The multilingual ISSA 2021 edition focused on the working conditions of scientists, their engagement with society and contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 on their work and career prospects. The survey closed in January 2022 and it gathered responses from over 3000 participants in 81 countries around the world. Results will be published in 2024.

ISSA 2021 implemented a new approach for engaging with the global scientific and research community. The OECD, as a new member of the ORCID consortium, used the ORCID authentication system to enable confidential survey participation. This helped reduce response burden and opened up participation to actors in the science system who are not necessarily registered as corresponding authors of indexed scientific publications.

Several experts, countries, scientific research organisations and stakeholders have supported and contributed to this work, including the Colombian Ministry of Science, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Evaluation and Planning, Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, HSE University (Russian Federation), Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, Spanish National Research Council, Directorate-General for Statistics of Education and Science (Portugal), Vitae (United Kingdom), American Association for the Advancement of Science (United States), National Science Foundation (United States), and Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (Egypt).

The OECD launched this survey in April 2020 to provide a timely picture of the state of science amidst the COVID-19 crisis and report on societal perceptions of its role and future outlook. This study, which gathered nearly 3000 responses from around 100 countries, complements the STIP-COVID survey on policy responses to the crisis. It was conducted in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank.

The OECD carried out a second round (ISSA2) of the International Survey of Scientific Authors in 2018, gathering statistical evidence on the digitalisation of science. The results, released in March 2020 and based on the responses from nearly 12 000 scholars across more than 60 countries, provide key insights into the ways in which digitalisation is changing scientific research, and how policy makers can maximise its benefits while addressing the challenges that arise from it.

Download the underlying data and review the report and methodology below.

The first ISSA pilot (ISSA1) carried out in 2015 was designed to collect evidence to address policy-relevant questions on the subject of open access to publications and research outcomes, and the potential implications of open science. ‌