Making open infrastructure the default in research @ UNESCO Working Group Meeting | July 7, 2022

"In the inaugural meeting of the UNESCO Working Group on Open Science Infrastructures, Kaitlin Thaney, our Executive Director, shared some of our latest work and plans towards making open infrastructure the default in research. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, adopted by its General Assembly in November 2021, encouraged its Member States to “prioritize investing in infrastructure and services which contribute to open science”. To facilitate input into the technical deliverables for implementation, UNESCO convened an ad-hoc Working Group, bringing together experts, organizations, and institutions in open science and open infrastructure to build a better understanding of the current open infrastructure ecosystem. This first working group meeting was moderated by Ezra Clark and Ana Persic of the UNESCO Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Section.... Kaitlin’s slides can be accessed at this link. Meeting participants discussed ways to ensure that open science infrastructure will serve the needs of a global community, in particular, those of the people of the global majority and citizen scientists. These include actively creating bridges between the Global South and North, actively listening to citizen science groups, local capacity building, and building robust, meaningful governance structures to ensure stakeholder-driven development of open infrastructure...."