G20 Chief Science Advisers’ Roundtable

The G20 Chief Science Advisers’ Roundtable (CSAR) is a critical government-to-government initiative of the G20 Presidency that will deliberate on free and universal access to scientific journals that are behind paywalls. India assumed the G20 presidency on December 1, 2022, and the G20 summit will be held in New Delhi from September 9-10, 2023.

CSAR’s Meetings and Objectives

In the run-up to the G20 summit, CSAR will be organising two high-level meetings in Ramnagar, Uttarakhand and Bengaluru. The participating G20 nations will discuss access to scientific journals that are free, immediate, and universal. Additionally, they will talk about high subscription and article processing charges levied by journals, interoperable inter-linking of national repositories with international repositories and archives, and an open access mandate to make knowledge outputs of public-funded scientific research widely available.

Furthermore, on CSAR’s agenda is promoting One Health for disease control and preparedness, improving diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in science and technology (S&T) and setting up an institutional mechanism for inclusive, continuous and action-oriented global S&T policy dialogue.

Free Access to Scientific Journals

Most scientific papers charge high subscription rates from readers. In 2019, the University of California dropped its nearly $11 million annual subscription to Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of academic journals. Although open-access journals are free for readers, they charge fees from scientists who wish to publish papers in them. Open access papers have drastically fewer lead authors from low-income regions than paywalled articles.

The One Health Agenda

Participating G20 nations will discuss a pandemic preparedness plan for flexible, adaptive, and timely responses to pandemics as well as integrated disease surveillance mechanisms for humans, livestock, and wildlife, as part of the One Health agenda. They will also talk about developing a roadmap for diseases and investing in analytics capacity (such as disease modelling, artificial intelligence, and machine learning tools) and data standards.

Other Government-to-Government Initiatives

Besides CSAR, other government-to-government initiatives are a part of the G20. These include Science-20 (S20) and G20 Research Innovation Initiative Gathering (RIIG). The S20 Engagement Group will comprise the national science academies of the G20 countries. RIIG aims to address the challenges of achieving socioeconomic equity through research and innovation.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2023

Category: Summits and Conferences