New scientific findings should be made more accessible through open science, a new declaration from a number of United Nations agencies says.
In the declaration, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights call on member states to uphold the ideals of open science. The central tenets of open science, it notes, are to make scientific data more accessible through open access and open data. The agencies have prepared a draft text in support of open science that is now open for comments.
"The health crisis has shown the incredible potential of scientific collaboration, which allowed us to sequence the virus's genome so quickly. The solidarity shown by the scientific community is a model for the future: in the face of global challenges, we need collective intelligence, today more than ever," Audrey Azoulay, the UNESCO Director-General, says in a statement. "As countries call for international scientific collaboration, as the scientific community, civil society, innovators, and the private sector mobilize in these unprecedented times, the urgency of the transition to open science has never been more clear."