Session
NIC.br
- Ana Eliza Duarte, NIC.br, Technical community, GRULAC - Henrique Xavier, NIC.br, Technical community, GRULAC - Carolina Botero, Karisma, Civil society, GRULAC - Beatriz Rocha, NIC.br, Technical community, GRULAC - Reinaldo Ferraz, NIC.br, Technical community, GRULAC - Sarita Albagli, IBICT, Technical community, GRULAC
- Henrique Xavier, NIC.br, Technical community, GRULAC - Carolina Botero, Karisma, Civil society, GRULAC - Kazuhiro Hayashi, NISTEP, Technical community, Asia - Sarita Albagli, IBICT, Technical community, GRULAC
4.4
8.3
17.16
17.6
17.8
Targets: Open Science can provide a pathway for youth and adults to learn advanced technical skills by making scientific knowledge, tools, and data accessible and transparent to everyone, aligning with target 4.4. Furthermore, Open Science is a policy that directly contributes to increasing access to science (target 17.6) and promoting knowledge and technology sharing (target 17.16). By making required knowledge available to more people and expanding the exposition of scientific contributions from different parties, Open Science reduces the knowledge gap and fosters innovation (target 8.3) and cooperation (target 17.6). Additionally, Open Science can drive information and communications technology (target 17.8), as they are essential for its advancement.
The session will consist of three parts. Firstly, the speakers will introduce the topic of Open Science and address three key questions: What are the best practices in Open Science? What are the current challenges we must face? What technical and governance approaches can be adopted to overcome these challenges? This presentation will serve as an ice breaker for the second part, where participants and speakers will be divided into small groups to discuss the topic. Online participants will be split into online breakout groups. At the end of the session, all groups will come together to present a summary of their discussions.
Open Science is the practice of promoting transparency, accessibility, and availability of scientific endeavors and their results to everyone. It fosters innovation, reduces global inequalities by disseminating knowledge, and enhances trust by allowing external scrutiny of data, techniques, and analysis. We invite you to join us in this discussion session on the technical and governance challenges and opportunities for advancing Open Science globally. After a brief introduction about Open Science, our debate will commence with a focus on its best practices, followed by an identification of bottlenecks and critical areas for improvement. From there, we will explore the technical and governance challenges we must address. Along the way, we will explore the intersections between Open Science and topics such as Data Localization, Sovereignty, Usage, and Governance, Information Literacy and Rights, and Skill building for advanced technologies.
To ensure that those joining the networking session online can fully participate, we will use video conferencing tools equipped with breakout room capabilities. In the first part of the session, online and onsite participants will connect in one virtual meeting to listen to the speakers' considerations. Then, in the second part, online participants will be divided into virtual breakout rooms to have discussions among themselves and the online speakers. At the end of the session, all participants will regroup to share the summary of the breakout group discussions. Moreover, we will provide remote participants with alternative communication methods, such as chat rooms or messaging platforms, to allow further interaction and feedback with the moderator and other participants.
Report
Report on the Networking Session #168: "Advancing Open Science Globally: Challenges and Opportunities"
The session was fascinating as it contrasted two different perspectives on the goals and paths of Open Science. While researchers and advocates from Latin America highlighted the importance of involving a broader range of individuals in the governance of science and of broadening free and open access to scientific discoveries and derived products in order to maximize its social impact, participants from the private sector and the global north emphasized the need to enhance the organization and standardization of scientific production, aiming at maximizing the value that can be derived from it.
Henrique Xavier highlighted the persistent issue of paywalls to scientific publications. Moreover, while government and academic data are often open, data from private companies in areas like social media and artificial intelligence remain closed. Opening such data sources is essential for research on misinformation and AI governance, both discussed at the Internet Governance Forum.
Sarita Albagli reinforced that paywalls hinder access to knowledge, particularly in the global south. She highlighted that Open Science is not only a more cost-effective model than closed science but also addresses the issue of knowledge access, preventing the loss of valuable resources. As a concrete example of a successful program, she mentioned the Brazilian bibliographic database SciELO.
She raised the requirement for Open Science to address citizens' needs and the importance of involving citizens in research about issues that affect them. She also mentioned the risk of Open Washing, where companies direct Open Science to practices that allow them to profit, which could disproportionately affect the global south by making its research subordinated to private foreign interests.
Carolina Botero emphasized that Open Science should grant access to publications and the knowledge generated by scientific research, such as vaccines during the pandemic. Rethinking patent laws is crucial to achieving this. Carolina emphasized the importance of addressing power imbalances, ensuring that all countries can utilize data for research purposes by adjusting legal frameworks to support global access.
Kazuhiro Hayashi emphasized that Open Science goes beyond Open Access. It encompasses providing access to both data and research methods. He stressed the importance of international cooperation in making this data and knowledge accessible to everyone. He said Japan was implementing Open Access and Open Data policies for publicly funded research.
Vint Cerf (present in the audience) mentioned Google Scholar and Schema.org as tools that help organize and standardize scientific knowledge. He raised the need to document experiment designs and the challenge of accessing old data, methods, and analyses after computer systems evolved. He questioned who should fund Open Science infrastructure and suggested we design a viable business model that could encourage companies to invest in these initiatives.
Vint Cerf highlighted the importance of creating a document stating the desirable properties of an Open Science ecosystem. He suggested creating a vast database to ease data processing and analysis. Cerf emphasized the importance of its interoperability so the database could migrate in case of a lack of support from the host institution. He recommended organizations such as UNESCO and the International Science Council as potential allies in advancing Open Science.
Two practical conclusions surfaced from the discussion. In order to maximize the value derived from scientific research, there should be a concerted effort by the global community, including the private sector, to standardize data and metadata related to scientific research and make this data widely available on the internet. To enhance accessibility to scientific results and resources and enhance their social impact, governments must reconsider existing intellectual property, copyright, and patent models.