The latest edition from 2021 shines a spotlight on the role that science and science governance have played in advancing both The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Fourth Industrial Revolution since 2016. It finds that countries of all income levels are prioritizing their dual green and digital transition. Although 32 countries have raised their research effort since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, four out of five countries still spend less than 1 per cent of their GDP on research.
The UNESCO Science Report finds that lower middle-income countries have shown the strongest growth rate in scientific publishing of any income group for key sustainability topics since 2016. These countries have quadrupled their research output on wastewater treatment, recycling and re-use and shown strong growth in topics such as smart-grid technologies, precision agriculture and ecological alternatives to plastics. Yet these countries contributed just 4.3 per cent to global research expenditure in 2018.
These trends suggest that international scientific collaboration is compensating to some extent for the modest funding levels available to these and other scientific communities. More than one-third of scientific publications produced by high-income countries now involve international collaboration. South–South co-operation is growing. At the global level, however, less than one-quarter of scientific publications involves an international partner.
The adoption of the first international framework on open science by UNESCO’s 193 Member States in 2021 could be a game-changer. Under the banner of open science, scientists and engineers use open licenses to share their publications, data, software and even hardware far and wide, helping to reduce the digital, technological and knowledge divide both within and between countries. By fostering greater transparency and boosting collaboration, this landmark agreement should also accelerate scientific progress.
Open science contributes to finding solutions to today’s complex global challenges. This has been demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which spurred scientists to share scientific data and information in a more open and timely manner. Some 70 per cent of scientific publications are normally locked behind paywalls but, over the past two years, this proportion has dropped to less than 30 per cent for publications on COVID-19, in order to accelerate the search for tests, vaccines and treatments.
Until now, there was no universal definition of open science. By adopting the Recommendation, Member States have pledged to adopt related policies and set up funding mechanisms for open science, to ensure that all publicly funded research respects its core values, and to report back on their progress every four years.
UNESCO began the inclusive, transparent and multistakeholder consultative process that produced this global instrument on open science back in 2019. Since then, the pandemic has sparked even greater interest in the open science agenda and the development of new models to fluidify the circulation of scientific knowledge.
