On April 23rd and 24th, the OECD organised a ministerial meeting on science and technology policies at its Paris headquarters chaired by Sylvie Retailleau, the French Minister for Higher Education and Research. 

A multi-stakeholder dialogue preceded the meeting and involved a variety of representatives from government, the research community, industry and civil society. The aims of the meeting of ministers responsible for research that followed were to discuss and define a common action programme for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) that was to be adopted through a joint declaration. 

Open science was a central subject in the discussions during the earlier multi-stakeholder dialogue and the ministerial meeting. 

On April 23rd a session of the multi-stakeholder dialogue entitled ‘Making open science a reality for the benefit of society‘ was given over to open science’s role in developing transparent and responsible international scientific cooperation in our increasingly polarised world. 

There was also a dedicated ‘open science’ session at the meeting of research ministers on 24 April.

In both cases, the French presidency restated France’s commitment to opening up science and the need to deal with the obstacles that hinder its progress. It also particularly called for stakeholders to join the Global Research Initiative on Open Science (GRIOS) and the Open Science Monitoring Initiative (OSMI). These two initiatives were proposed as levers to be used to overcome obstacles to the progress of open science, particularly the lack of knowledge and indicators. 

The aim of the GRIOS is to produce in-depth summary reports on research into open science and follows on from the communiqué published by the G7 at the Sendai summit in Japan.

The aim of the OSMI is to structure the construction of open science indicators. The first document produced by OSMI sets out principles for monitoring open science and is currently being consulted by UNESCO.

These two initiatives are led by the Committee for Open Science in the framework of the French National Plan for Open Science.

Related blog posts:

Release of the Open Science Monitoring Initiative website and worldwide consultation for the Principles of Open Science Monitoring

Global Research Initiative on Open Science : publication d’une proposition française visant à renforcer les politiques de science ouverte en s’appuyant sur les résultats de la recherche

Message from the French Minister Sylvie Retailleau about the OECD ministerial meeting

Participants in the multi-stakeholder dialogue

Multi-stakeholder dialogue session entitled ‘Making open science a reality for the benefit of society‘.