Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO)
Background: The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) is an international non-governmental institution with associative status in UNESCO, created in 1967.
Mission: CLACSO is a network of 898 social sciences and humanities research centers in 57 countries, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its objectives include the promotion of critical social research to fight against poverty and inequality, strengthen human rights and democratic participation, build bridges between social research and public policies and engage in the national and regional public debate, support the creation of SSH regional networks of researchers and institutions, expand South-South and North-South cooperation and dialogue, promote and implement open access to LAC academic production contributing to the democratization of knowledge.
Community over Commercialization:
“The way CLACSO promotes and supports regional working groups, research programs, and platforms for social dialogue, always demanding open access to outputs and the participation of a diversity of societal actors in the production and sharing of new knowledge about priority issues at the local and regional level, contributes to a more diverse and participatory open science future in which communities are actively involved in shaping their future.”
“The theme for OA Week 2023, Community over Commercialization, reflects well a growing global uncomfortableness concerning inequity in the present global scholarly communications system and its research assessment indicators, which are inadequate in an open science context. Contributions to a sustainable development future need as much local as international knowledge, expressed in multiple formats and languages from the diversity of cultures and contexts. “Community over Commercialization” is a strong context to work towards new scenarios.”
“We are proud that in the context of the OAWeek 2023, the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access (Oct. 23-27), where SPARC will participate, will take place in Latin America because it is the region of the world that has achieved the highest percentage of its scientific publications in open access. It has managed this process within the scientific and academic community, supported by public funds, in collaborative formats, without commercial outsourcing, promoting participation, bibliodiversity, and multilingualism.
“CLACSO prioritizes the theme "Community over Commercialization" in the way we promote and implement our various open access and open science initiatives. For example, CLACSO's editorial catalog (with more than 4,000 open access books), an institutional repository (over 150,000 open access publications), and CLACSO TV are assisting CLACSO and its member organizations in transitioning to community-led, collaborative, and non-commercial open access initiatives, which we consider crucial for a sustainable scholarly communication system.”
“The way CLACSO promotes and supports regional working groups, research programs, and platforms for social dialogue, always demanding open access to outputs and the participation of a diversity of societal actors in the production and sharing of new knowledge about priority issues at the local and regional level, contributes to a more diverse and participatory open science future in which communities are actively involved in shaping their future.”
- Dominique Babini, Open Science Advisor at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO)