On the last week of January 2025 took place the 3rd GA of the International Science Council (ISC). It was a full 2-day event, hosted by Oman in the brand new Conference Center of Muscat.
Without going into all the technical details of the GA, let us say that the past activities of the ISC in the last four years were presented by the President and the CEO of the ISC. A large increase of activities can be witnessed, in particular related to the interaction with the multilateral system. The ISC has partnered with the UN, UNESCO, the OECD, the EC, the WHO and other global institutions in projects where science plays an important role, like the Polar Year, the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development, a big project concerning the management of microplastics, the treaty of biological weapons, etc. Important contributions have been made concerning the trust in science and trans-disciplinarity.
The Vice-president for Science and Policy explained that the ISC has published a large number of important reports, some of them, launched by its recently created Center for Science Futures. Some of these reports are ‘The future of research evaluation’, ‘Metrics and best practices’, on Open Science, etc. The ISC has also been involved in science education, issuing a list of eleven recommendations to improve it, and has decided to set up a discussion group to deal with issues related to science education. There was also a report on ‘Unleashing science’ and two reports on data digitalization, one of them called 'Converging science and technology in a digital era: data for cross domain challenges’.About this, let us note that the ISC is part of CODES, coalition for digital environmental sustainability. Finally, the ISC has published a guide for decision makers about the value of science.
Concerning sustainability issues, the ISC has been involved in the creation of a global commission on science missions for sustainability and has launched a call for pilot science missions for sustainability (250 applications received, 12 selected).
The ISC is also very active in the areas of Freedom and responsibility in Science (FRS). The corresponding vice-president presented the activities carried out in this direction. There is committee which has analyzed the threats that scientists and science systems face nowadays, issuing recommendations and guidance. The committee dealt with thirty five individual cases in which scientists saw their rights not respected. The report ‘Protecting science in times of crisis’ has been published and joint collaborations have taken place on this subject with the IAP, TWAS and ALLEA. In the ensuing discussion, the members encouraged the committee for FRS to look at the cases of thousands of scientists who cannot work properly due to wars and other tragical situations. Some members encouraged the ISC to work in collaboration with the efforts that are done at the national level in many regions of the world.
The Vice-president for Outreach and Engagement presented the actions of the committee he chaired, the organization of the several Global Knowledge Dialogues in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the creation of the regional focal points in several regions of the world, the newsletters, website, noticeboard, the monthly Zoom meetings with the members, as well as the two prizes that the ISC awards in partnership with external organizations.
A long presentation was also given about the activities of the ISC concerning open science nd the wish to create a dialogue with all concerned in order to address some of the important issues that can be observed in this field.
The above were the highlights of the presentations that the members were introduced to. Next took place the discussion about the new strategic plan, and several members expressed strongly their disappointment because it is too vague, and they would like to see a concrete action plan attached to it. The president promised to work on that and send an action plan soon. The main concern of the members was that due to the lack of ressources, without priorities being clearly defined beforehand, the ressources could used badly on less important activities. The members also saw the need to stick to a list of activities, and not deviate too much from it. The president commented that sometimes one has to jump into opportunities that appear suddenly.
There was a vote concerning several resolutions presented by some of the ISC members. The most important one was the request of the French Academy of Sciences to include in the Governing Board the chair of the liaison committee with the host country in order to give him/her more power in his/her negotiations with the government of the host country on behalf of the ISC. This was discussed quite a lot, since it would need a change in the statutes. The resolution passed with 88% of the votes.
The finances of the ISC and the budget for the next two years were presented next. There were many discussions about this, because the information given to the members was not clear, the ambition was not there and it was difficult to be optimistic when looking at the tables presented in the GA. Different officers of the ISC indicated that the members’ dues cover more or less the salaries of the members of the Secretariat, and that almost all other activities are funded using external funds (donations, targeted funds, etc). Those are not known for the next years, so it is difficult to present a clear budget. In view of that, the decision was made to vote only for the 2025 budget, which was approved. The ISC also proposed an automatic increase of the dues by 2% each year, without limit in the future, and without taking into account the future inflation rates. The GA voted against this project.
Finally was discussed the plan to define a dues structure globally for all members, without of whether they came from ICSU or form ISSC. A committee has been set up to propose a new dues scale. They have propose to tier the dues structure, the tiers corresponding to the
financial strength of the members. All members of the ISC were asked to make propositions about how to define the tiers and how to measure the financial strength of all members.
There were the main discussions and decisions of the GA. It was announced that there would be a Midterm meeting in October 2026 in Beijing and that there would be a call for the organization of the next GA to take place in late 2028.
The GA concluded with a presidential address and the warm thanks to the Sultanate of Oman for their wonderful hospitality and their generosity.
Embedded in the GA there were several meetings of the different categories of the ISC. Concerning the meeting of the category 1 members (the so-called unions), to which ICIAM belongs, it was well attended. Three main topics were discussed:
(1) How to help scientists to get visas to attend conferences or work with collaborators? The decision was made to prepare a document, signed by the presidents of as many unions as possible, containing a declaration to the right of scientists to travel in order to pursue their scientific work. This document will be at the disposal of all scientists who need it, so that they can present it with the other documents for their visa application.
(2) To request from the ISC that a reference person in the Secretariat for all questions concerning the unions and their coordination.
(3) To continue the online meetings that the ISC has been organizing for the unions and have one every quarter or so. One union’s representative will be tasked with the establishment of the agenda of those meetings after examination of the suggestions sent by all the unions.
(4) Concerning the unions’ possible activities in the framework of the The International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development, the unions agree to write joint reports about recent research and developments in each discipline that could help advance the UN SDGs of the 2030 Agenda.
(5) The unions will seek to prepare a resolution asking for more transparency in the work of the Nominations and Elections Committee (NEC) of the ISC, in particular making public the number and origin of all candidates to the various positions of the Governing Board, and maybe the number of votes that each candidate received. Also, it would be good to request that the NEC selects up-to-two candidates for the president-elect, as it does for the vice-presidents’ positions.
(6) The unions should pursue the completion of the database about their structure and activities, so that all can learn about the others. An analytic presentation of all the data contained in the database should be made by the ISC.
Before the GA, took place another important event for two and a half days: the Muscat Global Knowledge Dialogue, organized by ISC in collaboration with the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation of Oman. It was a high level event full of presentations and panel discussions about many important topics for the ISC family: science education for our future; the impact of new technologies, and especially of AI, on the future development of science; ocean science and sustainability; polar science and the International Polar Year; how to reduce the gender gap in science; changing the context of science diplomacy; social cohesion and inequality; science, public trust and multilateral policy; how to increase the trust in science; etc, etc. The panels had been chosen to represent a diversity of origin, expertise and opinion and they often triggered a good number of questions and comments from the public. The concrete program of the Global Dialogue can be found at the address https://council.science/programme-muscat-gkd/. And the final declaration made at the end of the two days can be found at https://council.science/news/muscat-declaration/
In order to deepen the Council’s engagement with its Members and with individual scientists across the world, the ISC has in the past established a number of Regional Focal Points who will help build capacity of science systems and the global voice for science in the regions.
• — The Regional Focal Point for Latin America and the Caribbean hosted by the Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales was launched in 2021.
• — The Asia and the Pacific region is covered by a Regional Focal Point hosted by the Australian Academy of Science and was launched in 2022.
• — The dialogue to establish a presence in Africa started in 2022 with the ISC’s partners, Future Africa, a pan-African organization based based in South Africa, who has explored possibilities and has made recommendations to the Council at the General Assembly.
After this Global Knowledge Dialogue, it has been decided that a new Regional Focal Point will be hosted by Oman in Muscat to cover the Middle East and the North of Africa.
Both events gave all the participants a very good opportunity to interact with representatives of other members of the ISC. Representatives of scientific unions and councils, national academies, young academies and other scientific institutions could exchange opinions, share information and experiences and build a network of the future. For the first time, young researchers associations, like the long academies, were represented in the GA and that showed by the number of young researchers present in the events. Also, there was a good representation of all continents and regions of the world, what made the interaction much richer and interesting.
As representative of ICIAM in these events, I had the opportunity and the pleasure to exchange extensively with many delegates coming from all the continents and representing very diverse fields of science, and in particular with the representatives of the unions which are our companions in the group of Category 1 within ISC. That was important because during these days we could speak about common interests and make plans for possible future collaborations. These conversations replaced very pleasantly the usual exchanges by email and Zoom.
Maria J. Esteban
Chair of the ISC Committee of the ISC