Resilience in Research: The Role of Open Science in the Arab World
The Forum for Open Research in MENA (Middle East and North Africa; FORM) is set to host its 5th Annual Forum entirely online on October 19 and 20, 2026, marking a pivotal shift from its previous in-person gatherings. This year’s symposium, themed “Resilience in Research: The Role of Open Science in the Arab World,” will be delivered bilingually, reflecting a deep engagement with the immediate and pressing challenges faced by the region’s academic and scientific communities. The decision to transition to a fully virtual format underscores a stark reality: many of the countries and communities served by FORM are currently navigating profound crises, including armed conflicts, widespread famine, disease outbreaks, and severe economic instability. For the MENA region’s open research community, resilience is not an academic concept but an operational imperative, shaping the very conditions under which scholars and institutions strive to advance knowledge.
A Crucial Pivot Amidst Regional Turmoil
This year’s online-only format represents a significant departure from the 4th Annual Forum, held just a year prior in October 2025. That event was a vibrant physical gathering at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, attracting over 150 delegates in person and nearly 800 more who joined virtually from 73 countries worldwide. The previous forum facilitated invaluable face-to-face interactions, with librarians, funders, publishers, and early-career researchers exchanging insights and forging connections amidst coffee queues. The current geopolitical and socio-economic landscape, however, has necessitated a strategic pivot. FORM has been transparent about the reasons for this change, acknowledging that the term “crisis” accurately describes the lived experience of many within its constituency. This context transforms the forum’s theme from an abstract discussion point into a direct response to the operational conditions that its members are already working within, highlighting the indispensable role of open science in fostering enduring research capacity.
Independent reports further illustrate the tangible impact of these crises on the region’s scientific infrastructure. University World News documented specific instances of direct damage to critical research facilities, including the High-Performance Computing Centre at Sharif University of Technology, the Pasteur Institute, and specialized laser, plasma, and satellite-research facilities. Beyond physical destruction, the report also highlighted the devastating effect of internet blackouts, which have locked graduate students out of laboratories and severely disrupted ongoing research. Such examples underscore the immense burden the word "resilience" is being asked to carry, as academic institutions and researchers grapple with conditions that fundamentally challenge their ability to conduct, disseminate, and access scientific knowledge.
Tracing the Evolution of Open Research in MENA
To fully appreciate the significance of the 5th Forum’s theme and format, it is instructive to look back at the trajectory of open research in the MENA region, particularly through the lens of previous FORM gatherings. The 4th Annual Forum in Sharjah, held under the esteemed patronage of the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO), already identified the fault lines that the concept of resilience is now tasked with holding together. That meeting provided a crucial baseline for understanding the evolving agenda of open science in the region.
Sharjah itself served as a powerful symbolic host for the 2025 forum. The Emirate has strategically invested substantial resources in developing its knowledge institutions as a core component of a long-term economic diversification and development strategy championed by the Al Qasimi family. Chancellor Tod Laursen of the American University of Sharjah explicitly linked this investment to the principles of openness during his opening remarks at the 4th Forum. He emphasized knowledge that actively circulates, that can be readily reused, and that can be adapted locally to address specific regional needs, rather than being merely consumed. Twelve months later, with the imperative to convene online, this ambition must now be pursued through digital screens, yet the fundamental substance and urgency of the conversation remain undiminished.
At its core, the 4th Forum confirmed that the foundational question of whether to support open research had largely been settled across the World Bank-defined MENA countries. Statistical trends underscore this commitment: publication output across the region has demonstrated steady growth since 2016, with a notable tilt towards STEM fields and areas of clear public interest, such as health and engineering. This research output has predominantly been channeled through traditional, non-Arabic publishers. Concurrently, open access (OA) shares have also seen a significant rise, propelled by the rapid expansion of gold OA agreements. The region’s trajectory was already firmly set towards increasing research openness; the key challenge, as identified in Sharjah, was how to strategically guide this growing, yet uneven, ecosystem to ensure that openness served specific regional priorities rather than inadvertently reproducing existing global differences and hierarchies. Under the current acute conditions plaguing the region, these pre-existing disparities have only become more pronounced.
Structural Challenges and the Call for Coordination
What the Sharjah forum vividly exposed was a landscape rich in individual initiatives but critically lacking in overarching coordination. The proliferation of institutional repositories, national platforms, and discipline-specific networks, while individually valuable, often operated in isolation. For researchers attempting to share or reuse work across national borders, this fragmentation translated into asymmetrical quality standards, duplicated efforts, and a disjointed user experience. Emily Choynowski, FORM’s Co-Founder and Director of Operations, contextualized these challenges within broader structural pressures. She noted that national systems across the MENA region vary significantly in terms of available resources and regulatory maturity. Furthermore, English continues to dominate the most visible dissemination channels, and international university rankings exert a powerful gravitational pull, even when their underlying assumptions may not align seamlessly with local needs and contexts.
Choynowski, in side-room discussions at Sharjah, articulated a pressing need for a strategic reorientation: “There is a clear need for more localised and bilingual journals collecting and distributing Arab language – and a need to re-prioritise the region’s academic heritage and counter the endemic tendency to discard Arab and Arabic-language outlets for research as lesser.” This statement encapsulates a critical aspect of agency: regaining control over the means of knowledge production and dissemination to better serve local contexts and linguistic diversity.
Compounding Pressures on Research Infrastructure
These structural pressures, far from diminishing during times of crisis, tend to compound and intensify. The 4th Annual Forum’s leadership panel on the UAE brought these tensions down to the institutional level, illustrating how universities are expected to navigate increasingly complex demands. They are tasked with simultaneously increasing open publications and data sharing while rigorously safeguarding research integrity, effectively managing intellectual property rights, and responding to emerging risks, such as the influx of low-quality, AI-generated manuscripts.
National libraries and archives, meanwhile, face the monumental task of consolidating disparate collections, including large-scale digitization efforts like the ambitious Arabian Gulf Digital Archive. Their mandate extends beyond merely preserving the scholarly record; they are under increasing pressure to make this vast body of knowledge discoverable and accessible across a patchwork of varied repositories and legacy systems. This presents a formidable challenge that is as much about governance and resourcing as it is about technical implementation. Such efforts become exponentially harder when institutions are simultaneously managing the profound disruptions brought about by regional instability.
Dr. Fareed Al Amiri of the Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park (SPARK) offered a strategic perspective, framing open research as a vital practical instrument in the UAE’s ongoing transition from an oil-dependent economy to a dynamic, knowledge-based one. From his viewpoint, the ultimate test of open outputs lies in their ability to foster strategic partnerships and fuel innovation ecosystems, rather than remaining confined predominantly within academic circles. He emphasized that robust “plumbing” for open knowledge—encompassing interoperable systems, clear licensing frameworks, and trusted dissemination channels—is absolutely essential for businesses and public agencies to confidently rely on university outputs.
Dr. Al Amiri elaborated on this vision: “The region has made strong progress on access, but the next step is to have governance-ready digital systems that support cross-institution collaboration – particularly on knowledge systems that connect universities, industry, and government seamlessly, adopting conducive policies and incentives for collaboration, and evaluation systems that measure applied impact.” He further stated, “At SPARK, we see that when open outputs are connected to industry testbeds, incentives, and innovation funding, they stop being static documents and become instruments for problem-solving and addressing industry/community needs. In that sense, the next phase is less about widening access and more about how knowledge can be better exploited, reused, and translated into solutions.” This perspective highlights a critical shift from mere accessibility to active utility and impact, especially pertinent in a region striving for sustainable development amidst instability.
Reclaiming Agency: The Role of Social Sciences and Local Context
A second significant fault line, uncovered by initiatives like the Arab Social Science Monitor (ASSM), pertains to the visibility and representation within current research systems. The ASSM systematically documents how the social sciences are funded, published, and utilized across the MENA region, thereby exposing structural gaps that often become obscured within broad, STEM-dominated datasets. Its partnership with the Economic Research Forum has already yielded tangible benefits, strengthening research data management practices in several Arab countries. This concern is far from a marginal disciplinary grievance; social scientists are central to addressing the complex questions that a resilience agenda now places at the forefront. These include the ethics of artificial intelligence in areas such as policing and welfare, the intricate politics of water allocation in a water-stressed region, and the profound social consequences of mass displacement and rapid urban change. Their insights are crucial for developing context-specific and culturally sensitive solutions.
This detailed diagnosis forms the inheritance of the 5th Forum, validating the continued relevance of "agency after access" as a guiding framework. Once the necessary political will and financial funding cross a certain threshold, the task of widening access often becomes relatively tractable: agreements are signed, repositories are built, and publishing budgets are allocated. However, agency—defined as the capacity of universities, libraries, and communities to actively shape the terms on which knowledge circulates and is utilized—is a far more complex and enduring challenge. This capacity is currently being tested profoundly by the ongoing instability and crises across the MENA region.
It is imperative for readers outside the region to understand that MENA universities are not simply "catching up" with a pre-defined global open science agenda. In many crucial respects, they are pioneering their own unique experiment in institution-led openness. Rectors, university libraries, and research offices in the MENA region often occupy a role that national funders play elsewhere, driving the open science agenda from within. Crucially, they are doing so under conditions—marked by conflict, displacement, and economic hardship—that most funder-driven systems in more stable parts of the world have not had to confront. This unique context demands innovative and adaptive approaches to open science.
Measuring True Resilience: Beyond Publication Counts
As delegates prepare for the online sessions this October, a valuable test emerges: the effectiveness of open science in MENA should not be measured solely by what is free to read. A more meaningful metric of resilience lies in who is using open research and for what purpose. This requires examining whether ministries are citing local open research in their policy responses to crises and reconstruction efforts; whether small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are drawing on university datasets to design innovative services under constrained budgets; and whether journalists and civil-society organizations can readily find and interpret local evidence without encountering paywalled platforms as insurmountable barriers.
These are significantly harder numbers to collect than conventional publication counts or repository deposit rates. They demand a deeper engagement with the impact and application of research. However, it is precisely these metrics that will ultimately demonstrate to delegates, both from within and outside the region, whether resilience remains merely a compelling theme or has truly become an embedded practice within the MENA research ecosystem. The 5th Annual Forum, therefore, serves as a critical juncture.
Registration for the 5th Annual Forum, which is free and fully online, is now open. It will feature live English-Arabic interpretation to ensure broad participation. The 4th Annual Forum in Sharjah showcased a region that had wholeheartedly embraced open research in principle and made tangible progress in practice. This year’s fully remote, resilience-themed meeting poses a direct and urgent question to delegates, both inside and outside the MENA region: Will this hard-won progress continue to hold firm in the face of the current geopolitical climate? And, perhaps even more critically, will MENA institutions manage to retain the agency to set the terms of their own openness, or will those terms be dictated to them by the overwhelming current conditions of the region? The answers will shape the future of scientific advancement and societal progress across the Middle East and North Africa for years to come.
