One of our core goals is to support the development of “accessible and localized resources relating to the implementation of Open Science policies and practises” in higher education and research communities. The historic absence of a pan-regional open science vocabulary is one of the key challenges to the growth of Open Science practises faced by our research communities. It is crucial to the advancement of Open Science in the Arab region that there be a comprehensive and detailed lexicon of Arabic terms for key Open Science themes and topics, to ensure research communities across the region can address and engage with this issue, and produce localised resources tailored to the needs of their individual communities and institutions.

Therefore, during 2023, we worked with a group of experts from across the Arab region to produce a concise glossary of essential Arabic terms relating to the application of Open Science policies and practises in higher education and research communities.

While we appreciate that a project of this nature is inherently subjective, and the multifaceted nature of the Arabic language means that some translations and interpretations might vary within different regions and communities, we hope that this glossary will provide a useful starting point to help support higher engagement with Open Science practises and materials.

We are delighted that this glossary is already being used by nonprofit organisations and Open Science advocates across the world, and we will continue to expand and update the Glossary in the future to encompass new terminologies and developments within the field of Open Science. Moreover, now the Glossary has been published (under a CCBY licence, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10000577) we can now start on phase 2 of our project – to produce accessible localised resources and guidelines for our key stakeholder groups.

We wish to thank all the contributors who worked on this glossary for their hard work and insights, and we hope researchers across the Arab States will make use of the glossary, and feel free to send us suggestions for updates and expansions as new developments in the Open Science arena occur.

Access the glossary here.