UNESCO intends to design an “open science” plan to beconsidered by the UN General Assembly in late 2021. As part of that plan formation, UNESCO has solicited the input of the Open Scholarship Initiative. OSI has worked in partnership with UNESCO since early 2015 to forge a workable, equitable, and sustainable path to improvedopenness of all research, not solely science. OSI recommends that UNESCO forthwith adopt the enclosed OSI “roadmap” to develop its UN open science plan.

The Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) is an ambitious, global, multi-stakeholder effort to improve the flow of information within research and between researchers, policymakers, funders and the general public. OSI’s main goals are to improve the openness of research and scholarly outputs, lower the barriers for researchers and scholars everywhere to engage in the global research community, and increase opportunities for all countries and people everywhere to benefit from this engagement. Closely connected to this work, OSI is also focusing on correcting a broad range of scholarly communication deficiencies and inefficiencies—without these corrections, open will not be achievable or sustainable.

Following up on a proposal from OSI2016, this workgroup will identify and/or design new funding models for open scholarship, such as a venture fund that can allow more support for joint efforts, or propose ways to improve existing funding by improving the flexibility of library budgets (e.g. by examining the efficiency of “big deals”). After reviewing the challenges with funding open access, the group focused on the second part of the question to propose new ways to improve existing funding opportunities by finding flexibility in library budgets.

The HSS Scholars and Scientists workgroup was convened in recognition of the diverse dynamics and requirements of different research communities, particularly within the Humanities and the Social Sciences (HSS). Within these disciplines there are significant differences in research culture, practices, and access to funding, highlighting that a different approach may be required to embed an open science environment.

Managing the peer review process is one of the major attractions and benefits of the current publisher-driven publishing environment. Would it be possible to maintain peer review in different system—perhaps one where peer review happens at the institutional level, or in an online-review environment? How? What is really needed from peer review, what are the reform options (and what do we already know about the options that have been tried)?

How fast is open access growing? Is this fast enough? Why or why not? What are the impacts of currently evolving open systems? For instance, are overall costs being reduced for scholarly libraries? Is global access to scholarly information increasing? What about in the Global South? What is the impact in this region of increasing adoption of the author-pays system?

The OSI2016 Peer Review workgroup focused on peer review in the context of open scholar­ship. The group agreed that greater openness and transparency would improve accounta­bility, minimize bias, and encourage collaboration, but did not underestimate the challenges of openness, nor the variation in readiness across disciplines and publishing mod­els. The group recommended facilitation of peer review outside the traditional publication process—for example, in the context of preprint servers and after publication—with incen­tives for broad participation. These incentives need to include a cultural shift in recognition of peer review as a valid activity contributing to career progression.OSI2016 Workgroup QuestionManaging the peer review process is one of the major attractions and benefits of the current publisher-driven publishing environment. Would it be possible to maintain peer review in different system — perhaps one where peer review happens at the institutional level, or in an online-review environment? How? What is really needed from peer review, what are the reform options (and what do we already know about the options that have been tried)?