Chapter 3: Expanding human resources

(Executive Summary)

High-quality education and training are essential in all nations. Because so many of the urgent problems facing humanity today have potential solutions derived from science and technology, it is vital that science and technology become part of the mainstream of the education system. Courses providing the basis of S&T literacy and reasonable familiarity with scientific and technological culture should be required at all levels and for all students, including the many who do not intend to specialize in science or engineering. This can only occur if S&T literacy and culture are imparted in ways that capture the interest and imagination of young learners. But education will not achieve that quality unless the number of teachers knowledgeable in science and technology, and the quality of their education, are increased first.

Each nation should establish an S&T-education policy that not only addresses its own particular national needs but also instills an awareness of global responsibilities in such areas as environment, human health, and the sustainable use of the earth's resources. National education policies should particularly aim to modernize education at the elementary- and secondary-school levels (ages 5-18); and they should emphasize inquiry-directed learning of principles and skills while highlighting the values of science.
Each government should focus resources on providing high-quality training for science/technology teachers. This will involve special efforts at all tertiary-education institutions, including research universities.
Science and engineering academies and other S&T organizations should be involved in teacher training and the production of materials needed for students' S&T education. Scientists should be encouraged to visit schools at all levels to make well-designed presentations that promote science to the young. The InterAcademy Panel (IAP) and many national academies are already engaged in such activities, and results of their experiences should be widely disseminated. The private sector also should play an active role in promoting S&T education, as it will greatly benefit from a more sophis-ticated workforce. Foundations and nonprofit donors could find this a most deserving area of investment as well.
Each government should stimulate the organization of national science olympiads in different areas of knowledge, at several levels of primary and secondary education and the first year of higher education, providing resources to enable the best young talents to participate in regional and international competitions.
Each industrialized-country government should expand its support for S&T professionals and doctoral programs in the developing nations' best universities by offering long-term fellowships with adequate stipends to deserving young people from industrialized nations who wish to do their training in world-class research programs in developing nations. Visiting professors from foreign countries should help raise the quality level of courses and research, and participate in exams and thesis defenses. Meanwhile, all universities in developing nations should strengthen their under-graduate- and graduate-degree programs in science and technology and offer fellowships to the best students.

Developing nations should develop, attract, and maintain S&T talent. Many countries, especially the developing nations, suffer from two severe human-resource shortages: the lack of highly qualified scientists and engineers at universities and other research institutions; and a dearth of well-trained S&T teachers in the colleges and secondary and primary schools. A major reason for these persistent problems is the difficulty of keeping locally trained talents at home, as well as attracting home those individuals who have obtained their degrees at foreign institutions. This is the so-called 'brain drain' issue, and it is a serious impediment to building and sustaining indigenous human resources. The issue is dramatic enough to deserve much more attention from governments, academies, and international agencies; and it is important that reliable global statistics and trends related to the issue be compiled regularly by some of these institutions.

Governments of all countries, particularly the developing ones, should seriously consider providing, even on a temporary basis, special working conditions for their best S&T talents (whether formed at world-class research programs abroad or at home), including income supplements and adequate research support. These programs should primarily focus on young scientists and engineers, enhancing future leadership for a new era of science and technology in the country, which could ultimately improve working conditions for all of its scientists and engineers.
Governments of developing nations, in collaboration with their national S&T communities, should establish ties with their expatriate scientists and engineers, especially those who are working in industrialized nations.
Governments and private institutions in industrialized nations provide incentives for outstanding young researchers from developing nations to apply their skills in the service of their native lands. Recipient countries and international institutions should create or enhance programs that link these talents with efforts to develop S&T capacities back home.
Incentives should be established to help encourage companies, especially in the developing world, to create in-house research units and hire S&T talent. Local governments could give them tax rebates or national recognition for building their human-resources capac-ity in science and technology (through internship programs and contracted research). More broadly, a national strategic policy to promote research and development in a country's industries, including the provision of 'sectoral' funds, should be established.
The S&T community should develop outreach programs for young girls and women to increase their participation in science and technology.
Special outreach and support programs should be promoted by the S&T community for assuring ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity. Such programs should apply to all phases of the 'pipeline,' from early child-hood through graduate school and into professionals' working lives.
Appropriate international organizations should com-pile reliable global and national statistics documenting trends in the international migration of scientists and engineers.
National governments and international organizations should provide the financial support and design the institutional framework to establish university 'sandwich programs' that provide for study in, and return from, a more advanced S&T country.

S&T capacity building is a shared regional and global responsibility. Leading research centers in the more advanced of the developing nations should play a fundamental role in building S&T capacity, both regionally and worldwide. Given their firsthand experience in overcom-ing many of the developing nations' typical difficulties, they are natural centers for spreading knowledge and skills to their neighbors. They should therefore commit themselves to this new enterprise by providing scholar-ships and opening their laboratories to talented young researchers from other developing nations.

Regional cooperation in science and technology training that leads to doctoral degrees, together with postdoctoral programs, should be promoted in national or regional 'centers of excellence', especially those that are in S&T-proficient countries among the developing ones. In particular, such centers of excellence should provide scholarships and research facilities, including the use of their own laboratories, to help achieve international cooperation with and among developing nations. They should also take into account the often-critical need for travel money. Bilateral agreements between S&T-advanced and S&T-proficient countries should also allow for participation of scientists and engineers in neighboring S&T-developing and S&T-lagging countries.
S&T-advanced nations should create programs that establish short-term adjunct-faculty/research positions at some of their universities and laboratories for scientists and engineers from developing nations.
Networks that have already been established in diverse specialties should aid in the training of new scientists and engineers. These networks should be given enduring support by academic, governmental, intergovernmental, and private organizations.
Several programs and fellowships to support S&T capacity-building activities have previously been established by some countries and by organizations such as UNESCO, the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), and International Council for Science (ICSU). A database of all such activities should be created and posted on a Website, thus making the information available to all scientists and engineers, even those working in the remotest regions of the world.

Digital libraries of science and technology can bring knowledge to virtually everyone, everywhere. Scientists and technologists in developing nations have limited access to recent research findings (mostly in journals), to reference materials (mostly in libraries elsewhere), and to databases (some of which are proprietary); and these problems have been exacerbated in the last decade as information streams turned into torrents. The enormous advances in information and communications technology have opened up opportunities for remedying the situation as never before, though these same advances have also raised issues of intellectual property rights. The proper harnessing of digital technologies is essential to S&T capacity building in the developing nations, which should make major efforts to provide adequate infrastructure and trained technical personnel in information and com-munications technology for their learning and research institutions.

Information needed to promote and build S&T capacity - subscriptions to professional journals, for example, and textbooks - should be made available on the World Wide Web for free, or at modest cost, to scientists and engineers from developing nations. The InterAcademy Panel (IAP), International Council for Science (ICSU),
UNESCO, World Bank, regional development banks, and foundations should all promote this fundamental objective.
Efforts to provide digital copies of current and back issues of scientific and engineering journals should be intensified, and the full range of these materials gradually posted for free, or at modest price, and universal access, with a focus on reaching S&T professionals in developing nations.
The print journals presently publishing should be encouraged to post selected articles in electronic form concurrently with their paper publication; and to reduce the time between the appearance of the latest issue of the journal and its posting.
A major international effort should be supported to ensure that a digital-format basic-science library is made available to libraries in developing nations.
As much as possible of the scientific, engineering, and medical literature should be put in digital form on the World Wide Web for access from remote areas. In that spirit, new approaches should be explored for replacing copyrights with more suitable ways of protecting intellectual property rights and rewarding innovators, while supporting the public interest in having broad and rapid access to knowledge.
Major hubs in the developing world should be organized for sharing digital information with research institutions in the regions and in the industrialized world. This will facilitate access to some materials (in video format, for example) that require a wide band-width not necessarily available everywhere. It will also serve the eminently sensible goal of backing up origi-nal material.
Libraries should maintain electronic gateways for the sharing of digital information among researchers, teachers, and learners.
Interlibrary loans in electronic form should be encour-aged in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness. Various ways to ease fears of excess copying, from using established conventions to self-limiting or time-bound software, should be explored.