Statement of support for UNESCO's Open Science Recommendations

Latindex, Redalyc AmeliCA, THE Reference y CLACSO wish to express their appreciation to UNESCO for the Recommendation on Open Science, approved after an extensive consultation process by 193 countries that participated in its 41st General Conference in November 2021.

Open Science aligns with the values ​​of universal access to knowledge, the revaluation of local scientific production, and the inclusion of diverse stakeholders in the scientific production process; values ​​prevalent in a region where open access to knowledge has been a tradition and the norm, even before it was written in capital letters in the publishing world's vocabulary. This stems from the fact that in Latin America and the Caribbean, knowledge has historically been conceptualized as a public good.

However, in recent times the globalization and commercialization of research and higher education have led to the imposition of uniform criteria and indicators of productivity, quality and impact of scientific work and its products, blurring the contributions of countries and institutions, instead of promoting diverse models of openness adapted to local conditions and needs.

It is important that the transition to Open Science also signifies an openness to other forms of knowledge, other cultures and ways of thinking, other languages; that it takes context into account in order to ensure a fair and equitable exchange of scientific knowledge for the benefit of society and the environment. This implies that Open Science requires a universal regulatory framework that ensures the integrity of information and equity in the distribution of knowledge, preventing commodification and profit-making, while guaranteeing respect for diversity; a framework, in short, in which international collaboration ensures the preservation of knowledge products and universal access to them.

It is up to our region to work together to generate consolidated indicators that adequately reflect the output published in journals, books, and repositories, for use by those who evaluate researchers, institutions, and research projects. In this sense, the generation of responsible metrics and their articulation with institutional repositories and research management systems must be coordinated with regional initiatives that advocate for a change in the current evaluation system, such as the Latin American Forum on Scientific Evaluation (FOLEC CLACSO).

We want to highlight the shared vision that has permeated our work in the region: collaboration and a move away from the commodification of science. In this context, we strongly support the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and we urge governments and academic institutions to implement them in their entirety.