OSSAN Conference 2022

"Open Science South Asia Network (OSSAN) aims to bring open science enthusiasts and practitioners in South Asia to the same forum to engage in an international dialogue and share good practices for a stronger, more unified and workable Open Science policy framework, especially relevant to South Asia....

Open science is an emerging concept that aims to democratize science and has been extensively advocated by researchers, policy-makers, librarians, and international organizations like UNESCO and OECD. Open Science practices have been formalized to make research more ‘inclusive’, ‘transparent’, and ‘efficient’. It is an approach designed to foster open and equitable sharing of knowledge through journals articles, greater access to data generated from research processes following the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles, reorienting research assessment mechanisms to foster open science practices and sharing of other research output such as codes, hardwar.

However, globally more attention has been focused on the knowledge dissemination side with little or no contemplation of the knowledge creation process. Open science discussions focus mainly on the output of scientific research and how knowledge production can be more efficient, transparent, and reproducible. The cultural diversity in knowledge production is unexamined so far in the open science discourse. Insights on the knowledge creation process to make it more inclusive and collectively governed by society are also essential at this stage. Therefore,  the conference themes and discussions are aligned not only on the knowledge dissemination side but also on the creation with a specific focus on the needs of South Asia. Following this theme, Ideathon would focus on developing tangible results that aid open data in science among South Asian academics."