Summary
In 2021, UNESCO approved its Recommendation on Open Science (OS). By signing this recommendation, 193 countries made a commitment to support the development of OS with a vision of science as a global public good. According to this vision, science is only genuinely “open” when it embraces some core values and principles. These include transparency, reproducibility and integrity, as generally claimed in OS frameworks, but also equity, fairness, diversity and inclusiveness, and a commitment to contribute to collective benefits, which are less often invoked in OS policies. This talk will present this view of Open Science, and its transformative power of the research ecosystem.
Brief biography
Ismael Rafols is a senior researcher at CWTS and UNESCO Chair on Diversity and Inclusion in Global Science. He works on science policy developing novel approaches that help in fostering epistemic pluralism, broadening participation, and widening the distribution of the benefits from science. He is interested in funding portfolios and priority setting for societal challenges such as bird flu or obesity, and issues related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in health and agriculture. Ismael has been involved in policy initiatives ‘responsible metrics’, such as the implementation of UNESCO’s Open Science Recommendations, the Leiden Manifesto, the EC Expert Group on Open Science Indicators, on or discussions on biases against research topics from the Global South in assessment and databases. Previously, he had developed indicators and mapping methods for the evaluation of interdisciplinary research, e.g. in emergent fields such as bio and nanotechnology. He received an MSc in Science and Technology Policy from SPRU (Sussex), a BSc in Physics from the Univ. Barcelona, a PhD in biophysics from Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) and was a postdoc in nanobiotechnology at Cornell University. Before CWTS, he worked at SPRU (Sussex) (2005-12) and Ingenio (CSIC-UPV) (2012-19). He has worked on international cooperation in Oxfam and the City Council of Barcelona between academic positions.