Global scientific collaboration and global problems

This article is based on Knowledge, networks and nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century, a report by the Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science) published in March 2011. The report documents changes in the global scientific scene and analyses their implications.¹

The global scientific landscape has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Since the beginning of the century, global spending on research and development has nearly doubled, and the number of scientific publications has grown by almost a third.

Rising stars

The biggest increase in scientific activity has occurred in the major emerging economies, China, India and Brazil. In the league table of numbers of scientific publications, China has risen from sixth in 1999–2003 to second in 2004–2008, and could overtake the US to become No. 1 before the end of the decade. Science is taking off in many other countries. In Turkey, funding increased sixfold between 1995 and 2007. The number of publications from Iran has grown faster than in any other country, from just 736 in 1996 to 13,238 in 2008. The Gulf States are making major investments in science. And African leaders increasingly acknowledge the importance of science, although funding is still extremely limited in most countries.

Drivers of international collaboration

In parallel with the growth and spread of science, there has been a huge increase in international scientific collaboration. In 1996, 25% of scientific papers had authors from more than one country, but this had risen to 35% (of a much bigger total) by 2007. This increase was enabled by improved communications (the Web, Skype, cheaper travel) and driven by three factors:

• The search for quality. When in need of complementary skills, researchers seek out the best collaborators, wherever they may be located, and the most appropriate facilities. Figure 2 shows that international collaboration indeed leads to increased quality as measured by the number of times papers are cited.

• The search for economies of scale and increased efficiency and effectiveness in projects that require very large facilities (such as the Large Hadron Collider) or very large numbers of scientists (such as the human genome project).

• The need to combine data from different regions when studying global problems, such as the impact of climate change and the spread of pandemics.

Who is collaborating with whom?

All countries are involved in international scientific collaboration. The US is the major hub, accounting for 17% of all internationally collaborative papers in 2008, followed by the UK, Germany and France.

Figure 1 shows that international collaboration is nevertheless relatively unimportant for the US itself (accounting for only 29% of papers), whereas the figure is 45% or more for the UK, Germany and France.

Not surprisingly, international collaboration figures are bigger for smaller and for less scientifically active countries, at more than 50% for Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, and approaching 100% in parts of Southeast Asia and Africa. While collaboration is becoming increasingly important for scientifically established countries, its importance is declining in relative terms for many of the countries in which scientific growth is most rapid, such as China, Turkey and Iran. This is not surprising and is presumably a temporary trend: The many new researchers in these countries need time to become established before they are in a position to seek out (or be sought out as) collaborators.

The data show that although intra-regional collaboration between African countries, among the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and inside Southeast Asia has grown, extra-regional collaboration has grown faster. Intra-European collaboration, however, has grown faster than collaboration in general, as a result of deliberate policies designed to foster a European Research Area.

Collaborating to address global problems

How can the growing and increasingly integrated global scientific community best be harnessed to address global problems? There have been some scientific successes. In the 1970s, the realization that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were generating a hole in the ozone layer led relatively quickly to their being banned worldwide in 1987. In this case the science was clear, the threat of cancer easy to grasp, and the solution was simple and relatively inexpensive to implement. Some of these features are shared by the elimination of smallpox, announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1979. In this case nearly 200 years had elapsed since the scientific breakthrough; while the solution was simple, global vaccination was a huge task.

The global issues we now face (such as energy, food and water security; climate change; biodiversity; potential pandemics) are much more complex than the ozone hole and smallpox. In many cases the science is multidisciplinary, and the solutions are not clear-cut, are likely to be very expensive, may require changes in behavior, and could produce winners and losers. Once potential threats have been identified, persuading policymakers and potential funders to act is up to the scientific community (although as in the case of the 2001 tsunamis their voices may not be heard), with a special responsibility falling on national academies and government science advisors. Governments must take the lead in most cases, although major industrial involvement, which will require suitable incentives, may be vital, and philanthropy can play an important role.

There is no single prescription for how to harness global science to address the diverse problems that we face, but case studies² presented in the Royal Society’s recent report offer various lessons:

• Improved international coordination must not stifle local initiatives and buy-in.

• Philanthropic organizations, which can respond faster and more flexibly than governments, can play important roles, but they are unaccountable, and philanthropic funding may distort agendas.

• There are tensions between collaboration and competition (especially when industry is involved and intellectual property is at stake).

• It usually takes much longer than expected to create new joint institutions and build mutual confidence between different players.

• International consortia must reconcile technical interests with political interests, and transparent governance with the need for widely shared ownership, and they must strike a balance between inclusivity and scientific quality.

Global actions will be difficult, if not impossible, unless as many countries as possible are involved in identifying options and choosing solutions. This is yet another reason for building technical and scientific capacity (in social as well as natural sciences) in developing countries. Public engagement will also be essential before voters accept costly solutions that may affect their lifestyles.

The growth of science across the world and the increasing interdependence of different scientific communities are laying the basis for building consensus on actions that must be taken in order to deal with the global challenges that we face.

(1)The full report, which was produced under the direction of an advisory group that I chaired, can be downloaded from: http://royalsociety.org/policy/reports/knowledge-networks-nations/. The data on publications in the report, which were provided by Elsevier, refer to peer reviewed publications with an abstract in English (18% of the articles themselves are in languages other than English). Technical reports and conference proceedings are excluded, and generally the report and this article focus on academic, rather than industrial, collaboration. (2)The International Panel on Climate Change, the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research, the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in tackling health issues, the global fusion project ITER, and proposals to share the results of pilot carbon capture and storage projects.

Contributor: 

Chris Llewellyn Smith

Title: 

Director of Energy Research

Affiliation: 

University of Oxford

Chris Llewellyn Smith is currently Director of Energy Research, University of Oxford, and President of the Council of SESAME  (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East). Llewellyn Smith obtained his D.Phil. in theoretical  physics in Oxford, where he returned after working for periods in Moscow, at CERN and at Stanford. He was Director General of CERN from 1994 through 1998, when the Large Hadron Collider was approved and served as Provost and President of University College  London (1999–2002). He was also Director of the UK’s fusion program (2003–08) and chaired the Council of the world fusion project ITER (2007–09). His scientific contributions and leadership have been recognized by awards and honors in seven countries on three continents.