Unesco to measure performance of national science systems

Global project will assess progress on areas including scientific integrity and open access

A global monitoring exercise from the United Nations’ science agency is setting out to evaluate the performance of countries’ national science systems, including their levels of open access, integrity and funding.

The initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco)—which comes out of a 2017 recommendation on science and scientific researchers—will attempt to set common standards and values as well as collecting data on progress across ten key areas, including scientific integrity and ethics, open access and levels of public investment.