Global science for global challenges: paths towards securing international scientific collaboration
Published on January 30th , 2023
Ruth Morgan
Professor of Crime and Forensic Science
and Vice Dean (Interdisciplinarity Entrepreneurship) of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences at University
College London
Rees Kassen
Full Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Ottawa and scientific director of the Coronavirus in the Urban Built Environment initiative. Rees also serves as Chair of the Science and Innovation Advisory Council at the Institute on Governance (Ottawa, Canada), co-chair of the EvolvES global research network at FutureEarth, and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Scientific Collaboration.
Introduction
Realizing effective scientific collaboration among nations is not an easy task. As our first piece showed (here), the landscape of international collaboration is complex and variable, leaving much we cannot explain and do not yet understand. Consequently, there is likely no ‘one size fits all’ pathway, as each country must navigate complexity shaped by a wide range of factors including issues of trust, income status, historical antecedents and the changing geo-political landscape.
This complexity notwithstanding, our stakeholder discussions identified a range of cross-cutting issues serving as barriers to and opportunities for durable and resilient international collaboration. Our discussions focused on country-level relations because it is the diplomatic and cultural ties among nations, alongside decisions about domestic expenditures and resourcing of the research and innovation system, that position a country as more or less ready to engage in collaboration.
The case for country-level support for international collaboration can sometimes be hard to make, especially when doing so is costly and risks exposing national security vulnerabilities. However, countries that do invest in international collaboration can avoid knowledge and skills deficits that slow the engine of innovation, paving the way for technological, economic and societal innovation. Strong collaborations among nations through their researchers also creates both formal and informal networks of scientists that can be important avenues for diplomacy and innovation.
The trends we identified in the first paper of this series are a snapshot of the landscape of scientific collaboration. Taken together, they shine light on specific areas requiring attention to maximize the benefits of collaboration. While the dynamic nature of research and the complexity of the geo-political landscape makes it challenging to point to any single factor or policy that a country, company, or funder could change to support effective scientific collaboration, some general pathways to supporting international collaboration are clear.
Commentary
Global science for global challenges: paths towards securing international scientific collaboration
https://doi.org/10.25453/plabs.22141787.v1
Introduction
Realizing effective scientific collaboration among nations is not an easy task. As our first piece showed (here), the landscape of international collaboration is complex and variable, leaving much we cannot explain and do not yet understand. Consequently, there is likely no ‘one size fits all’ pathway, as each country must navigate complexity shaped by a wide range of factors including issues of trust, income status, historical antecedents and the changing geo-political landscape.
This complexity notwithstanding, our stakeholder discussions identified a range of cross-cutting issues serving as barriers to and opportunities for durable and resilient international collaboration. Our discussions focused on country-level relations because it is the diplomatic and cultural ties among nations, alongside decisions about domestic expenditures and resourcing of the research and innovation system, that position a country as more or less ready to engage in collaboration.
The case for country-level support for international collaboration can sometimes be hard to make, especially when doing so is costly and risks exposing national security vulnerabilities. However, countries that do invest in international collaboration can avoid knowledge and skills deficits that slow the engine of innovation, paving the way for technological, economic and societal innovation. Strong collaborations among nations through their researchers also creates both formal and informal networks of scientists that can be important avenues for diplomacy and innovation.
The trends we identified in the first paper of this series are a snapshot of the landscape of scientific collaboration. Taken together, they shine light on specific areas requiring attention to maximize the benefits of collaboration. While the dynamic nature of research and the complexity of the geo-political landscape makes it challenging to point to any single factor or policy that a country, company, or funder could change to support effective scientific collaboration, some general pathways to supporting international collaboration are clear.
Barriers
Many researchers looking to collaborate internationally have encountered obstacles to doing so. The impact of these obstacles on collaboration is hard to measure, in part because they can be region, discipline, or career-stage specific. Nevertheless, our stakeholder discussions revealed three issues that, in an increasingly polarized world witnessing a retreat from multilateralism and threats to geo-political stability, are high obstacles to effective international scientific collaboration.
Funding retrenchment - It is generally acknowledged that addressing levels of health, well-being and prosperity requires collaboration between countries, and between business, industry and researchers. International scientific collaboration is no different. Efforts to address international collaboration in science will need to gain visibility and be championed, especially given the costs sustained in 2020 - 2022 during the pandemic and the food and energy security challenges being precipitated by conflict and economic downturns across the world. While there have been pledges to ensure funding for research and development in some nations, there have also been many casualties. When difficult decisions are being made about limited resources, there are a growing number of instances where investing in making funding available that encourages international scientific collaboration is not making the cut, signaling real challenges for achieving broad global goals such as Net Zero and the UNSDGs.
Balancing openness and security - Open access to data benefits both publicly- and privately-funded research. This was especially true during the pandemic, where online viral genome repositories support both vaccine development and viral surveillance. Open data resources similarly underpin discovery and long-term monitoring in other disciplines central to achieving the SDGs like climate forecasting and biodiversity. At the same time, and against the backdrop of a retreat from multilateralism that began before the pandemic, fears around foreign influence over scientific research and access to data are growing in many nations. Balancing the benefits of open access to data against potential national security risks, not to mention the cost of supporting robust data infrastructures and stable financial support into the future, are needed to ensure effective collaboration in a world where many of the threats we will face do not respect political borders. If we can reach a point where science is considered to be a ‘commons’, there is significant potential of increasing opportunities for international scientific collaboration and realizing its benefits.
Accessible infrastructure and resources - Building capacity for collaborative research and innovation remains a foundational challenge, especially when it comes to ensuring we have systems and infrastructures that nurture and enable accessible knowledge networks. It is important to consider how lessons learnt during the pandemic, such as increasingly flexible patterns of working and the development of blended approaches to collaboration activities through the use of online platforms, can create opportunities to increase the representation and diversity of collaborations. Funders have a role to play in ensuring structural inclusion is woven into grant calls, and research institutions in the public and private sector will be key to shaping ecosystems that enable collaborative working across regional borders.
Opportunities
Overcoming these barriers will require concerted effort on the part of all nations, not just those with established histories and traditions of collaboration. This means finding ways to reduce or eliminate these barriers to support effective and resilient collaboration among countries across the income spectrum, including North-South and South-South collaboration. Realizing the full benefits of international collaboration demands we take full advantage of opportunities to make international collaboration effective and resilient. Our stakeholder discussions identified three key opportunities:
International collaboration can support and strengthen domestic research ecosystems - No country possesses the full complement of talent and infrastructure needed to support a high functioning research and innovation ecosystem. International collaboration can be an effective mechanism to address these gaps because it allows a country to make use of sources of knowledge, innovation and human capacity that are not available domestically. At the same time there are risks: collaboration can make a country reliant on external subsidies for research, infrastructure and talent, and place the sovereignty of a country over its intellectual property and research outputs in a precarious position. Based on our analysis of international collaboration in relation to GERD,[2] those countries at greatest risk are the ones that invest least in domestic R&D.
The changing nature of knowledge dissemination – The pandemic accelerated changes in the way peer review and scientific publishing processes could happen. Preprint servers, social media, and text messaging apps all contributed to a dramatically shortened peer review process, motivated by the urgency of the pandemic. This shift in how scientists communicate with each other has not only changed the locus of debate from print to online, it is changing the peer review process itself and the role academic journals play in that process. Peer review by social media, while rapidly accelerating the process of vetting knowledge, relies on personal networks or those created by social media algorithms to feed knowledge exchange and risks reinforcing existing inequities and bias stemming from information filtered through algorithm-driven echo chambers. Journals, for their part, are beginning to shift from being gatekeepers of knowledge to the final repository for it. Effective collaboration demands evidence gets a fair hearing and this means ensuring the technologies we use to vet evidence are, and remain, as democratic as possible.
New tools for communication must be harnessed to promote dialogue - The relationship between science and its stakeholders is dynamic and operating in evolving systems. Considering what effective communication and engagement beyond the academy looks like is an ongoing dialogue that will be critical as we look forward. Ultimately, if we can create pathways that bring together diverse perspectives and understandings of the world, along with contrasting methods and tools for collaboration and dialogue, there is a real opportunity to bring collaborative and creative science into the real world to solve problems in ways that have currency in the range of economic, political and cultural contexts in which persistent challenges often manifest.
Recommended pathways to safeguard international scientific collaboration
We set out to paint a portrait of the landscape of international scientific collaboration from a combination of stakeholder dialogues and data. Complexity and data gaps notwithstanding, the results shine light on specific pathways in that landscape that can help maximize the benefits of collaboration.
● Better measures of scientific collaboration - We measure what we value and value what we measure. It is telling, then, just how poorly we measure international scientific collaboration. Metrics capturing the full scope of scientific collaboration through training, innovation and funding, in addition to co-authorships on academic publications, are needed, and this data needs to be regularly reported.
● Improve the capacity for collaborative and equitable innovation - Most international collaboration happens as a by-product of domestic investment, not because of it. This situation needs to change if we are serious about addressing global challenges. Governments, public and private funders, as well as research institutions must come together with deliberate, targeted support for collaborations beyond national borders. Investments could include long-term, collaborative research programs, as well as agile, rapid and responsive funding calls like those seen in the pandemic. Capacity could also include strong legal frameworks around intellectual property that support equitable benefit sharing and 'brain-circulation' programs that allow talent to gain international experience while also having opportunities to return home.
● Build trust by supporting networks - Strong collaborations rest on trust, and trust can only be built on relationships and dialogue. The Global Young Academy offers one example of how a network can nurture ongoing open ended dialogue that builds community, trust and opportunity. Fellowships enabling policy makers to work within science environments, and vice versa, and newly emerging media fellowships offer similar opportunities to build networks beyond the academy. Efforts to support indigenous knowledge in research are desperately needed, as are dialogues between scientists and global leaders, policy makers and those entrusted with governing national and international agendas. Central to this mission is rethinking how we recognise and reward excellence in our research institutions, and how we foster a diverse research ecosystem that accommodates different forms of excellence (such as research, teaching, engagement) to ensure a pipeline of scientists able and supported to work collaboratively.
● Work to provide secure and sustainable data sharing - Open data is a global public good that can spur innovation. New models for long-term support of open data repositories that do not rely on contributions from a few countries or funders are needed. In addition, a set of standards around data security, privacy rights and intellectual property protection are necessary to support the open sharing of data to the extent that it is feasible and acceptable to all parties involved.
Summary
To achieve productive, transformational and equitable collaborations that foster innovation, international scientific collaboration needs deliberate attention and investment by a range of actors including researchers, funders, and the public and private sectors. While some collaboration will happen as a natural by-product of domestic investment in science and innovation, these are not likely to be the transformative partnerships required to meet the global challenges we are facing. Instead, focused support for collaborations across the public and private sector, especially those made possible by technological innovations in data sharing, analysis and communications, is needed.
Scientific collaboration is an essential tool for addressing wide-reaching challenges, like those associated with climate change or emerging infectious disease, that do not respect political boundaries. There is a clear need to enable international scientific collaboration that can bring the best of human capacity together within infrastructures that reflect the global scale of the challenges we seek to address, and to produce the insights from science that are sufficiently holistic and diverse that can deliver the solutions that we need. The pathways offered here will require ongoing dialogue and a nuanced approach to be realized effectively. Next steps need to be framed in ways that are sensitive to both regional context and timeframes - what may work well in one place is unlikely to be fit for purpose unmodified in another, and what may achieve goals in the short term will not achieve long term goals.
The context of global collaboration in science is complex, challenging and evolving. We must work deliberately to support and sustain international scientific collaborations across geographies, generations and disciplines. Ensuring that global science is as resilient and agile as possible is necessary to deliver the insights and evidence needed to uncover the solutions to global challenges.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge productive and valuable conversations as part of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Scientific Collaboration with the council co-chairs and members, and council managers Greta Keenan, Alice Hazelton and Sam Leakey.
We thank all those who contributed their time, expertise and insights to the dialogues captured in this piece.
