Two New Items From International Science Council: Survey Findings on “First Draft of UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science & Report: “The Record of Science: Making Scholarly Publishing Work For Science in the Digital Era”

Two recent items from from the International Science Council.

#1 First Draft of UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science

The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science is envisaged as important step in promoting a global understanding of the meaning, opportunities, and challenges of Open Science. The ISC, along with the IAP, our UN Major Group for the Scientific and Technological Community partners WFEO, and ALLEA, assisted UNESCO in gathering comments on the first draft of the Recommendation from the scientific community through an online survey at the end of 2020.

The perspectives of the international scientific community and their assessment of the draft text gathered through the survey will assist UNESCO and its Member States in the development of the final text of the Recommendation on Open Science, expected to be adopted by Member States in November 2021.

The responses were generally positive towards the UNESCO Recommendations and highlighted some key concerns and gaps.

Direct to Survey Results

Direct to Complete Publication Announcement

#2 The Record of Science: Making Scholarly Publishing Work For Science in the Digital Era

Concerns about the extent to which contemporary scientific and scholarly publishing systems serve the needs of researchers and the public have been raised repeatedly in recent years. This report – which is aimed at the scientific community and its institutions – seeks to establish a shared view of the principles and priorities of the scholarly publishing system. It proposes a series of normative principles that should underlie the operation of scientific and scholarly publishing; describes the current publishing landscape and its trajectory of evolution; analyses the extent to which the principles are observed in practice; and identifies problematic issues that need to be addressed in realizing those principles.

This report is the first output of the ISC’s ongoing project on The Future of Scientific Publishing. It was prepared as a discussion document in consultation with an international working group, and has benefited from expert external review, and from extensive consultations with representatives from the ISC membership. The report will be used to set the agenda for a subsequent phase of discussion and action involving ISC Members and other stakeholders.

Direct to Full Text Report
77 pages; PDF.

Direct to Complete Publication Announcement

Filed under: News, Open Access, Publishing, Reports