A very short editorial this time. I attended a debate at EGU 2022, “Towards an academic evaluation system that celebrates diversity of talent ”, where the question of the evaluation of researchers’ careers and performance was addressed. To my surprise, several of the participants (including those developing evaluation software), seemed to converge on the idea that having published in open-sources is an assessment criterion of researchers.Open Sciences is an institutional-driven policy (e.g., government, funding bodies) or a community. The goal is to generalize it broadly; and to achieve this goal more or less coercive actions may be used to ensure it or encourage it. Despite all the virtues of open access, which I personally strongly support, its implementation has nothing to do with a researcher’s scientific performance or quality of scientific output. We should not mix the two. Researchers must be firm on this. Publishing in open access journals or having publications on a freely accessible repository does not demand to develop specific qualities. In the past, not that long ago for someone of my generation, all publications were published in paper only. Change to fully online publications was a long challenging process. It took many years before all journals were accessible online. During that process, it crossed nobody`s mind that such a ‘technological’ step could become a criterion to assess researchers. Why this misunderstanding on the fundamental question of the assessment of researchers? We should raise the question and try to understand what has changed in the mind of people to create such confusion. As researchers, it is our duty to raise questions and correct inconsistencies that affect us directly. Every opportunity to discuss these matters counts (e.g., conferences, meetings, etc.).