The reality and potential of the modern storm of digital data together with pervasive communication have profound implications for society, the economy and for science. No state should fail to adapt its national intellectual infrastructure to exploit the bene ts and minimise the risks this technology creates. Open Science is a vital enabler: in maintaining the rigour and reliability of science; in creatively integrating diverse data resources to address complex modern challenges; in open innovation and in engaging with other societal actors as knowledge partners in tackling shared problems. It is fundamental to realisation of the SDGs.

The challenge for Africa. National science systems worldwide are struggling to adapt to this new paradigm. The alternatives are to do so or risk stagnating in a scientific backwater, isolated from creative streams of social, cultural and economic opportunity. Africa should adapt, but in its own way, and as a leader not a follower, with its own broader, more societally-engaged priorities. It should seize the challenge with boldness and resolution by creating an African Open Science Platform, with the potential to be a powerful lever of social, cultural and scientific vitality and of economic development.

Scientific prizes confer credibility to persons, ideas, and disciplines, provide financial incentives, and promote community-building celebrations. The article examines the growth dynamics and interlocking relationships found in the worldwide scientific prize network. 

In the 21st Century, research is increasingly data- and computation-driven. Researchers, funders, and the larger community today emphasize the traits of openness and reproducibility. In March 2017, 13 mostly early-career research leaders who are building their careers around these traits came together with ten university leaders (presidents, vice presidents, and vice provosts), representatives from four funding agencies, and eleven organizers and other stakeholders in an NIH- and NSF-funded one-day, invitation-only workshop titled “Imagining Tomorrow’s University.” Workshop attendees were charged with launching a new dialog around open research – the current status, opportunities for advancement, and challenges that limit sharing.

The workshop examined how the internet-enabled research world has changed, and how universities need to change to adapt commensurately, aiming to understand how universities can and should make themselves competitive and attract the best students, staff, and faculty in this new world. During the workshop, the participants re-imagined scholarship, education, and institutions for an open, networked era, to uncover new opportunities for universities to create value and serve society. They expressed the results of these deliberations as a set of 22 principles of tomorrow's university across six areas: credit and attribution, communities, outreach and engagement, education, preservation and reproducibility, and technologies.

Despite the growing interdisciplinarity of research, the Nobel prize consolidates the traditional disciplinary categorization of science. There is, in fact, an opportunity for the most revered scientific reward to mirror the current research landscape.

In academia, assessment of grant proposals is the forward‐looking review, the laying out and checking of your research plan, while peer reviews in journals are the final, consolidatory scrutiny before publication. An important difference between these academic checkpoints and my, admittedly somewhat forced fashionista analogy, is that in academia the two stages of review take place independently of each other.