South Africa and Australia Embrace Promising Open Science Policies - SPARC

"After years of public and government consideration, the South African government approved a National Open Science Policy in December 2025. It requires all research outputs that arise from public funding be made available open access. The Department of Science, Technology and Innovation published details of the landmark policy in March 2026.

“Faster, less costly access to scientific results, data, and methods can accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and the uptake of the results,” the policy states. “Global inter-connectedness supports the rapid exchange of these outputs.”

Discussions on the policy go back to 2019 when an Open Science Advisory Committee began to draft the policy. Feedback from the public was elicited in 2022 before it was finally voted on by the government. It is one of the first comprehensive, government-backed Open Science mandates on the African continent....

The open science movement in South Africa has been driven by a push for equity, inclusion and social justice. Support for the UNESCO recommendations on open science came from a variety of scholars, including those not at mainstream universities who have been excluded from the academic system, and more crucial for the department of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Mchunu said.

A coalition of South African university leaders and experts supported the drafting of a national policy, along with researchers from big data, nonprofits and advocates of indigenous knowledge. There were two large, stakeholder engagements on the policy to get input from the public.

Under the new policy, open access is now compulsory for all publicly funded research. It cites the principle – “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” – a nuanced framing that acknowledges exceptions for security, ethics, and intellectual property, while defaulting to openness."