Ensuring that science truly benefits people on this planet without excluding anyone requires a necessary shift in the entire scientific process. credit: file
By Guillermo Allo
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In the context of pressing planetary, social and economic challenges, sustainable and innovative solutions require effective, transparent and vital scientific effort, not only from the scientific community, but from the entire community. The scientific community’s recent response to the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020 has demonstrated well how open science can accelerate the achievement of scientific solutions to a global challenge.
But making sure that science truly benefits people on this planet without excluding anyone requires a necessary shift in the entire scientific process. Open science is precisely a movement that aims to change this situation. Building an accessible, efficient, transparent and beneficial science for all societies in the world.
Driven by unprecedented developments in the digital environment, the transition to this revolutionary paradigm allows information and data from scientific products to be more easily accessed and shared more easily, with the active participation of all stakeholders. Open science can represent a turning point in responding to social and economic challenges, and help reduce the science, technology and innovation gaps that exist between and within countries.
Fortunately, there is a growing global consensus about the need to modify scientific activity towards a more open scheme, which brings with it the need to create interoperable infrastructures: spaces that truly allow scientific production and evaluation of production is not just a publication.
The open science movement emerged from the scientific community and spread rapidly in all nations, calling for the doors to be opened to knowledge. Investors, businessmen, politicians and citizens are joining the call. However, in the fragmented scientific and political environment, there is still a lack of a global and deep understanding of this meaning, and the perception of opportunities and challenges that this movement brings along. That is why UNESCO, in a process that began two years ago, is seeking to agree at its General Conference these days a universal Recommendation on Open Science. Historic contribution to the topic enjoys the unanimity of the whole world. It was nurtured by contributions from all regions of the planet, with Latin America playing a prominent role.
The idea behind Open Science included in the recommendation is to allow scientific information, data, and findings to be more accessible (open access) and more reliably used (open data) with the active participation of all interested parties (open to the community).
By encouraging science to be more relevant to the needs of society and by promoting equal opportunities for all, open science can be a real game-changer to reduce differences in science, technology and innovation between countries and contribute to the exercise of human rights to science, so that all people benefit equally From the progress of science and its benefits.
Head of UNESCO’s Program on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Investors, businessmen, politicians and citizens must participate in building an open and accessible scientific system; In the scientific and political environment scattered in the region, there is still a lack of comprehensive understanding of this meaning.
