Global Young Academy member Mohamed Elhadidy (Egypt) represented the GYA at the 2018 Global Research Council (GRC) MENA Regional Consultative Meeting from 3-4 December 2018, in Cairo, Egypt. The meeting brought together science funding organisations from the MENA region and beyond to address the theme “Expectations of Societal and Economic Impact”. This theme will also be the focus of the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council (GRC). Specifically, to discuss two ways of how research funding organisations have responded to the increased expectations of societal and economic impact. Some research funding organisations have introduced societal or economic impact as funding criteria for research projects, while other research funding organisations have focused on improving the assessment and demonstration of the impact of research of funded projects after their completion.
Mohamed presented collaborative work by the GYA Scientific Excellence working group. The group’s recent report “Publishing models, assessment, and open science” asserts that quality and the genuine goals of scholarly research must come first, and provides concrete recommendations for action.
The GRC comprises the heads of science and engineering funding agencies from around the world, dedicated to promoting the sharing of data and best practices for high-quality collaboration among funding agencies worldwide. Regional consultations are held every year in five regions around the globe (Africa, Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle East/North Africa), with the aim to gather regional thematic input to contribute to the GRC annual meetings. The 2018 MENA regional meeting was co-hosted by the GRC and the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), Egypt and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia.