[1] The Science and Humanities Council's Scientific Commission has 32 members appointed by the Federal President.

[1] In the recent past, the German Council of Science and Humanities expressed its views in its statements, recommendations, and position papers on various topics, including university construction (2022),[2][3] the transformation of scientific publishing to Open Access (2022),[4][5] and science communication (2021).

[6][7] In 2020, it published the position paper "Impulses from the COVID-19 Crisis for the Further Development of the Science System in Germany,"[8] which described ten challenges for research to be crisis-proof.

[10][11] In the same year (2019), it issued a statement on the further development of university medicine in North Rhine-Westphalia.

[12] In 2016, the Council produced a position paper on knowledge and technology transfer.