Open science faces a collective action problem: while everyone benefits from activities like data sharing, reproducible methods, and open peer review, these and many other essential contributions remain systemically undervalued. Despite decades of open science advocacy and countless viable alternatives, the adoption of open science principles, practices and platforms remains persistently low, primarily due to misaligned incentives.

Metavaluation addresses this crisis through a simple and inclusive peer evaluation mechanism that places all contributions on the same scale – including evaluations themselves – incentivizing engagement, value creation and collaboration across stakeholders. Critically, the same mechanism can also recognize and reward system improvements, alongside all other scholarly contributions, creating the potential for a virtuous cycle of value creation and systemic change.

Introduce Metavaluation’s conceptual foundations and core mechanics

Share prototype data from diverse communities in academia and beyond, demonstrating how interoperable value-aligned metrics can foster coordination

Preview our soon-to-be-released open-source MVP application

Discuss potential use cases within the field of neuroimaging

Share the vision and next steps for interested communities

OSR 2025 | Emergent Session 4: Metavaluation: Kickstarting a Virtuous Cycle in Open Science