Why Has Science Been of Crucial Importance for Human Development in the Last Centuries?

In this chapter we deal with science. Why is science so influential and what is the reason for its rapid development in recent centuries? A crucial characteristic demonstrated by its history is that science has always aspired toward openness. Science has developed a system of scientific publishing that requires scientific research to be reproducible, which is only possible by transparently stating all the procedures and tools that led to the results. Universities have played a key role, greatly helped by their autonomy backed by legislation. Universities and other research institutions have taken publicly recognised scientific achievements into account when promoting new PhDs and habilitating professors. Bibliographic databases thus play an important role in the orderly and transparent evaluation of results, and research agencies, the funders of science, are an additional pebble in the mosaic, selecting research projects in a similar way to scientific journals when deciding on the publication of scientific articles, i.e. on the basis of transparency in three areas: clearly proposed results, the verifiability of its procedures, and the transparency of its funding. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Slovenian Research Agency that has put the principles of transparency at the heart of its work.