13th APEC Policy Partnership on Science, Technology & Innovation (PPSTI) Meeting

The 13^th Meeting of the APEC Policy Partnership on Science, Technology and Innovation (PPSTI) was held in Viña del Mar, Chile.

Academician Professor Emerita Datuk Dr Mazlan Othman FASc and Ms Nitia Samuel represented ASM to attend the meeting from 9 to 11 May 2019.

At the meeting, ASM presented a Concept Note titled “Capacity Building Workshop Towards Supporting Open Science for APEC”.

According to ASM, there is an urgent need to remove barriers to the free flow of knowledge by enabling preservation, reproducibility and reusability of data.

Therefore, this Workshop was proposed to foster possibilities for the APEC economies to find means to tap into the data assets/knowledge to achieve the following goals:

• Finding collaborative solutions for regional and global challenges for inclusive and sustainable development.
• Encouraging researchers to build international linkages.
• Having science to inform policies.

The objectives of this Workshop are as follows:

• To build a community of purpose that works together to identify platform governance measures and technical know-how.
• To recommend policies to promote engagement and knowledge sharing among APEC economies through Open Science.

This Workshop was proposed to be carried out on the APEC platform to leverage on five aspects:

1. Diversity: The rich diversity offered by APEC economies can be harnessed through the sharing of a variety of approaches and perspectives towards Open Science for common benefits.
2. Inclusiveness: APEC economies can work together collectively to bridge the knowledge divide to ensure inclusiveness among APEC economies.
3. Efficiency of Scale: The workshop is able to utilize this platform to gather a critical mass of the best people in planning, collaborating and sharing of capacities to amplify impact.
4. Knowledge Exchange: The Workshop promotes capacity building and transfer of skills between APEC economies, creating opportunities for research collaboration.
5. Shared Vision: By tapping into the APEC Platform, a common vision can be developed for sharing of research data and prioritized research domains among APEC economies.

Open Science could bring a host of benefits to APEC economies. On the socioeconomic front, it allows increased access to research results, which could lead to spill overs not only to scientific system, but also trade, investment and socioeconomic systems.

In addition, Open Science encourages the internationalisation of local researches by the respective economies, as well as its researchers and scientists.

Furthermore, APEC economies could stand to benefit from Open Science by guiding policy makers in making decisions with better information.

The Open Science initiative will be guided by three important documents, one of which is “Open Data in a Big Data World” by the International Science Council (ISC). This international accord proposes 12 principles to guide the practice and practitioners of open data, focused on the roles played by scientists, publishers, libraries and other stakeholders, and on technical requirements for open data. It also assesses the “boundaries of openness”.

The OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding is also used as a guiding principle to provide broad policy recommendations to the governmental science policy and funding bodies of member countries on access to research data from public funding.

FAIR Data Principles are also used to provide a set of guiding principles in order to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

To strengthen its proposal of this concept note, ASM illustrates the relevancy of this concept note by presenting its alignment to APEC’s theme of Connecting People, Building the Future, as well as PPSTI’s work plan of building science capacity, promoting an enabling environment for innovation as well as enhancing regional science and technology connectivity.