WSIS Action Line C7 E-science: Assessment of progress made over the last 20 years

Charting the Future of E-Science: Reflections and Directions from WSIS Experts

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) hosted a panel of experts to reflect on the evolution of e-science over the past two decades and to chart a path forward. The session, rich in dialogue, touched upon various facets crucial to e-science’s future.

A central issue was the need for open science. The panel highlighted the uneven distribution of research resources globally, with a concentration of patents, publications, and funding in G20 countries. This has led to calls for actions to bridge the science, technology, and innovation gaps between and within nations, ensuring science is more connected to societal needs and accessible to all.

The digital divide was a recurring theme, with the panel agreeing on the importance of equitable access to digital tools and resources. Collaborations built on trust and shared values were deemed essential for the successful implementation of e-science initiatives across different regions.

Policy and governance were also discussed as key to shaping e-science’s trajectory. The panel stressed the need for governments to develop policies that meet the scientific community’s current needs. International recommendations, such as those from UNESCO on Open Science and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, were cited as guiding principles for transparent and responsible AI technology use.

Infrastructure and technology were pinpointed as critical to e-science progress. The lack of high-performance computing in developing countries was identified as a significant challenge, while the potential of cloud computing and high-speed networking to enable e-science was acknowledged. The emergence of digital repositories and the importance of data management were discussed, with the panel calling for the adoption of FAIR principles.

The panel recognized multilingualism and knowledge transfer as vital in making scientific knowledge accessible across language barriers. The potential of AI and machine learning to enhance access to and understanding of scientific information was discussed, suggesting the use of large language models to navigate language barriers and make content more discoverable and contextually relevant.

Funding and sustainability were highlighted as areas needing attention. The need for long-term funding models to support open science initiatives was emphasized, alongside the challenge of sustaining organizations like IFIP that contribute to open access publishing.

The session concluded with a call for enhanced cooperation and a rethinking of processes to align with modern technologies and the needs of both the global north and south. Ethical considerations, especially in the application of AI in science, were recognized as increasingly important and requiring careful attention.

The panel acknowledged the changing data landscape, necessitating a new approach to data management and sharing. Political commitment and multi-stakeholder engagement were identified as crucial for advancing the e-science agenda. There was optimism about e-science’s potential to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, provided there is a concerted effort to address challenges and capitalize on new technological opportunities.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you very much for joining this session where we are trying to stocktake on what has happened in the last 20 years and what should be the way forward for us to drive the agenda of e-science for WSIS. Before I begin, I would like to play a little video that our Assistant Director General for Science has created. This is the message that she has to say, share with the panel.

Video:
Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to join you in marking 20 years of dedicated effort towards strengthening people focus and inclusive information and knowledge societies. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone can freely share scientific advancement and its benefits. To advance this human right and ensure that science fulfills its potential for all, we must make science more connected to societal needs and more accessible, bridging the gap in science, technology, and innovation, both between and within countries. Today, science is produced and funded unevenly around the world. Approximately 9% of patents, publications, and research funding originate from G20 countries. Furthermore, the tools and infrastructures used for research are unevenly distributed. As science and innovation becomes increasingly dependent on technology, access to, governance of, and creation of these technologies remain concentrated in the hands of few. Changing this pattern requires a genuine shift in who participates in science and information systems, who shapes scientific agendas, and how science is used to enhance knowledge and engage with society. Both open science practices and digital technologies transformative potential for a stronger science system that can meet societal needs. To serve all of society, we must address technology gaps and ensure accessibility of open science platforms and resources. However, technology alone is not enough. We need to foster collaborations among communities and between countries, building mechanisms and modes of engagement based on genuine trust and shared values. The 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science provides a guiding framework, with countries agreeing on shared actions to enhance access to scientific knowledge and tools. The recommendation calls for openness and engagement with society and dialogue across knowledge systems, aiming to create stronger STI systems that serve all. A growing set of technological tools is available to track information. However, without joint efforts, the adaptation of new tools by some could deepen inequalities and feed mistrust in science. This is particularly true for technologies that rely on vast quantities of data, such as machine learning, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. The 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence sets international norms to ensure AI technologies are used responsibly and transparently, helping to mitigate and redress biases. Twenty years ago, the World Summit on the Information Society set out a vision for global digital cooperation and building of knowledge societies. Today lets us learn from the successes in such cooperation and continue to challenge ourselves by asking who is present and participating. participating in the use of information technologies, and participating in their creation and management. Thank you for your efforts to support universal access to information and technology, the promotion of open solutions, and the expression of human rights, including digital rights. I thank you.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
All we can do is thank Dr. Brito for sharing some of those points. In fact, Dr. Brito raised two issues. One, she spoke about the recommendation of an open science, and also she noted the recommendation of artificial intelligence. Professor Wong, considering the rapid evolution of e-science, what immediate steps should government take to develop and uptake policies that address the current needs for the scientific communities?

Anthony Wong:
Thank you for inviting me to join your panel today. Quickly, IFIB is the International Federation for Information Processing, created under the auspices of UNESCO in 1960. I’m the president, and I’m speaking on behalf of the Federation of our Member Societies across five continents. Today with me, I also have with me in person the president of our Member Society in Zimbabwe, who will give her perspective, since she’s here, on the aspects from a developing country. I’m both a technologist as well as a lawyer, and also an academic, so I’m speaking from many hats when I look at the challenges going ahead for e-science. E-science is a very big topic, covering many things, but in the short time I have, I can only cover so much. I like to give my perspective. So yesterday, when I was on the panel for UNESCO, I said I observed a little girl sitting in the bookshop with her mother, and she was conversing with Siri for the whole time that the mother was in the shop. When I wake up, my ex-minister from Australia, he just did a post about intelligent artificial assistant agents. And that was what I spoke about yesterday at the panel, that very near future, we’re going to have personal intelligent assistant just design, train with our data just for us, to guide us how to get up in the day, what best route to get to get to work, what’s the weather like today, and what’s the program that we got to do today, and many, many things. The world we’re going to look for in the next 20 years will be so different from the world that we’ve been. So we need to look at many structures, infrastructure, systems, processes, humans, training, capacity training, digital literacy. But when I talk about digital literacy, I said to the panel, are we talking from the perspective of us, who are in the older generation, are we talking about people who’s coming forward? Because now they’re trained, as that example I showed you with the girl with Siri, digital devices and intelligence and AI is part of their growth. So are we actually planning for us or for them? Because when they come into work in force in the world, they will be so different from us. So are we designing things for us or for them in our old age? So I like that question posed by the panel, because it’s a very challenging question. So it is very different. I’m a lawyer, I have to look at laws of how we’re going to cope with some of this thing. Thank God that some of the laws are now coming in, like the EU AI legislation, for instance, in Europe, the Council of Europe Treaty that was just signed last week, the UNESCO AI principles and many, many other principles. I predicted two years ago, the next few years about AI regulation and ethics, but ethics now is less so because ethics can only be so much in terms of ethical washing. And we’ve seen. any organization, including those big tech companies, starting off with well-intent, having ethical committees. But in recent time, they’ve disabled or removed those from their institution. So I’m questioning the world, yeah? We need to be transparent. If we’re going to do the ethics route, and e-signs, and open data protection, let’s not just showcase and then not demonstrate the action. So I think, from UNESCO’s perspective and my perspective, action is needed. I think, yes, policies will need to be developed, and we need more of those. But we need action. So why don’t we start from perspective from my member states in Zimbabwe? As you know, IFIP was created like UNESCO with member states. So I also have a president who’s here for the first time at WSIS from Zimbabwe, Joyce. So Joyce, could you give perspective from a developing country about the question that was posed? Please.

Joyce Benza:
Thank you very much. I am glad to be part of this conversation because where I come from, I think we still have a number of issues that need to be looked at. There’s been a lot of enhancements and developments as far as infrastructure is concerned. But basically, we’ve got a network, a good network, through universities. We’ve got a network through centers we call growth points, where connectivity is also reasonably available. We also have professional bodies, which include the Computer Society of Zimbabwe. We also have bodies representing industry. We also have the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe. We also have our own government-led post-talent regulatory authority, which is actually present during this week here. So the idea is that we need to be able to synchronize all the efforts. So as far as e-research is concerned, e-science is concerned, our universities will take the lead. lead, but basically we would need all parties involved. That means we’re looking at ensuring that we’ve got digital literacy in the various areas that I talked about that are not in the urban areas. But because we now also are going to have cheaper infrastructure in the form of some of the recently launched agreement on Starlink, where we can now have our rural areas have accessibility, it then becomes easier and reasonably affordable for all the centers that are situated in those areas to now be able to start getting into research. Basically, it’s been good in the form that the universities are doing that for us anyway. And recently, the computer side of Zimbabwe, we launched a women in ICT organ where we are running a few initiatives in the rural areas where we are trying to expand digital literacy. So as part of the digital literacy, we also have some basic research where we are actually taking the women that are out there. Some are peasant farmers, some are basically end users like primary school teachers and the people that are still working with them in that area. So I think we are doing reasonably well, but a lot of support is still needed. But the structures are there, and I’m confident that as far as Zimbabwe is concerned, and I also do consultants across Africa, even in some African countries that we also deal with. I think as long as we focus on ensuring that there’s synergy, there’s integration between universities and including government. In government, we’ve got our Minister of ICT, and we all kind of report to the Minister of ICT. We also have the Office of the President and Cabinet, and the ICT government unit that also coordinates and consolidates. dates some of those major efforts, and we see that that whole agenda is achievable. It might not happen overnight. Thank you very much.

Anthony Wong:
In the sense of time, you know, perhaps, you know, we can come back to the question part and you can complete, you know, your statement a little later. Thank you.

Joyce Benza:
I was saying it might not happen overnight, but I’m saying the infrastructure is there, the facilities are there.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Absolutely. That’s very well said.

Joyce Benza:
Human resources are also there to be able to run with the initiative.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please move to the next speaker. Yes. Thank you very much. I think, you know, it’s a very nice segue into something, you know, that I’m going to ask Lydia. Lydia, I think what ADC Lydia, you know, like spoke about, you know, recommended open science and something that Anthony and, of course, you know, Joyce also added, the context of, like taking these policies or this, you know, the global, say, discussion on openness of science or science as a whole or ICT and sciences to where it matters most. What do you think, you know, can be done, you know, like how can equitable access to digital tools and resources can somehow be facilitated by the global community?

Dr. Lidia Borrell-Damian:
Thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to participate in this panel. And I welcome very much the reflections of Anthony. And let me start kind of following up what he said, because I fully agree with him. We seem to be trying to use artificial intelligence in the existing processes. And we can see how it is very difficult to fit. Well, maybe what we need to do is to look at what we want to go and define completely new processes where artificial intelligence is already part of the start. I see that, for example, several of the organizations that are part of Science Europe that we have national funding and performing organizations are experimenting with tools to assess research proposals. And it the tools that exist today are not robust enough to to say, yes, we can delegate the task to artificial intelligence tools because it’s too risky. Either they over qualify or under qualify. And you can see that they may. It’s too much to you to rely on them, even for just baseline. So maybe we need to think about that and about the role of the funding or the performing organizations. But I think that, above all, we need to think about what type of world do we want. And if we think and I think while in this room, we agree that we have global challenges and local challenges that are equally complex, that need the input from scientific research to be solved. We cannot do that if we continue with the current processes, normally what we call the closed science. So access to research outputs behind heavy pay walls where there are old privileged countries that either have access or pay for the underdevelopment, underdeveloped countries. And I think this is a trend that to me with artificial intelligence probably will only enlarge the gap. And instead, I think we should go and break through that and really make science open and accessible for all. It’s free for authors, free for readers, and it’s the funding agencies that are in charge of paying for whatever it needs to make that possible. data and publications accessible. Now we have a problem of a geopolitical problem which is this retraction of some countries reinforcing data sharing policies that are by far too restrictive and that is impinging or at least not offering proper frameworks for open science. We need to be very careful on that development because an excessive protectionism on data may lead to a very non-collaborative world in terms of research and that we all know that research is about collaboration and especially international collaboration. So I think that policies are important. I know we need action but to have action we need financial resources and capacity. It’s not only enough to have money, we need money well invested with the right policies, with the people that are competent to implement them. So I think that also investing capacity everywhere in the world is absolutely important to favour that. One of the models that is not I think in my view sufficiently exploited in terms of scientific publication is the retirement open access model which is exactly that, free for authors, free for readers and until today is just maybe 10%, 15% of the total publications that are using that model. The rest are normally open access but still where the authors have to pay a lot of money, authors or institutions or that they are still indeed under paywalls. So big push towards diamond type of scholarly publication models to make science accessible for all.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you very much and I think that actually provides, gives me a very interesting question. When do you think we can bring in the diamond model in the infrastructure divide that we have increasingly started to face? So perhaps this will be my question to Dr. Bob Jones who heads, our deputy heads the ICT team at CERN. How do you think this new type of divide that is emerging primarily because of high performance computers in developing countries, they are almost non-existing at the moment. How do you think that will contribute to this disparity in research taking place in different regions of the

Dr. Bob Jones:
world? So thank you very much for the invitation. So let me start by just trying to put it into context. We’re talking about what’s passed in the last 20 years. From an infrastructure point of view, remember that that the first iPhone didn’t appear until 2007, so less than 20 years ago. Talk around generally available machine learning techniques and so on only really started to appear in 2010. So we are really dealing with the cutting edge of technologies. But one of the big things that has helped, I think, during those last 20 years is that computing and its infrastructure has become a lot more ubiquitous. And easily and readily available at reasonable costs. This has meant that with the advances in technology, in particular, I would say high speed networking, which is of an international nature. There are structures such as Inside Europe with the Xeon network, which allows to exchange scientific data at great speed over international borders. Such structures supported with the advances in computing architectures means that we now have a model by an environment by which we can have a federated model. That’s to say it’s not necessary that the computing infrastructure or that capacity is actually sitting next to the user. And the advent of cloud computing and so on demonstrates that. We are now using data centers which are remote to where the users are sitting. President Joyce from Zimbabwe highlighted the importance of high speed networking, satellite based networking in rural areas for giving access. And what does this allow us to do? I think one of the big points that’s linked to what Lydia was talking about for open access is the important infrastructures available for those now are digital repositories. Those were not so prominent 20 years ago. Archive, which as far as we are aware, was the first digital repository for scientific research open access. access to research, which is Los Alamos in the US in 1990s, to provide access to preprints of physics papers, things have developed a lot more there. And where I work at CERN, we we host and operate the Zenodo digital repository, which can be used to provide access to digital copies of papers, but not only papers, but also software and data. And those are the essential elements that are necessary if we want to perform eScience, you need the knowledge that you find in the recorded in the publications, you need the software that’s been used to produce it, so you can reproduce the science, and you need the data on which it is performing. And as you say, now we see that the data is growing very big. But having access to those even if it is remotely, is important. And you highlighted another point, which is the question of policy of access. So just as now we have talked about diamond access for publications, and we have the equivalent of diamond access to data and the software, which is also there as well. And that is some of the tenets of open science. And one of the organizations Europe where I also work, the European Open Science Cloud Association, is putting is working hard to put in place such a platform where that can happen, initially inside Europe, but with the intention that this should be part and join up with other regional structures around the world.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Wonderful, thank you so much. In fact, that provides a very interesting and I say, as a context for us, that if diamond has already become the new say, a workflow for open access publishing, perhaps there should be another say diamond model for open data, and perhaps a diamond model for research infrastructure. So now I would like to invite Dr. Johan Arubik, executive director of Coalition YES, and he’s also a linguistic professor at Leiden University. Can you please share your thought on an effective strategy that can be implemented to close the digital divide between developed and developing country? Primarily, what you can do is you can, in fact, draw in your experience in becoming one of the premier organization kind of driving the diamond model of open access forward, which was just conceptually agreed by the world in 2023. So this is essentially just fresh out of the oven. So please.

Dr. Johan Rooryck:
Yes, so thank you, Bhanu. What Bhanu is referring to is the Global Diamond Alliance that was proposed in Toluca as a way of federating all efforts in diamond open access publishing in the world. So this is part of a larger access, a larger program. What I would like to do is to string together, indeed, what Lydia said about equitable access and what you said about infrastructures. Namely, we have to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic status, have not only equitable access to research results, but that they can also participate in the scientific discussion without financial barriers. The current publication system that we have is highly inequitable in that regard. It’s based on a prestige economy with prestige journals that cost an enormous amount of money. And that, of course, creates a digital divide between North and South, with only researchers from rich countries able to participate in this prestige journal economy. But diamond changes that radically, because basically the only hurdle, the only condition to participation is scientific competence, right? I mean, you can participate in the scientific discussion. discussion, if you are competent, that’s the only and that is, of course, selected on the basis of peer review and the process and all the selection processes that we know. So this is what I’m talking about is an alternative model, which has a much longer tradition than commercial publishing and commercial publishing, the way we know it, extractive commercial publishing, the way we know it is only 40 years old. That’s a, you know, a fraction in the history of scientific publishing. And what we are looking for is a model where there is not only no fees for readers and authors, but we’re also intellectual property rights are in the hands of authors and in the hands of the scientific communities with, for instance, CCBY licenses. So open access has to be immediate. Diamond is also community owned and led. So that allows for in a fabric fine grained manner to have direct control mechanisms over the content of all content related aspects of publishing. And since there is no commercial incentive, there’s also no reason to produce large numbers of papers just for to satisfy commercial needs. So editors are not under pressure to publish. They are really there to to pay proper attention to to the reproducibility and the quality and the transparency of the data. All of this is, of course, also part of a quality distribution network. I mean, this net, this this diamond open access has been very active in Latin America since 20 years. It’s been dispersed and fragmented in the rest of the world. What we need now is an infrastructure, a global infrastructure, regional infrastructure and local infrastructure, a fine capillary network that brings it all together. And I think that’s entirely feasible. Like you said, you know, the infrastructure, the tools, the digital tools for this have become available. I mean, it’s not expensive to do. All the tools are available for this. We can do this as a scientific community. We do not need commercial extractive proposals for that. And we have also developed in the community, because I’m part of various projects that develop diamond, we have developed a diamond open access standard for quality, a standard for quality, not only for the technical quality of the scientific output, but also in terms of good open science practices, open peer review, which is transparent peer review, so that you can see where the decisions and why the decisions have been taken to publish a journal or to publish an article or to publish a paper, and that we have access to the entire scientific discussion and not just to the paper itself. So we want to go for a much more open discussion. also in diamond open access with open fair data, which is actually easy, easy, possible. I’m an editor myself. We have, for instance, a few years ago taken the decision that we would we would not accept papers for for review unless the author states that the data will be accessible on an open platform. It’s a very easy measure to make sure that your data are open. And it’s something that that journals can do and journal editors can do. And it’s much more easy to do that in the scientific community than to ask commercial publishers to do that, because that that they they they don’t necessarily want that. So, yeah, financing of this system can be done, I think, from redirecting funding from current subscriptions and fee based publishing towards diamond open access. But this needs a lot of political support, because very often, of course, those funds are tied up in subscriptions and in high APCs. And we need we need to transition to that new system. So we need political support for that. And then we need effective strategies to close that difficult that digital divide by endorsing diamond as a default of scholarly communications. And there has to be a commitment to finance this via the public purse, which is already financing, but is actually financing the stakeholders of the large commercial publishers, which is which should not be the intention, I believe. So these these initiatives like the diamond open access initiative that was decided in Toluca in October, contributes to this, I believe, to closing the digital divide, because I think we can all together work towards a world where each researcher and placed anywhere positioned anywhere in the world can participate in a scholarly discussion on the basis of scholarly merit alone. And this is where I will stop.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you so much. I think that’s very insightful. One of the things that you mentioned was a political commitment. And now, you know, I’ll turn to Dr. Rajendra Joel, who works in in multiple areas, and he’s also a CEO of GEF. Rajendra, just, you know, to ask you, Johan mentioned about political commitment. Political commitment requires multi-stakeholder engagement. So, what do you think, you know, what kind of multiple, multi-stakeholder arrangements are needed and essentially, do you know, drive this e-science agenda forward?

Dr. Rajinder Jhol:
Well, thank you for inviting me back here. Multi-stakeholder discussions, enhanced collaboration discussions have been ongoing, you know, within the WSIS process for many, many years now and as you know that the WSIS lines themselves are being, you know, reviewed and potentially reviewed. So, you know, we might have to rethink, like Lydia said, you know, rethink how we understand the multi-stakeholder process and, you know, especially with regard to the Common Agenda and its 12 goals. You can see that, you know, goal number one is just renewal of the social contract, is how to rebuild trust. So, it seems that, you know, multi-stakeholder collaboration has got some trust issues linked to it and, you know, if I would just go through the other elements of the Common Agenda, you would see how they’re interrelated towards multi-stakeholder processes, is number one was renewal of social contract, number three is inclusive network, effective multilateralism. You look at number six, it’s turbocharging the actions on the SDGs and then, of course, you have the summit of the future and that recommendations on open science, the transformative impact. We basically are still very primitive beings with medieval institutions and god-like technology, you know, and we are unable to rethink our institutions, modulate or moderate our, you know, individual humanness to increase collaboration. We tend to, you know, hoard on our cost structures, think in silo boxes, even within organizations, which makes it really complicated, you know, to promote further collaboration, you know, either within the organizations, international organizations, academia, civil society, businesses. So, what we really need is to rethink how we define integrated policy approaches and, of course, the financial commitment that has to be rethought as well. But I think the most important thing would be technology, you know, how how do we upgrade technology? How do we rethink about financing technology? I mean, CERN is super lucky to have huge amounts of financing to build its technology stack. But it’s got very limited member states, mainly from the global north. So I would really invite the United Nations or even ECOSOC to rethink if they would like to build a technology stack, if they would like to invest in further research and development to make sure that the research and development efforts are favorable to global north and to the global south, which is a big, big challenge for many different countries. And I think further investments into research and development would also help us to rethink how we can use, how we can harness modern technologies like AI technologies or Web 3 technologies or Web 4 technologies to increase transparency and accountability, to improve efficiency and reduce bureaucracy, to strengthen trust and collaboration, to allocate funds and resources and to track them, to improve the innovation, and to make sure that whatever we do is always inclusive and equitable and so that we can better align with these last few years which are left towards the achievement and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. So rethinking would be really crucial and to keep repeating what we have been repeating in the WSIS process and across the different UN discussions about, yes, we need enhanced cooperation, yes, we need multilateralism, but we don’t have the tools to support them. So I think that. If we want to have the benefits of increased trust and efficiency, accountability and scalability of cooperation, if we want to reduce the North-South divide, we might have to rethink some of these processes from a technological mindset and philosophy.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you. Thank you. We have received, now I will turn to my audience here, if you have got any questions to this eminent panel. But we already have received two questions. Yes, sir, please.

Audience:
Thank you very much. My name is Horst Kramers from Berlin, Germany, and I’m working in information management for the risk domains. This is also very complex things. What I come about in my practice of 40 years or so in environmental and geo-information, I find that it was said, currently we are talking about open software on open data. What I found to understand what is happening in this data and in this software would be something like making more open and enforce the compilation of data management plans where the knowledge of data structures, the knowledge of ontologies, you wouldn’t understand ontologies when you see the software. You would have to have a very hard analysis of the software if you want to guess about the ontologies behind that. So that kind of digital ontologies exchange, ontologies maps to compare, easily compare by machine, comparison of complex ontologies or something in the fields of not only syntax and semantics, but also in the pragmatics where you see what happens, what can happen, What is the potential workflow, the event chains, and so on? That is what we are asking about, and this is not clear how we do that in the future. What I want to mention certainly is not mentioned here, the gap from science to practice. Everyone knows that you cannot see science from the inside, as was displayed here mainly, but science is not only inside. Here we are in the information society. We need to look, when we talk here at ITU, we need to look from inside and outside science, what does it do for society, and that is, for instance, like knowledge transfer is fantastic, but knowledge transfer is not only copy and send, and there it is, the knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer is, in many things, a mental and a real knowledge is to implement in a different situation. That would be knowledge transfer, much more complex than cut and paste and send or something. So we have to make sure of this. I also would have been happy if some remark on the position of the International Science Council would have been mentioned, because that also is an argument. Certainly a lot of the same problems are discussed there, but I will leave it by this and think that there is a lot of more things to do, and I hope we can support this. Thank you.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you very much, sir. Of course, you know, there is a lot to be done. Lydia, would you like to take from the science Europe’s perspective on that one, that, you know, a lot is being spoken and talked about, but not so much is being put in practice?

Dr. Lidia Borrell-Damian:
Yes, thank you. Well, I agree with your views that we should look at science from the inside and also from the outside, because we make an emphasis precisely in science Europe that there are the generation of knowledge that we always say that should be useful for society, but there’s also the generation of knowledge for the sake of generating knowledge, which is also a very good basis for the future. So I think that the many organizations are looking at science from the inside, a few are doing it from the outside. I know the International Science Council is one of the few organizations that do that, and maybe we should take up some of their recommendations. that they issued, I think that at the same time, it is good, as I said before, to rethink, for example, very provocative questions like, would funding research organizations exist in 10 years? Things like that. Or if they exist, probably they will still exist, but how can we envision the way they will work? Because probably they will work in an entirely different way than they work today. So I think this type of provocative questions, that even from the inside, the look at science from the outside perspective, and I agree with you that we should make more of it.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you very much, Lidia. I think it is a very interesting question. One is directed to Anthony, and then the other one is to Johan. And I was wondering, Johan, if you’d like to take up this question where this gentleman, actually David, ask you, how does open data lines, or I think he means our, like maybe our alliance, our e-science, can look at the multilingualism assuming sciences? And he’s essentially asking, can ICT make wider, like engagement of people who are not speaking mainstream languages participate in the scientific discourse?

Dr. Johan Rooryck:
Yes, actually, this is one of the components of this Diamond Open Access Standard that we developed. One of the seven components, actually, looking at indeed multilingualism and solutions of multilingualism. So one of the recommendations that we formulate there is that at least the abstracts of articles in other languages would be translated in at least one other language. So that is one way of, for authors, for readers to have access to the paper and then see whether they want to translate the paper even further. There’s also a recommendation to. published papers in more than one language. Automatic translation is becoming ever more powerful, so that can really play a role there. But of course, all of this needs organization because it needs organization and it needs funding. But what is interesting here is that we can learn actually from languages that are, let’s say, minority languages, if I may say, if I may use that word. For instance, if you look at Croatia, Croatia has about 500 journals in Diamond Open Access. And what you see there, since not everybody in the world speaks or reads Croatian, many of those journals have their abstracts available in English so that an English-speaking or English-reading public can have access at least to the gist of the article and then decide whether they want to translate it further. The same is true for Finnish journals. So this is actually a richness that comes from these publications in other languages than English. And that can really help us going forward. But of course, this needs coordination at the highest possible level. This is, you want to do this. But the Croatians, too, is something that you want to do for Finnish, for Hungarian, for many, many other languages. And that costs time and infrastructure. Not impossible. Again, we have those tools at our disposal. It’s just a matter of organizing it well into a well-distributed architecture that works. Just a follow-up question to that one. Do we have a current estimate of what percentage of science gets produced in English? And what percentage of science gets published in French or Spanish? I don’t have exact numbers. But the English is there. But I have some number. I mean, I know someone who would have the numbers, Etienne Apollon from the Multilingualism Initiative in Helsinki. He also runs a COARA working group on multilingualism. So where these very same issues are discussed and where recommendations, again, will be focused on multilingualism. formulated to make sure that multilingualism is ensured. I don’t have the exact numbers, but he would. I mean, I know I can give you, I can find you the slide.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Okay. Anthony, you know, there is a question some gentleman Chen has asked, and he’s asking that with IFIP’s prominent role in the field, how do you envision IFIP enhancing the uptake of science policies across various countries? What strategies or initiatives can IFIP implement to ensure that these policies are effectively adopted and implemented to support scientific advancement?

Anthony Wong:
First of all, thank you for the question. Thank you for the question. People may know that IFIP is not a UN direct agency. It’s a creature created under UNESCO. Its mission is about responsible development and deployment of ICT. IFIP has over the years invested in open access publishing. We have a digital library. Once our published papers have gone through a number of years with our commercial publisher, it goes out for free access worldwide. It’s currently hosted out of France in AMIA. We actually have to pay to keep it going, and we have to pay to upload the information. So IFIP itself is investing what little money it has for open access. So we are doing huge contributions for the world. We have half a million members working in many scientific field of endeavor in ICT from Zimbabwe, as I mentioned, my colleagues here from New Zealand, Brazil, Sri Lanka, China, Australia, where I’m from, South Africa, Nigeria, and many, many countries in Europe. We have 6,000 people working across those five continents on many futuristic scientist research and publication to share with the world. But we also need money to sustain IFIP. We are created like UNESCO, membership fees from countries and organizations. And we have to be self-sustaining. So many of us are volunteers outside our work time to do this very good deeds for humanity. So if you can think of any good support that we can to do our mission statement, we’ll be most grateful. Absolutely. So if there is an agency who come forward and say to IFEB, since you have to pay to host all this thing for free for humanity, when you’re actually creating it for humanity, will there be funds available to do that?

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Thank you. I think I saw Raj wanted to please, time is the essence here, we’re almost run out of time.

Dr. Rajinder Jhol:
Well, I’d just like to make a couple of comments, again, thinking about primitive human beings, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies like AI, and to rethink about open science, translation issues, re-conceptualization issues, it would be an interesting approach to think about AI, large language models, accessing open access catalogs of papers together with LLMs or having smaller language models on specific science elements, which would not only provide the access, the knowledge transfer, as you mentioned, but also help to educate, help to break down in terms of chain of thought, how to understand these papers and contextualize those papers, and to make them discoverable. Not just from the science perspective, but also from the innovation perspective. This is why I’m saying we might have to rethink how we do what we do and what we want to deliver, and I think we would miss out a lot if we do not think in terms of what AI has been doing and how AI has been deployed globally, and how actually the room just next door is talking about AI everywhere. So rethinking in terms of AI, large language models, small language models, accessing scientific information, re-contextualizing, making it discoverable, making it visually accessible, and across the language barriers. I mean, large language models are just more than amazing. in terms of how they translate and how you navigate through language.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Just to add on to that point, we’ll soon be organizing a major meet of those companies that are developing open large language model, that is end-to-end, like open. Because most of the time, for example, in open AI, if you go, it’s not open. It talks about open, but it’s not open. So we are doing that. So, you know, from you, can you basically give one sentence to, on how e-science agenda should be taken forward by WSIS? Just one sentence, not more than that.

Dr. Rajinder Jhol:
Well, a lot of people have been losing trust with science recently in a couple of years, and because we don’t really understand, you know, how-

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
It’s more than one sentence.

Dr. Rajinder Jhol:
Okay, well then my one sentence would be, let’s deploy large language models, small language models for the promotion and development of science in the world.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Professor Tony, one sentence.

Anthony Wong:
I feel as invited to provide a formal submission to the WSIS process. One of the things I already mentioned, that we need to think outside the box. The world 20 years from now, will not be the same today as 20 years before. So that’s my sentence.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Super. Martin? WSIS should insist on FAIR, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable. Okay. Lidia? Thank you.

Dr. Lidia Borrell-Damian:
I will add, yes, invest in open science policies, but invest also in peace research, because we need peace to collaborate. And it’s not possible if we don’t have peace.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Johan?

Dr. Johan Rooryck:
It’s very difficult to come back after that one. But I would plead for, we need a worldwide infrastructure for scientific publishing that is accessible for both readers and authors.

Dr. Bhanu R Neupane:
Just to give the closing sentence on this one, I think, you know, like, I took note of, you know, your comments and interventions. So it looks like, you know, we’re still in the world of digital divide, but perhaps, you know, this digital divide is a different type of digital divide, you know, that needs to be addressed. We still work in knowledge silos, and sadly, you know, there’s no… knowledge silos need to be somehow broken to move forward. And especially knowledge silos, how can some of these models that are coming up, such as a diamond open access and diamond data model that Bob just mentioned, which I really was caught by tension, and I’ve tried to advocate that. But there are also some operational hurdles. That’s something that Raj also noted, that robust support is needed, limited access to high-performance computing, long-term funding models, which are not there, and modern educational framework, something that Joe has also noted, which just needs to be there. And the last thing, it looks like we are getting into, and this is, I think, what Bob also mentioned, like a different, say, realm of data, so where a fair model will come in. The ethics will become extremely important in the e-science in the days to come. So with those, thank you so much. You know, we have been a fantastic audience. And thank you so much to my panel. Recording stopped. Very nice.