2023 mid-term meeting of ISC members: Capitalizing on synergies in science

Paris, France, 10-12 May 2023

Three hundred delegates representing the global scientific community met in Paris from 10 to 12 May as part of the International Science Council’s “Capitalizing on Synergies in Science” jamboree to discuss critical issues facing humanity and the role of science in finding solutions to global challenges. 

The three-day meeting featured a rich programme of plenary and breakout sessions that focused on the ISC’s evolving mission and objectives, the evolution of science in a global context, exploring how institutions representing science should – and must– adapt and what capacities and competencies should be built that address these challenges. Though this was not a general assembly, the meeting included discussion of planned changes to the ISC constitution to increase its members and make the organization more responsive to the challenges facing the scientific community.

The ISC has set an ambitious programme to be “the global voice of science” to address a public crisis of confidence in scientific research. To pursue this goal, the ISC is seeking funding to increase its activities, reach and influence. The current ISC council is preparing amendments to the ISC constitution to make it more responsive  to current and future challenges and increase the number and diversity of its institutional members. 

Several of the scientific unions expressed concerns about proposed changes to the ISC constitution and hoped the ISC would take into consideration the scientific unions that have ECOSOC status at the UN by closely involving the members in their UN-related activities.  

The meeting was well attended with representatives from ISC member organizations, donors, and affiliated organizations from around the globe. It included interesting break-out sessions that focused on topics such as communicating research to policy, supporting early career scientists, and transdisciplinary research. The IUSSP Executive Director, Mary Ellen Zuppan, attended the first 2 days of the meeting on behalf of the IUSSP making contact with members of other scientific associations with mutual interests in population and health issues, including the International Statistical Institute and the International Union for the Psychological Sciences. IUSSP currently has a joint project with CODATA, the ISC’s Committee on Data, working on FAIR Vocabularies. ISC offers IUSSP and its members opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration. 

*IUSSP is a Category 1 member of the International Science Council, via its longstanding membership in the International Social Science Council, which merged with the International Council of Scientific Unions, in 2018, to create what is now the ISC.