UNESCO Cairo Office was targeting the development of the UNESCO Regional Science Podium for the Arab Region: Towards open science in the Arab region and the world: An open podium for all those working in the sciences in the Arab region, seeking to advance the science agenda, enhance scientific cooperation, and promote and activate the concepts and practices of “open science” in the Arab region and the world, towards the effective deployment of science in addressing with the various goals of human development and their challenges.
UNESCO Arab Science Podium specifications:
- Modern Portal: design with the latest tools and IT technologies; we can provide you the solution with whether WordPress or SharePoint. While WordPress is an open-source solution with a free license that responds to the RFP requirements.
- Localization: bilingual Arabic and English.
- User Experience: Having the latest UX and web cross-platform capabilities (i.e. mobile friendly).
- Security: multiple user roles Public, Registered, Researcher, Editor, Administrator, etc.
- Development of fully functional modules capable of translating the vision and all requirements provided.
- Dynamic database for STI indicators benefitting from our experiences with ESCWA and UNESCO cases to provide a dynamic and flexible database to support all kinds of indicators and derived indicators even with multiple levels to respond to any current (18 indicators derived from 12) and future need.
- Middleware services that allow the import of data from external sources.
- STI Indicators reporting will be a powerful, easy, fast responsive, and multi-dimensional reporting tool that gives the user the flexibility to play and transpose data with all their dimensions (i.e. countries, years, indicators, specifications, etc.)
- Science &Technology specialization areas: All information contained in this Portal must be categorized by different areas of specialization (biology, chemistry, information technology, etc.)
- Virtual conferences: The net meeting is the main idea behind the portal, to replace the “International conference to combat Brain Drain in the region”. Instead, this portal will facilitate a sustainable chain of virtual conferences in all areas of science.
- Science & technology forums: Is a public forum categorized by specifications and sub-specifications, where registered users can post ideas and annotations about different scientific subjects and projects.
- Member Countries Profiles: Every member country of the Portal has a page that contains all information about it. This information may be statistical (area, population, etc.), politics (president name, etc.), important web links, etc.
- STI Strategy for the Arab Countries – PLAN of Action: The regional big project between 2 or more members of the region, in general one of the partner countries, may take the leading management (and may the financing) of the project.
- International Partnerships: Cooperation project between any of the regional countries and an international country (almost this international country is one of the west rich countries).
- South-South Cooperation Activities: Cooperation project between 2 members of the regional countries.
- Recruitment: The main target of this module is to return our scientific brains from outside to their countries. So, in this module, we publish any scientific job vacancy in the region, also grouped by specifications. Student Exchange programs and fellowships at professorship levels will also be targeted and promoted.
- Science Publications & Patents: Contains links to registered scientific patents and published publications, in addition to other publications that may be published by registered users (sure must be accepted by the administrator to be published to the public).
- News Room: This module will contain any scientific news and any scientific innovation in any of our specification fields.
- Arab science & technology national observatories: Could contain reports about every country; to describe science & technology situation, regarding the indicators and the effort taken by the country.
