BEIJING, Nov. 21 -- China, Brazil, South Africa and the African Union have jointly launched an Initiative on International Cooperation in Open Science, with the goal of building an open, fair, impartial and non-discriminatory global environment for science and technology development, according to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

The full text of the initiative was officially released on Thursday.

The initiative also aims to promote global scientific and technological innovation to benefit the Global South.

It notes that the open and sustainable sci-tech innovation is conducive to enhancing the strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth of the global economy.

The initiative proposes that governments, scientific communities, enterprises, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders should support the free flow of sci-tech innovation personnel and resources on a global scale, and ensure that different stakeholders can equitably participate in and are treated fairly in the open science cause.

Scientific knowledge should be publicly available, according to the initiative, which also states that scientific practices should be diverse, inclusive and sustainable.

The initiative says that governments of all countries should increase investment in open science and encourage the cooperation, joint construction and sharing of major scientific research infrastructure.