Making European performance and impact assessment frameworks for research infrastructures glocal

Sustainability of research infrastructures (RIs) is a big challenge for funders, stakeholders and operators, and the development and adoption of adequate management tools is a major concern, namely tools for monitoring and evaluating their performance and impact. BioData.pt is the Portuguese Infrastructure of Biological data and the Portuguese node of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures "Landmark" ELIXIR. The foundations of this national research infrastructure were laid under the “Building BioData.pt” project, for four years. During this period, performance and impact indicators were collected and analysed under the light of international guidelines for assessing the performance and impact of European research infrastructures produced by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the EU-funded RI-PATHS project. The exercise shared herein showed that these frameworks can be adopted by national RIs, with the necessary adaptations, namely to reflect the national landscape and specificity of activities, and can be powerful tools in supporting the management of RIs. “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts”. (Attributed to William Bruce Cameron)