UNESCO’s Initiative to Map Open Science and Interoperability Across East Asia

UNESCO has initiated a regional mapping project to chart open science infrastructures and interoperability practices across East Asia. The effort aims to provide a clearer picture of how data platforms, repositories, and collaborative tools are organized, where technical and policy gaps remain, and which approaches are proving effective. By surfacing best practices and friction points, the project intends to accelerate collaborative research, increase transparency, and broaden equitable access to scientific knowledge across the region.

Regional Snapshot: Progress Amid Persistent Fragmentation

East Asia presents a mixed picture: substantial investments in digital research infrastructure and open access coexist with uneven technical standards and divergent policy environments. Several countries have developed mature repositories and publication platforms, while others are building foundational services. Cross-border collaboration is growing, yet interoperability-both technical and governance-related-lags in many areas.

Noteworthy regional strengths

• Robust national and institutional repositories in multiple economies that improve long-term preservation and access.
• Increasing adoption of open-access publishing models that elevate visibility of regional scholarship.
• Pilot cross-institutional initiatives that demonstrate scalable approaches to shared services and data exchange.

Major weaknesses to address

• Lack of harmonized metadata schemas and differing licensing norms that complicate reuse.
• Fragmented identity and access management, which impedes secure federated workflows.
• Uneven policy alignment across countries, limiting efficient cross-border research collaboration.

Country-Level Examples and Focal Areas

Jurisdiction	Prominent Platforms	Interoperability Focus	Policy Stage
Japan	National scholarly platforms and university repositories	Persistent identifiers, structured metadata	Established
South Korea	Government-backed research portals and data services	Metadata harmonization, API-driven exchange	Progressing
China	Large-scale national databases and knowledge platforms	Scale and integration; licensing clarity	Evolving
Taiwan	Institutional repositories and subject collections	Open access mandates and capacity building	Developing

Technical Pillars of Interoperability

For open science to function effectively across borders, several technical building blocks are essential. Implementing these components reduces silos, enables discovery, and supports long-term reproducibility:

• Persistent identifiers and standardized vocabularies: Widespread use of PIDs for researchers (ORCID), organizations (ROR), datasets (DOIs) and consistent controlled vocabularies improve citation, attribution, and machine-readability.
• Open, well-documented APIs: Interfaces that allow repositories and tools to exchange data programmatically are critical for federated search, harvesting, and automated workflows.
• Common metadata frameworks: Agreed-upon core metadata elements and mappings between local schemas make datasets and publications discoverable across platforms.
• Federated authentication and authorization: Single-sign-on and trust frameworks let researchers access multiple resources securely without duplicative credentialing.

Regional implementations worth noting

Examples across East Asia show different mixes of these pillars in action: platforms adopting ORCID for researcher IDs, repositories exposing standardized metadata via OAI-PMH or JSON-LD, and pilot federated login services connecting libraries and data centers. These efforts illustrate how technical alignment can unlock shared services and richer cross-institutional workflows.

Governance, Policy, and Capacity: The Human Side of Interoperability

Technical standards are necessary but not sufficient. Governance arrangements, funding models, and skills development determine whether interoperability practices are adopted and sustained.

• Shared governance models: Cooperative decision-making among universities, funders, and governments builds trust and encourages reuse of common infrastructure.
• Aligned policies: Harmonizing open access mandates, data management requirements, and licensing guidance reduces legal and procedural friction for cross-border projects.
• Capacity building: Training for researchers, data stewards, and librarians on FAIR principles, metadata practices, and API usage increases uptake and quality of shared assets.

UNESCO’s Strategic Recommendations and Investment Priorities

UNESCO’s mapping highlights several priority actions to accelerate an interoperable open science ecosystem in East Asia:

• Define regional core metadata profiles and best-practice templates that institutions can adopt with minimal customization.
• Support interoperable services-such as PID registration, API gateways, and federated authentication-through pooled funding and shared technical operations.
• Create regional training programs and knowledge exchanges to raise capacity among researchers, repository managers, and policymakers.
• Prioritize equitable infrastructure investment so smaller institutions and underserved communities can participate fully in open science networks.

Implementation pathways

Short-term steps include launching pilot networks that interlink repositories across several countries, producing modular policy guidance for national adoption, and establishing regional help desks for technical support. Medium-term measures involve scaling successful pilots into sustainable services and integrating them into national research infrastructures.

Practical Examples: How Interoperability Enables Research

Consider a multinational climate study that combines satellite data, regional biodiversity surveys, and socio-economic indicators. When datasets use common metadata profiles, carry PIDs, and are available through open APIs, researchers can combine and analyze inputs far more quickly. Conversely, when contributing repositories use incompatible metadata and proprietary access mechanisms, projects waste time on cleaning and reformatting, delaying insights.

Another example: an early-career researcher applying for cross-border funding benefits from ORCID and linked institutional profiles that make tracking outputs and affiliations straightforward for evaluators-speeding up administrative review and credit attribution.

Measuring Success and Next Steps

Indicators of progress include broader adoption of persistent identifiers, measurable increases in machine-readable metadata exposure, growth in API-based integrations between repositories, and rising participation in regional governance forums. Equally important are qualitative measures-researcher satisfaction, reduced time-to-discovery for datasets, and demonstrable reuse of shared resources in collaborative projects.

Outlook

UNESCO’s mapping work offers a practical roadmap for strengthening open science in East Asia. By combining technical harmonization, coordinated policy development, and targeted capacity building, the region can move from a patchwork of systems to an interconnected ecosystem that accelerates discovery and widens access to knowledge. Governments, universities, research funders, and industry partners that invest in interoperable services and shared governance will help ensure the benefits of open science are inclusive and enduring across East Asia and beyond.