As Open Science is developed in the Global South, it raises many questions about the limitation of Open Science practices in various Global South contexts. Some of these questions are related to the governance of scientific knowledge and the implication of the digital information divide between the North and the South. In particular, the implication of Open Access has been extensively discussed in relation to its economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions.
However, one of the most sought practices in Open Science is the FAIR principles, but it’s been rarely researched or adopted outside the Global North Context. Findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) ecosystems aim to accelerate research and drive down inefficiencies in the current system, but it can not be adopted without its own sophisticated infrastructure. This project aims to address the possible contextualising of FAIR in the MENA region and it’s partly inspired by “Contextualizing Openness: Situating Open Science by Leslie Chan”. The project will be carried out as part of the Open Science Community Saudi Arabia (OSCSA). The vision of this community is to provide a place where newcomers and experienced peers interact, inspire each other to embed open science (research) practices and values in their workflows and provide feedback on policies, infrastructures and support services.
As the adoption of FAIRfication was proved challenging in Europe, it proved even more problematic in the MENA region. This is not only because of the lack of infrastructure but it extends to other legal and cultural barriers. However, there’s a hidden infrastructure in the Middle East, which may have low visibility and proves risk-free in the legal dimension. This project will seek to develop a strategy or possibly guidelines for implementing FAIR in the current infrastructure, culture and legal system in Saudi Arabia. This strategy can form a foundation for adopting FAIR in the MENA region. We will look into examples taken from Latin America, which recently created and maintained some sort of Open Science infrastructure.
At the same time, the project will ask about the possible impact of FAIR on our contemporary and future sustainable society? And its potential in perpetuating existing inequalities of increasing the visibility and discoverability of the outputs of researchers and scientists in the MENA region.
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