Regional cooperation lies at the heart of what we do at FORM – bringing together diverse communities, supporting the exchange of ideas, and encouraging the development of new partnerships. That is why we are particularly thrilled to welcome the Arab Council for the Social Sciences into our community as our newest member.

The Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) is a regional, independent, non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening social science research and knowledge production in the Arab Region. They have a huge array of programmes, fellowships, and activities, working with scholarly communities across the region – one of their most recent project, and one particularly interesting for us, is their research data management progamme which focuses on supporting the advancement of open and FAIR data policies and practises in the Arab region. To learn more about the organisation, visit their website.

We were lucky enough to welcome their Director, Setenay Shami, on our regional strategies panel at the 2023 Annual Forum, and have had a number of productive discussions since then around the needs and priorities of the region, and the importance of ensuring the open research movement embraces and supports all scholarly disciplines. We look forward to strengthening our relationship in the coming years, collaborating with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences to support the development of open science policies and practices in social science and humanities research communities.

If you would like to learn more about our Membership policies and benefits, details are available here.