, indicates that OS accelerates research processes, reduces the related costs, fosters innovation by improving access to data and resources and this ultimately generates economic growth. Specific sectors, such as life sciences, are researched more and the literature exhibits substantial gains, mainly thanks to OFD and OA. OSS supports productivity, while the very limited studies on Open Methods indicate benefits in terms of productivity gains and innovation enhancement. However, gaps persist in the literature, particularly in fields like Citizen Science and Open Evaluation, for which no empirical findings on economic impact could be detected. Despite limitations, empirical evidence on specific cases highlight economic benefits. This review underscores the need for further metrics and studies across diverse sectors and regions to fully capture OS's economic potential.

Open Science (OS) aspires to broaden scientific engagement, deepen collaboration, andbolster trust in academic work. Despite this expansive promise, empirical evidence of howspecific OS practices foster tangible societal or economic benefits remains uneven and, insome cases, anecdotal. The PathOS Project addresses these uncertainties through aresearch design that integrates existing literature, robust causal methods, and real-world casestudies. PathOS focuses on clarifying under what conditions OS initiatives may or may notyield measurable impacts, thereby guiding future policies and practices.

This paper examines the long-term impact of open data in driving innovation, with a specific focus on the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt). The analysis was conducted within the framework of the Horizon Europe project – PathOS - which aims to develop and test a comprehensive framework for describing the impact pathways of open science. Indeed, the objective of analysis was to explore the long-term outcomes of UniProt in driving innovation outputs and enhancing academic productivity.
Indeed, the availability of UniProt’s open data, which can be integrated with proprietary datasets, may enable companies to accelerate innovation, resulting in increased patenting activities. At the same time academic researchers may leverage open biodata to generate new knowledge in life sciences, often resulting in a higher volume of research outputs, including publications

Open Science (OS) aims, in part, to drive greater societal impact of academic research. Government, funder and institutional policies state that it should further democratize research and increase learning and awareness, evidence-based policy-making, the relevance of research to society's problems, and public trust in research. Yet, measuring the societal impact of OS has proven challenging and synthesized evidence of it is lacking. This study fills this gap by systematically scoping the existing evidence of societal impact driven by OS and its various aspects, including Citizen Science (CS), Open Access (OA), Open/FAIR Data (OFD), Open Code/Software and others. Using the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews and searches conducted in Web of Science, Scopus and relevant grey literature, we identified 196 studies that contain evidence of societal impact. The majority concern CS, with some focused on OA, and only a few addressing other aspects. Key areas of impact found are education and awareness, climate and environment, and social engagement. We found no literature documenting evidence of the societal impact of OFD and limited evidence of societal impact in terms of policy, health, and trust in academic research. Our findings demonstrate a critical need for additional evidence and suggest practical and policy implications.

This deliverable aims to provide the methodological framework for the impact pathways. It starts from the Theory of Change and uses the RI-PATHS approach as a baseline model. We explain Impact Pathways and align on terminology.

We address challenges in describing these pathways, especially on the criticisms that pathway visualisations oversimplify and that pathways hardly address causal relations. For this we follow a stepwise but systematic approach:

1. As a starting point, we will identify individual intervention pathways based on the eight European Union's Open Science policy priorities. This is the traditional approach for describing impact pathways.
2. Next, we will aggregate and zoom out to a higher level, by clustering the outcomes and impacts from step 1 covering academic, economic, and societal impact.
3. Zooming in for narrative overviews and causal relations. This will give room for providing details on how the interventions have worked (or can work).

As the project's focus is on empirical evidence, we will address multiple lines during the project: systematic literature scoping, implementing indicators, but also case studies (both thematic and national) and cost-benefit analysis.

This deliverable will be updated as we will have regular feedback loops from these activities. First experiences indicate that we envisage multiple smaller feedback loops rather than one big loop as was originally planned.

The report will collect knowledge to date (from peer-reviewed and grey literature) on models, evidence, correlations and causalities within Open Science impact, collected and synthesised via a PRISMA-SCR methodology.

Check out scoping reviews on societal and academic impact:

Cole Nicki Lisa, Kormann Eva, Klebel Thomas, Apartis Simon and Ross-Hellauer Tony. The societal impact of Open Science: a scoping review. Royal Society Open Science, 2024

Klebel Thomas, Traag Vincet, Grypari Ioanna, Stoy Lennart, & Ross-Hellauer Tony. The academic impact of Open Science: a scoping review. Royal Society Open Science, 2025

Tsipouri, Lena, Sofia Liarti, Silvia Vignetti, and Izabella M. Grapengiesser. The Economic Impact of Open Science: A Scoping Review. Royal Society Open Science, 2025

This report explores the impacts of Open Science (OS) practices with the scope of a proof-ofconcept study using the impact pathway concept described in PathOS D1.1 (Dekker et al., 2023). Based on previous data collected by PathOS, particularly from the scoping review by Klebel et al. (2024) and empirical case studies conducted by Cole et al. (2023), this report customizes, tests, and validates the Key Impact Pathway (KIP) approach in the context of Open Science. The resulting information is used to generate high-level impact chains, displayed as intervention logics, of Open Science practices. Three such preliminary pathways indicating the impacts of different Open Science activities are identified in the report: 1) Citizen Science, 3) Open Access pathway, 3) Impacts on climate and environment.

This is an updated version of the D1.3. 

This report will synthesise findings from across the project to present a coherent vision of Open Science Impact Pathways and present co-created multi-stakeholder policy guidelines and recommendations for future interventions to maximise these impacts - Coming Soon.

A data driven methodology for reproducibility indicators and a report on of indicators, data sources and approaches. Includes discussion of challenges and opportunities for identifying causal effects of open science.

You can access the most updated version of the Open Science Impact Indicator Handbook here (or click here for a Zenodo version).

You can also access the PDF version (note: this pdf is an older version; the most updated version can be found above)

A report on indicators, data sources and approaches. Includes discussion of challenges and opportunities for identifying causal effects of open science.

You can access the most updated version of the Open Science Impact Indicator Handbook here (or click here for a Zenodo version).

You can also access the PDF version (note: this pdf is an older version; the most updated version can be found above)

Case studies for evaluation of Open Science impact.

The Data Management Plan (DMP) will outline how data will be handled during the project, and after its finalisation.

A collection of datasets, tools, and methodologies developed within the PathOS project to support the measurement and operationalization of Open Science indicators. The toolkit provides reusable scripts, workflows, and documentation to facilitate case study analysis, indicator computation, and data processing.

Deliverable on methodological note on the CBA of Open Science practices.

This methodological deliverable presents the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) framework developed within the PathOS project to assess the impacts of Open Science initiatives. Drawing on established CBA principles and refined through real-world applications to UniProt and RCAAP, the framework offers a structured, rigorous approach to quantify both the costs and benefits of Open Science practices. It enables comparisons with a non-Open Science scenario, identifies typical cost-benefit categories, and provides guidance for their measurement. The framework focuses on short-term, measurable outcomes while acknowledging potential long-term enablement effects. A glossary and technical annex support users in applying the method.

The report summarises the outcomes of the Cost-Benefit Analysis of two open science resources, specifically UniProt (the Universal Protein Resource) and RCCAP (Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal).

This deliverable summarises the results of two Cost-Benefit Analyses (CBAs) conducted under the Horizon Europe PathOS project, evaluating the socio-economic impacts of Open Science practices. The focus is on UniProt, an open-access protein database, and RCAAP, Portugal’s national open repository network. Comprehensive case study reports are included in the annexes (for UniProt and RCAAP).

Guidelines for communication, engagement and dissemination.

his deliverable presents an updated version of the PathOS Training Plan. The training program targets a diverse range of Open Science stakeholders, including policy officers, funders, university executives, research infrastructure managers, librarians, OS experts, researchers, scientometricians, and publishers. The main objectives of PathOS Training are to equip targeted groups with the knowledge, skills, and guidance needed to use the PathOS outputs, maximise their uptake in the long term, and hence their impact.
This is an updated version of the Training plan.

Report listing the Key Exploitable Results of the project and responsible partners, including planned exploitation timelines and pathways.

Coming soon

Short policy brief on the expected impact from the project (internal document).

Coming Soon

Describes PathOS internal management procedures, detailing the project’s Quality assurance process (internal document).

Appointment of an independent Ethics Advisor to monitor the ethics issues involved in this project and how they are handled (internal document).

A report by the independent Ethics Advisor, covering the 1st reporting period (internal document).

A report by the independent Ethics Advisor, covering the 2nd reporting period (internal document).