World comes together to back Unesco’s vision of open science
Free access to Covid-19 data has shown that the dream of open science can be achieved, director-general says
The first universal definition of ‘open science’ has been agreed by 193 countries under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) umbrella. They have also agreed to abide by common standards, and adopted a roadmap to guide future developments.
The agreed definition makes reproducibility, transparency, sharing and collaboration core principles of science. Among other things, it states that open science should make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone beyond the traditional scientific community. It builds on the following key pillars: open scientific knowledge, open science infrastructures, science communication, open engagement of societal actors and open dialogue with other knowledge systems.