International research collaboration in the “New Normal”
If there is anything we have learnt about scientific collaboration in the past 20+ months of frantic coronavirus research, it is that combining forces across both national borders and traditional disciplinary boundaries holds the promise of making real progress in our understanding and mitigating of the most pressing scientific and societal problems the world is facing.
A clear case for interdisciplinarity
Epidemiologists and virologists worked together to disentangle the virus’s basic biology and understand the scope of the problem. Rapid sharing of epidemiological data enabled us to determine that the disease’s transmissibility was somewhere between that typical of influenza (the ‘flu’) and measles, whereas it also allowed genomics scientists to sequence the COVID-19 genome at unprecedented speed. Biomedical scientists and molecular biologists then took the lead and developed a number of viable vaccines at an astounding pace; diagnosis and therapeutics, in turn, required intense collaboration involving clinical medicine and pharmacy professionals. In the words of Professor Gabriel Leung, Dean of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, “Everybody who has some expertise [related to infectious diseases], dropped everything.”
During the two decades prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, international collaboration had already been characterised by a sustained upward trend. Indeed, Magdalena Skipper, Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious journal Nature, recently summarised the situation facing the world succinctly: “Science lies at the heart of solutions to important problems.”
Tackling the world's most pressing challenges
Among the most important problems we are facing today, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic is just one of many. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2021 identifies among the most pressing global challenges the climate emergency and its associated extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity, food insecurity, future global health, education, social justice and poverty alleviation. Most of the report’s top global risks today are linked to natural disasters, failure to take climate action, environmental damage caused by human exploitation and the loss of biodiversity; in this context, the odd ones out are, unsurprisingly, concerns about infectious diseases and the potential impact of weapons of mass destruction.
Mitigation of all of these pressing global challenges will require cross-discipline and cross-sector approaches, on a global scale, if we are to prosper in a post-pandemic future. This is increasingly recognised by our politicians. As Amanda Solloway, the UK’s science minister, recently pointed out, “This pandemic has demonstrated the urgent need … to work together to tackle our common challenges. From genomic sequencing to vaccines, our scientists and researchers have achieved far more working across borders than they would have been able to alone.”
Practical and political impediments: Challenges and opportunities
Yet, scientists across the globe, particularly in the Global South, face significant practical challenges to working across borders. Border closures and travel limitations prevent early-career researchers (ECRs) from building up their networks. Interruption of fieldwork may lead to gaps in long-term data sets or even to the loss of entire experiments or research programmes. The current lack of opportunities may prevent ECRs to gain the skills and experience they need to become our future experts. And in addition, the international research ecosystem has seen a gradual erosion of political support through policies embracing isolationism rather than inclusivity, anti-foreign interference legislation in countries like the USA, the UK and Australia, among others, Brexit, Swiss exclusion from Horizon 2020, the European Union’s flagship science programme, and many other pressures.
Nevertheless, the current resource and travel-constrained environment has also opened up unexpected opportunities for scientists to thrive through international collaboration. This new online world offers a unique chance to reduce the North–South imbalance through lateral, virtual collaboration at any stage of a research project, thus creating opportunities for scientists in the Global South, including South–South collaborations. The online “New Normal” allows for increased transparency, visibility and representation of scientists at any stage, irrespective of their geographic location. Indeed, remote participation and educational opportunities that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive are now becoming a practical reality for many. In fact, some nations have experienced positive brain gains because of diaspora scientists returning "home".
Global data access and its challenges
However, for international collaboration to thrive, global data access is imperative, but that is precisely an area where the challenges are increasing. I already referred to isolationism, the retreat from multilateralism, that science has been experiencing. In addition, free exchanges of information are increasingly curtailed or threatened in some national settings, with mounting geopolitical tensions definitely not helping.
There are certainly grounds for concern, for instance in the context of the ethics of responsible data sharing, data privacy and security, and national security concerns. Data access policies must have built-in safeguards to prevent data exploitation by either governments or private enterprises. Building international collaboration and global education must be based on transparent and trustful relationships. Development of the latter takes time and a willingness to engage.
The potential advantages of open data access to the global scholarly community are enormous. Such an environment would have immediate and significant benefits to publicly and privately funded research. Open lines of research and relationships facilitate world-class research outcomes, including through citizen science or citizen-based digital research. However, digitising societies, in turn leading to wealth generation, must be based on sound public–private trust relationships. Again, developing the latter takes time and effort.
These threats are increasingly recognised by global leaders, fortunately. Recently, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, President of the European Research Council, unequivocally stated, “Science needs an open world to thrive.” Similarly, Lene Oddershede, Senior Vice President of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, voiced support from the business sector: “We need a global code of conduct for data sharing.”
The "New Normal" in international collaboration
This context then leads to the obvious question as to what is next, once the COVID-19 pandemic has been suppressed satisfactorily. In some of the wealthier nations, governments have committed to releasing spending packages to support their economies. In some cases, these spending packages included new funding for science, but they were largely targeted investments. Yet, tackling global challenges like the COVID-19 threat require both curiosity- and mission-driven scientific breakthroughs. Governmental emphasis on the latter and a lack of interest in the former risks increasingly imbalanced funding portfolios. In addition, collaborative innovation needs infrastructure and capacity building across disciplinary, academic and national boundaries to reduce barriers to international scientific collaboration.
Indeed, effective scientific collaboration transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. The education system needs to actively encourage collaboration between disciplines, as well as between science and industry, business, media, citizens and governance bodies. Academia, private sector, policy-makers and civil society must collaborate in an equitable and inclusive way to co-design future solutions and interventions. This thus offers a unique opportunity for the business and financial sectors to support and consider collaboration as a guiding principle when considering investments.
Industry leaders are rapidly embracing these ideas. Seema Kumar, Vice President of the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, is clearly enamoured: “Science needs to capitalise on a moment of great opportunity and momentum.” I fully agree. International collaboration in science, technology and innovation offers significant and increasing potential to yield important advantages in terms of scientific, economic, health, national security, educational, societal and diplomacy benefits and developments. Let us hope that the renewed interest from many of our politicians in the scientific enterprise will have lasting positive effects on the international research ecosystem!
This article is a summary of an invited contribution to the See the Future 2021 conference. Richard de Grijs is an acclaimed academic and journal editor with more than 25 years of experience in the physical sciences. In March 2018, he joined Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) as Associate Dean (Global Engagement). Richard is one of the current AuthorAID Stewards and Managing Editor (2021 Q4) of the News section of the AuthorAID website.