Public Mobilization via Open Science – Challenge or Potential?

In light of today’s rising inequalities that some would argue were created by science, can open science help regain people’s confidence in science? This project aims to explore the potentials for the developing countries with many dilemmas and future aspirations.

There is no doubt that today’s world is built upon accumulated knowledge and science. However, science results are not always widely shared and communicated in the most effective way especially to the public and in the developing countries. The Global South suffers from the lack of data and the insufficient dissemination of scientific research. At the same time, people living the developing world hear all of the time about the large number of scientific conferences that are being held to discuss how to address the current challenges they face and work towards achieving the SDGs.

However, the public in the Global South is still suffering from many problems including poverty, rising inequalities and the generally weak levels of education and health services, which could feed the belief among some that science cannot not solve these problems and only makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Therefore, this project aims to explore the challenges and potentials of using open science to regain the public’s trust, especially in the developing countries, in science.

It aims to explore and discuss the possible answers to the following questions: How can open science build public mobilization to support science in the developing world and bridge the gap between science and real-life ground? Is open science a welfare or necessity in developing countries? How can open science achieve its objective in light of the low educational levels and high illiteracy rates that prevail in some developing countries? What are the economic and political challenges that face the promotion of open science in the Global South? How can the international organizations help support open science in the developing countries?

One potential initiative to promote open science is building an international database of the on-going and past public research projects supported by the different international organizations with their data and results.

Skills for Project