World Science Report 1998

This year's edition of the World Science Report examines the role played by science in resolving the major issues facing human society, such as food security, water resources and disease.

This year's edition of the World Science Report examines the role played by science in resolving the major issues facing human society, such as food security, water resources and disease.

Social science from Western countries continues to have the greatest global influence, but the field is expanding rapidly in Asia and Latin America, particularly in China and Brazil. In sub-Saharan Africa, social scientists from South Africa, Nigeria andKenya produce 75% of academic publications. In South Asia, barring some centres of excellence in India, social sciences as a whole have low priority. These are a few of the findings from World Social Science Report, 2010: Knowledge divides. Produced by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and co-published with UNESCO, the Report is the first comprehensive overview of the field in over a decade. Hundreds of social scientists from around the world contributed their expertise to the publication. Gudmund Hernes, President of the ISSC, Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), Hebe Vessuri, Director, Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), and François Héran, Director of Research, National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), France, are among the experts who presented the Report during its official launch at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 25 June 2010.

This year's edition of the World Science Report examines the role played by science in resolving the major issues facing human society, such as food security, water resources and disease.

Produced by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and UNESCO, and published by the OECD, the 2013 World Social Science Report represents a comprehensive overview of the field gathering the thoughts and expertise of hundreds of social scientists from around the world. This edition focuses on the transformative role of the social sciences in confronting climate and broader processes of environmental change, and in addressing priority problems from energy and water, biodiversity and land use, to urbanisation, migration and education. The report includes 100 articles written by 150 authors from 41 countries all over the world. Authors represent some 24 disciplines, mainly in the social sciences. The contributions highlight the central importance of social science knowledge for environmental change research, as a means of understanding changing environments in terms of social processes and as framework for finding concrete solutions towards sustainability.