Paris, 20 March 2026 — UNESCO, in partnership with the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library, has launched a global consultation on a draft policy brief titled "Equitable Scholarly Communication for Implementation of Open Science." The consultation, opened during the 4th UN Open Science and Open Scholarship Conference, invites all interested stakeholders to review the brief and provide feedback by 13 April 2026.
The policy brief is part of the UNESCO Open Science Toolkit and explores equity in scholarly communication — the practice through which researchers create, validate, and share knowledge within and beyond the academic community. It reviews the history of scholarly communication in relation to equity, highlighting both the opportunities created and the unintended consequences of existing systems.
Why Equity in Scholarly Communication Matters
The brief grounds its analysis in the United Nations' Pact for the Future, which defines equitable scholarly communication as fostering an open, fair, and inclusive environment for scientific and technological development, as well as ensuring fair access to knowledge and science. This framing positions equity not as an add-on to open science, but as a practical means of realizing the open science vision established by the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
Key Challenges Identified
The policy brief identifies several systemic equity-related challenges in scholarly communication:
- Publication costs and APCs: Article processing charges create barriers for researchers from low- and middle-income countries who may lack institutional funding to publish in gold open-access journals.
- Evaluation and validation systems: Peer review structures and journal hierarchies can reinforce existing power imbalances, privileging institutions and regions with established reputations.
- Language and indexing: Dominance of English-language publishing marginalises research produced in other languages and limits its discoverability.
- Infrastructure access: Many institutions in developing regions lack the technical infrastructure, repositories, and digital tools needed to participate fully in open scholarly communication.
The brief recommends pathways for building more equitable scholarly communication systems by addressing these challenges directly, rather than assuming that open access policies alone will resolve structural inequities.
How to Participate
UNESCO is inviting all interested stakeholders — researchers, policymakers, librarians, publishers, funders, and civil society organisations — to review the brief and provide feedback. Stakeholders can download the PDF from UNESCO's document repository, add comments directly in the document, and email it to openscience[at]unesco[dot]org with the subject line "Feedback on equitable scholarly communication." Alternatively, written responses referencing specific paragraph numbers can be submitted in the body of an email.
Context: The Broader Open Science Landscape in 2026
The consultation is one of several UNESCO initiatives advancing open science in 2026. In June 2026, UNESCO launched the Open Science Platform, a digital tool that promotes open access to UNESCO-supported research and tracks global progress through interactive dashboards. In July 2026, the Open Science Outlook 2 report was launched during the Global Conference of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development, providing a global assessment of open science implementation based on data from the first monitoring cycle.
The 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science defines open science broadly, encompassing open access to publications, open data, open-source software, and open hardware. While UNESCO provides the global framework, actual mandates are implemented at the national or institutional level. Funding agencies such as NIH, UKRI, and Horizon Europe have become increasingly concrete in their open access requirements, and the consultation on equitable scholarly communication aims to ensure that these requirements do not inadvertently deepen existing inequities.
Implications for Research Policy
The policy brief is intended to assist policymakers, scientists, and other stakeholders engaged in supporting and implementing open science. For research funders, it raises questions about how open access mandates are designed — whether they account for the varying capacity of institutions to pay APCs or build repositories. For institutions, it highlights the need to invest in scholarly communication infrastructure as a core component of research support, not an optional add-on.
For the global research community, particularly in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia where open access infrastructure is still developing, the consultation represents an opportunity to shape a system that is designed with equity from the outset rather than retrofitted after the fact.
Sources
- UNESCO, "Launch of global consultation: Equitable scholarly communication for implementation of open science," 20 March 2026 —
- Draft policy brief (PDF) —
- UNESCO Open Science Toolkit —
- UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021) —
- United Nations Pact for the Future —
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Institutional Research Desk · Foresight Institute of Research and Translation
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