Open data sharing is essential to pursuit of sustainability solutions

This was a consensus among representatives of funding agencies in the Americas who met virtually in October under the aegis of the Global Research Council. A previous event discussed funding for research relating to artificial intelligence in Latin America.

By André Julião  |  Agência FAPESP – Countries and research funders must join forces in order to assure life’s sustainability on Earth and to address crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, according to participants in a virtual seminar on “Open Science, International Cooperation and Sustainability”. 

The webinar was held on October 11 by GRC Americas, a group of research funding agencies in North, Central and South America with seats on the Global Research Council (GRC), which comprises the heads of science and engineering funding agencies from around the world.

The participants agreed that open repositories of research data exist but can be significantly expanded by collaboration among institutions in different countries. “Science is a public good. The results of research funded with public money are therefore public goods and must be made available to the general public as quickly as possible, while respecting the principles of scientific ethics, privacy, data security, and intellectual property protection,” said Carlos Frederico de Oliveira Graeff, a professor at São Paulo State University’s School of Sciences (FC-UNESP) in Bauru. 

Opening the webinar, which was transmitted to registered participants via Zoom, Graeff presented some of FAPESP’s open science initiatives, such as its Code of Good Scientific Practice launched in 2011 and updated in 2014. He addressed information accessibility, among other topics, and the experience with SciELO, an online library of open-access science journals that completed 25 years in 2023.

In 2019, he recalled, FAPESP launched a policy requiring open access to the results of the research projects it funds and announced support for a network of university repositories in São Paulo State.

“Every research project supported by FAPESP must have a data management plan. This was especially important during the recent COVID-19 crisis. We’re committed to assuring open access to research data, and this is increasingly important to the practice of science,” Graeff said. 

Early in the pandemic, FAPESP and the University of São Paulo (USP) established COVID-19 Data Sharing/BR, a platform that holds anonymized data, including clinical examinations and laboratory test results, from over half a million patients processed by five institutions.

Another speaker was Lautaro Matas, Executive Technical Director of LA Referencia, which defines itself as a federated network of open-access institutional repositories of scientific publications in Latin America. “We operate as a federated network based on national aggregators. We provide the software, technology and infrastructure to construct these portals. We also help implement best practices in data interoperability, literature sharing, and standards of various kinds. The network comprises national and regional nodes that are linked to international networks,” he said.

Country representation is important, requiring a governance framework involving national and regional institutions, he added. The platform currently has an agreement with Spain, and talks on collaboration and access are in progress with Portugal and African countries.

Artificial intelligence

During the event, Graeff recalled a webinar held in September, at which GRC Americas discussed the need for multilateral calls for sustainability solutions using artificial intelligence (AI). Esther Luna Colombini, a professor at the State University of Campinas’s Institute of Computing (IC-UNICAMP), also referred to AI. “The pandemic showed that international collaboration is a highly effective mechanism for capacity building and making knowledge accessible to all. More than sustainability and applications of AI, we need to discuss the role of funding agencies in shaping the future of research and the development of AI,” she said in the opening presentation.

Funding agencies have the power to foster an ethical and inclusive ecosystem that benefits humanity regardless of geographic region, she added, so the agencies must support initiatives that promote equal access to AI in all countries.

“In my opinion, funding agencies can lead by example. They can establish guidelines and ethical requirements for the AI-related research they fund. The guidelines can serve as beacons to encourage research and developers to adopt best practices,” she said.