There has been a great deal of activity over the last 12 months within the global open science and open access communities. New strategies and approaches are being discussed to help support the global accessibility and transparency of research, to help enhance the recognition of societal impact of research, to ensure the openness of scholarly communications infrastructures, and to identify sustainable community-led publishing models.
With this in mind, we feel it is important to ensure the Arab region is involved in these global discussions, and also shapes its own policies according to the needs and priorities of all the Arab States.
We are therefore working with a number of leading stakeholders in the higher education and research communities of the Arab world, to identify the main regional challenges and shared objectives with regards to the development and implementation of open science policies and practises, reforms in scholarly publishing, and other pressing matters relating to the development of accessible, inclusive and equitable research and education models for the region.
As part of this process, we have developed a survey which will help us understand the priorities and challenges faced by the various stakeholder groups involved in advancing open science policies and practices in the Arab region.
We are collecting information over the next month, and will close the survey on the 13th of August. The results will be presented at this year’s Annual Forum for Open Research by Dr Alwaleed Alkhaja (of the Qatar National Library)
