In recent years, the Open Science movement has been gaining traction in many countries with international bodies such as the International Science Council (ISC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank publicly championing and advocating for Open Science. Open science encompasses unhindered access to scientific articles, access to data from public research, and collaborative research enabled by ICT tools and incentives.

Broadening access to scientific publications and data enables the benefits from research outputs to spread as widely as possible. The wealth of natural resources that are available in the tropics calls upon the need for tropical nations to have capable data management and storage systems that can enable scientists, policymakers, and citizens to use data to inform their research and policies.