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International Research Network - SMO and Home Care Services provider

International Research Network is an SMO and a Home Care Services provider. By utilizing our extensive expertise and our large alliance clinical trial research site network in Europe and North America, we are providing our clients with solutions for expedited patient recruitment and highest quality study delivery.

Our offering – Site management services to pharmaceutical companies and CROs to reduce Study timelines and costs and as an outcome lead to more efficient and accurate trial results.

Our SMO teams keep patients engaged with high retention rates and provide our clients with tailored services to reach the right population.

IRN is the fastest growing Site Alliance Network in Eastern and Central Europe, build on 25 years experience in clinical research.

Achievements

- Top recruiter status for > 60 clinical multicenter trials - Ensuring activation of all sites on average within 30 days of approval - Consistent achievement of DBL within less than 4 weeks from LPLV - 95% of the recruitment targets reached on time

Audits / Inspections

- more than 50 audits/inspections - 3 FDA inspected sites, NAI letters

Therapeutic areas

We are proud to be able to bring a depth of knowledge to our clients’ studies based on experience across a wide range of therapeutic areas. Our clinical trial experience enables us to work with our clients at any stage of drug development from Phase I through Phase IV for traditional as well as highly innovative clinical programs. The listed number of trials is a provisional representation of our experience. For case studies and more detailed information about our track record of experience in clinical research, please contact our business development department: [email protected]

Benefits of SMO

- Shorter study timelines, lower costs and elevated quality metrics. - Faster patient recruitment - Improved data and query management - Better focus for research teams and decreased burden for the PI - Audit Readiness from Start to the End of the Clinical Trial

Site Network

IRN was established to address the high need for patient sourcing techniques and having behind Comac Medical’s 25 years of experience, rapidly became the fastest growing Patient-Centered Site Alliance Network in Eastern and Central Europe.

Since its establishment the company already operates in more than 700 partnering institutions, with more that 2000 partnering investigators, in 18 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and North America, with access to more than 8 million patients on file.

The headquarter is located in Sofia, Bulgaria. IRN has also offices and it’s own trained and experienced local staff in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech R., Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, N. Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and North America.

Services Provided By IRN

Feasibility & Site selection

Conducting clinical trials is inherently complex, and engaging ...

Study management

Our Clinical Site Managers will support your trial ...

Site Augmentation

Our unique study delivery model to support Sponsors ...

Home Care Services

With clinical trial nurses and physicians covering CEE, ...

Regulatory consulting

Full strategic and operational support from our Regulatory ...

Patient recruitment & retention activities

With our patient-centric approach of work we help ...

partnering institutions

partnering investigators

million patients on file

countries in Europe and North America

completed clinical trials

What Is New At IRN

IRN has signed a Master Service Agreement with one of the biggest private networks of hospitals in Poland.

One of the IRN alliance sites became Hospital of the Year for 2017 in Bulgaria

International Research Network (IRN)

An international cooperation tool shared by the CNRS, dedicated to strengthening research partnerships.

need to find a French cnrs collaborator? email us at Fainstitute.arizona.edu 

1. What is an International Research Network?  

The purpose of an International Research Network is to structure an international scientific community around a common theme or research infrastructure. It promotes the organization of international workshops and seminars, as well as thematic schools organized by network partners in France and abroad. It brings together, for a duration of five years, researchers from one or more French laboratories, including at least one from the CNRS, and several international partner laboratories.

2. Who are International Research Networkintended for?  

International Research Networks are intended for personnel conducting research in a CNRS unit and their scientific partners in France and abroad.

3. How to propose an International Research Network?  

Applications should be submitted to the CNRS scientific Institute in charge of the applicant’s unit. It is recommended that candidates contact the international relations correspondents within their institute as early as possible to find out the specific procedures for submitting a project. For interdisciplinary projects, the various Institutes concerned can be informed.

4. How are International Research Network evaluated?  

Proposals for International Research Networks are evaluated by peer reviews within the CNRS scientific Institutes based on the following criteria: scientific value of the project, interest of the international collaboration, scientific quality and complementarity of teams, past relations, balance of participation in scientific activity, participation of young researchers, ethics, and financial justification. Special attention will be given to the identification of targeted objectives relating to the expected impact beyond the scientific activity itself (for example, preparation of a joint response to calls for proposals, promotion of joint programming, insertion into multilateral networks, and organization of the activity around a research infrastructure).

5. What are the outlines of the institutional formalization of International Research Network?  

Once selected, International Research Networks are the subject of institutional letters of commitment from the French and foreign institutions willing to support them, in particular by granting additional funds in accordance with the internal evaluation and selection procedures specific to each institution.

6. How are International Research Network financed?  

In addition to the resources directly provided by the participating teams, International Research Networks receive funds earmarked explicitly by the CNRS for international mobility between the laboratories involved and for setting up international workshops and seminars, working meetings, and thematic schools organized by the partners, for a total amount comprised between €50,000-€75,000 over the duration of the project. Managed by the CNRS laboratory overseeing the International Research Network (lead laboratory), the CNRS funds are allocated by annual installments depending on the initial project, scientific assessments, and annual financial reports issued by the lead laboratory and members of the International Research Network.

More information and points of contact are available on the CNRS's international webpage http://international.cnrs.fr  

European Research and International Cooperation Department CNRS-Campus Gérard Mégie 3, rue Michel-Ange 75794 Paris Cedex 16

See the original call for proposal on the CNRS website

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Article Contents

1. introduction: rising research collaboration in global science, 2. characterizing international research collaborations: benefits, motivations, and challenges, 3. autoethnographic case study: objects, methods, and data sources, 4. case study of an irc project in the sociology of science, 5. reflections on the benefits, motivations, and challenges of irc, 6. discussion and conclusion, acknowledgements.

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Benefits, Motivations, and Challenges of International Collaborative Research: A Sociology of Science Case Study

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Jennifer Dusdal, Justin J W Powell, Benefits, Motivations, and Challenges of International Collaborative Research: A Sociology of Science Case Study, Science and Public Policy , Volume 48, Issue 2, April 2021, Pages 235–245, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scab010

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Contemporary science is marked by expanding and diverse forms of teamwork. Collaboration across organizational and cultural boundaries extends the possibilities of discovery. International collaborative research projects often provide findings beyond what one team could achieve alone. Motivated to maintain existing relationships and grow their scientific network, researchers increasingly collaborate, despite often unrecognized or underappreciated costs, since such projects are challenging to manage and carry out. Rarely studied in-depth and longitudinally, the perspectives of scientific team members are crucial to better understand the dynamics of durable collaboration networks. Thus, this retrospective case study of a sociology of science project applies the novel method of autoethnography to examine teamwork benefits, motivations, and challenges. Key challenges found include spatial distance and differences of culture, language, and career stage. This study, spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, focused on collaborators’ characteristics and evolving perceptions of team dynamics over a decade.

Contemporary science is marked by expanding and diverse forms of teamwork. Collaborations across organizational, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries extend the possibilities of discovery, despite often unrecognized or underappreciated costs (see Hicks and Katz 1996 ; Leahey 2016 ). Currently, competition on multiple levels transforms universities ( Musselin 2018 ) as individual and collective actors are simultaneously embedded in diverse nested and interdependent competitions ( Krücken 2019 ). This is mediated through formal evaluations, performance measures, and continuously generated comparative indicators that increasingly target collaboration ( Powell 2020 ). To succeed in this learning race to achieve new knowledge, participation in networks and interorganizational linkages, with continuous communication and collaborations of different sorts, will be crucial to success ( Powell 1998 ). Yet both collaborative and internationally comparative research projects are more complex; with the principles of ideal research designs more difficult to achieve—and such teamwork demanding ( Kosmützky 2018 ; Wöhlert 2020 ). Data from different national contexts must be gathered and compared, taking into account that team members in research projects may have contrasting cultural and disciplinary backgrounds; furthermore, they work within specific organizational conditions for conducting research ( Dusdal et al. 2019 ). While most research projects are not explicitly comparative, considering collaborative research’s exponential growth since the mid-1990s ( Powell et al. 2017a ), more attention is now devoted to (international) research collaborations (e.g. Hicks and Katz 1996 ; Shrum et al. 2007 ; Anderson and Steneck 2011 ; Jeong et al. 2014 ; Jeong and Choi 2015 ; Ulnicane 2015 ; Edelenbos et al. 2017;  , Wagner 2018 ). The meanings of international collaboration ( Bozeman et al. 2013 : 2ff) extend beyond the foundational definition: ‘working together of individuals to achieve a common goal of producing new scientific knowledge’ ( Katz and Martin 1997 : 7). As just one of myriad collaboration outcomes, coauthored publications, visible and measurable, have become the standard, though conservative, indicator of increasing research collaboration.

Several waves of studies on international research collaborations (IRC) have focused on drivers, patterns, effects, networks, and measurement. In case studies of ‘big science’ collaborations, Shrum et al. (2007) emphasize technology, data, organization, and trust. Kwiek (2020) shows that IRCs are a powerful stratifying force that distinguishes locally-oriented from internationally-oriented researchers in terms of their coauthorships and scientific productivity. Chen et al. (2019) identify key topics for future IRC research: to compare IRC properties and variance; to investigate networks; and to develop measures to assess costs and benefits. Despite the continued exponential rise of collaboration across the sciences, IRCs that extend beyond the usual timeframe of a project have rarely been studied in-depth to understand evolving researcher interactions and relationships ( Ulnicane 2015 ). Indeed, long-term relationships between collaborators and internal, team-level factors remain the ‘black-box of collaboration study’ ( Jeong and Choi 2015 : 460). Examining such factors, Bozeman et al. (2016 : 226) interviewed dozens of researchers to develop a ‘subjectivist conception of collaboration effectiveness’ to uncover collaboration dynamics relating to field/discipline, collaborator characteristics, and team management. Similarly, we also follow Kollasch’s (2012 : 173) call to examine hierarchical and horizontal relations to understand the ties that bind together international teams. Empirical studies on communication within intercultural research teams and impact on research processes themselves are also rare ( Kaden 2009 ; Wöhlert 2020 ). Notable exceptions include the laboratory studies by Latour and Woolgar (1979) and Knorr-Cetina (1981) , yet these classics illuminated laboratories in STEM fields, closed environments in which collaboration challenges across great distances or in different organizational contexts were not central.

Because researchers face multiple challenges when they work together, explicit reflection of such processes is necessary—especially as the majority of research in many disciplines is now collaboratively conducted and publications coauthored. The emerging field of ‘science of team science’ focuses on micro-level studies of research teams and their interactions (see, e.g. Tartas and Muller Mirza 2007 ; Fiore 2008 ; Slipersæter and Aksnes 2008 ; Thomas et al. 2009 ; Brewster et al. 2011 ; Falk-Krzesinski et al. 2011 ; Esser and Hanitzsch 2012 ; Brew et al. 2013 ; Hoffman et al. 2014 ; Sugden and Punch 2014 ). Studies mainly focus on natural sciences, life sciences, and engineering (see Wagner 2005 ; Gardner et al. 2012 ; Gray et al. 2012 ; Wang et al. 2014 ; Zhai et al. 2014 ; Zdravkovic et al. 2016 ), far less on social sciences and humanities. Specificities of IRC in these other fields remain underexplored ( Reichmann 2013 ; for reviews, see Kosmützky 2018 ; Wöhlert 2020 ). Such research must also reflect specific methodological complications and the social complexity of diverse research teams conducting international and intercultural work, studied thoroughly neither in higher education research nor in sociology of science ( Kosmützky 2017 : 77ff.). This reflects the limited internationalization of social sciences ( Kurzman 2017 ; Stevens et al. 2018 ). Case studies of team processes are relatively rare (but see Kumar 1985 ; Moody 2004 ; Hanges et al. 2005 ; Albert et al. 2015 ; Levitt 2015 ; Okamoto 2015 ). Longitudinal studies are even more unusual (but see Ulnicane 2015 on cases in nanoscience and technology).

To understand varying benefits, motivations, and challenges of IRC, it is essential to analyze evolving relationships of involved scientists and organizations ( Wöhlert 2020 ). Thus, we carried out a case study of teamwork within a highly international, multicultural research team in the sociology of science. This autoethnographic case study emphasizes cultural differences, including intercultural communication. Documentary analysis, several rounds of interviews, and a retrospective survey provide reflections and insights on the aspects of teamwork and divisions of labor among team members at different career stages working in universities in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. The study longitudinally explored benefits, motivations, and challenges that researchers from diverse cultures and at different career stages experienced within an international collaborative research team.

Next, we outline known benefits, motivations, and challenges of IRC. Then, we present our retrospective autoethnographic analysis of team dynamics in this case study and its implications. Finally, we discuss how science policymakers could better support IRCs as the increasingly crucial mode of producing new scientific knowledge.

International research collaborations have increased in volume and importance, responding to higher education expansion and the advancement of knowledge as well as the increasing professionalization and specialization of science. Further factors include rising investments, easier access to (financial) resources, an association with the scientific elite, mutual intellectual or social influences, increased scientific productivity, easier and less expensive communication, and exchange programs ( Luukkonen et al. 1992 ; Dusdal et al. 2019 ). Although it is far from simple and takes innumerable forms, collaboration has become taken-for-granted. Collaborative networks and relationships between organizations and researchers are difficult to study, especially given their complexity and the primacy accorded individual scientists. Conventionally, collaboration has been measured through coauthored publications because such outputs are readily accessible, whereas the dynamics and subjective experiences of collaboration remain largely hidden (but see Shrum et al. 2007 ).

Scientific collaborations—with the goal to achieve new scientific knowledge that cannot be generated by one researcher alone ( Katz and Martin 1997 ; Bozeman et al. 2013 )—often begin informally, establishing trust between researchers meeting in face-to-face situations ( Jeong et al. 2014 ). Long-standing collaborations reflect helpful ‘collaboration management strategies’ and good ‘work-style fit’ ( Bozeman et al. 2016 : 232) along with shared understandings of disciplinary norms. Depending on the field and team constellations, collaborations may be driven by ideas, questions, and theories; equipment and resources; or data ( Wagner 2005 ).

As scientists increasingly work in teams, they need to meet, understand, cooperate, and collaborate—doing so for myriad reasons ( Beaver 2001 ). In some fields, research has become so complex that individual scientists cannot achieve meaningful results without collaborating—the so-called collaboration imperative ( Bozeman and Boardman 2014 : 1). Shared infrastructure also facilitates collaboration. Today’s modal paper in the natural and social sciences represents the work of multiple researchers, often working in different organizational and cultural contexts. This collective shift toward teamwork ( Adams 2013 ; Fortunato et al. 2018 ), and the implied division of labor and specialization, extends from fundamental research to the applied world of patents ( Wuchty et al. 2007 ; Mosbah-Natanson and Gingras 2013 ).#

Collaboration occurs on multiple levels that need to be distinguished ( Kosmützky 2017 : 54ff.). As intrinsically social processes that are difficult to define and operationalize, collaboration takes on many forms; few are explicit: providing infrastructure and services, managing the division of labor or transmitting know-how ( Jeong et al. 2014 : 521f.). In combination with scientific motives, social purposes, even friendship, are often mentioned. Agreeing on research aims, distributing tasks fairly, and maintaining communication are key components of successful long-term collaborations ( Melin 2000 ; Ulnicane 2015 ). Further, to maintain and renew long-term (international) collaborations, it is important to include younger researchers and others with new ideas and relevant skills.

2.1 Determinants of successful international research collaboration

Individuals’ knowledge, experience, and reputation are crucial in producing and publishing scientific knowledge, with the career stage crucial for successfully carrying out diverse roles within IRCs ( Bozeman et al. 2016 : 233). Senior scientists tend to have larger networks and access to resources. They have established their reputations and mentored younger scholars ( Jeong and Choi 2015 ). Long-term collaborations may remain creative and productive long-term due to understanding different work commitments, crediting contributions correctly, and negotiating conflicts ( Bozeman et al. 2016 : 237). Existing relationships, repeated interactions, and intellectual synergies provide the basis for durable collaboration networks ( Ulnicane 2015 : 433f). Our case study demonstrates this.

2.2 Benefits of international research collaboration

As most collaborations begin informally and grow gradually, analyses must attend to social and cultural aspects as well as constraining and enabling factors within different science systems and research organizations—and on the team level ( Leahey 2016 ). Collaboration has many consequences; the results are mixed ( Beaver 2013 ). Some conclude that the proportion of high-quality papers increases with more authors per paper ( Lawani 1986 ). Fanelli and Larivière (2016) argue that while total published papers have increased, individual publication rates, based on the number of first-author papers, or by measuring publications fractionally, have not. IRCs are associated with higher-quality research than national collaborations; internationally coauthored papers tend to have greater research impact ( Rigby and Edler 2005 ; Levitt and Thewall 2010 ; Adams 2013 ). Thus, the numerous benefits of collaborative work justify IRC ( Rigby 2009 ). Many of these benefits were, ultimately, confirmed in our case study.

2.3 Motivations of international research collaboration

Researchers obviously collaborate for innumerable reasons (see Beaver 2001 , 2013 : 50f.; Sonnenwald 2007 ). Motivations include research organization and researcher reputation, higher visibility, opportunities for multidisciplinary research, access to research funds, and mentoring of younger researchers. Development of new methods and sharing knowledge, equipment, laboratories, or (big science) infrastructures, including data, encourage researchers to collaborate, in the process extending their networks. More personal reasons include friendships with chosen colleagues, intrinsic motivation, or the ambition to maximize personal scientific output (see Conchi and Michels 2014 ). In this case study, we analyze which of these motivations were central.

2.4 Challenges of international research collaboration

International and culturally diverse research projects provide valuable opportunities to advance scientific knowledge production, yet also imply challenges, risks, and drawbacks ( Kosmützky 2018 ). The advantage of joining forces and finding synergies of expertise incorporates the risk of invisibility of single researchers within the larger team. Particularly, younger researchers’ contributions may be subsumed. Principal investigators may not be involved in the day-to-day research because their main responsibility is to compete for funding and manage teams. Likewise, IRCs are time-consuming, requiring administration, coordination, and continuous exchange among teams ( Beaver 2013 : 53) as well as intercultural and interpersonal agreements on goals. Tasks must be distributed and responsibilities fulfilled, individually or in constellations ( Easterby-Smith and Malina 1999 ). Handling communication challenges, especially when scientists work in different locations over long time periods, demands clear communication styles to create understanding, trust, and sensitivity; advanced social planning; and functioning technological supports ( Livingston 2003 ). In particular, ‘spatially dispersed scientific collaborations’ demand substantial coordination to effectively bring ideas and expertise together ( Cummings and Kiesler 2005 : 704). Melkers and Kiopa (2010) identify the research gaps of social interactions and researcher engagement in IRCs. Thus, our retrospective case study gathers autoethnographic insights from team members.

IRCs, especially on team level, can be analyzed, categorized, and explored in different ways ( Beaver 2013 : 45ff). Less often studied, spatially distributed teams must deal with multiple methodological and sociocultural complexities that differentiate them from local teams ( Kosmützky 2017 ). To address this research gap, we explore the potential of autoethnography, as this newer approach has been applied to facilitate explicit reflection of research processes. We chose this method to retrospectively guide research and provide insights into the evolving experiences and perspectives of IRC team members. This enables the reconstruction of the discontinuous, sometimes disorganized , work within a multicultural team across four continents. Over a decade, the team constituted itself, carried out research together, and published findings that any one regional team could not have accomplished alone. This approach encourages reflexivity about experiences and valorizes personal narratives—to make sense of the meanings that we researchers retrospectively ascribe to extensive collaboration processes across different stages of career development. While not generalizable, this retrospective, self-reflexive autoethnography synthesizes lessons learned and risks in carrying out IRCs, focusing on team dynamics.

Autoethnography, as a research method, uses researchers’ own experiences in describing and evaluating beliefs, practices, and experiences in particular contexts; it recognizes and values researchers’ social embeddedness. More than a method, it not only describes research processes but simultaneously serves as the product of research ( Ellis et al. 2010 ; Adams et al. 2015 : 21ff). In contrast to claims that research should be neutral, impersonal, and objective ( Delamont 2009 ), autoethnography acknowledges and uncovers often hidden but important drivers of social research, namely subjectivity and personal connections. Such relationships are difficult to observe with standard methods in science of science, such as scientometrics, which measure only the most visible results of collaboration. Methodologically, autoethnography combines content analysis of documents with interviews to support retrospection ( Ellis et al. 2010 ). Personal experiences are connected with the current state of research ( Ronai 1992 ). These generative benefits are balanced by challenges, including lack of theorizing, self-centeredness or insufficient self-criticism, and too few observations ( Ellis et al. 2010 ).

To avoid these pitfalls, alongside our reflections and evaluation of the project collaborations, the study was conceptualized as an analysis using multiple methods to gather data longitudinally. Conducted by two members of the Europe-based subteam over a four-year period, the study includes (1) document analysis, (2) guided autoethnographic interviews, and (3) a retrospective survey of project researchers and managers eight years after project start. Exploring the use of this newer approach in this research field helps us to uncover aspects of IRCs often unobserved when conducting standard expert interviews or participant observations of a ‘foreign’ research team.

The decision to study our own research collaboration was taken after the project officially ended; follow-up projects were in the planning stages. In-depth interviews were carried out with a small number of team members (four) from different status groups (principal investigator, project manager, doctoral student) and cultural backgrounds (North America, Europe, East Asia) in person or virtually. In 2016, document-based sources, including official project documentation, research and administrative notes, official communications with the funding agency and partner universities spanning the Northern hemisphere, and innumerable project and personal e-mails were collected, sorted, and selected. Most materials were collected from project folders stored for joint use. Furthermore, we retrieved dozens of communications from our own e-mail archives.

The study gathered interview extracts and voices from project members from all regional subteams. Guiding themes and topics included the following:

Motivation and experience: Why did you decide to join the research project? Please share your experiences.

Research and learning: What were your research goals and questions within the project? What did you learn?

International collaboration: How do you define ‘international collaboration’. What dis/advantages or costs and benefits did working in a highly international, diverse team have for you? Would you like to work in such a project again? Why (not)?

After transcription, results were synthesized, with key points illustrated below. To enable renewed reflections from team members’ evolving retrospective standpoints eight years after project begin, a follow-up survey on selected findings and focused on benefits, motivations, and challenges of IRC was conducted in August 2020. This included an extensive table of statements ranked by the participants (see Table 1 ). We sent the questionnaire to the whole team; five members responded. Thus, a majority of (former) team members participated in at least one phase of our autoethnographic study. Their responses manifest different perspectives and team-connectedness after the project’s official end. Half of the original team members, from different world regions and in different career stages, continue to actively collaborate and co-author papers.

Benefits, motivations, and challenges of international research collaborations.

Source : Authors’ representation.

We now turn to an overview of the project’s genesis, team size, duration, and budget; its members’ cultural diversity and career stages; patterns of mobility, distribution of labor, and leadership; and the team’s sociodemographic and academic characteristics. Then, we delve into the subjective meanings associated with this IRC, derived from team members’ perspectives.

First ideas about possible transatlantic research collaboration were explored in Summer 2010 by a small group of researchers—later project principal investigators (PIs)—after an international workshop on higher education (HE) in Germany. From two countries and of three generations, they had known each other for ten to twenty years and developed friendships. After another year informally discussing common research interests, more concrete project ideas emerged: to analyze (1) worldwide HE expansion, (2) its consequences for scientific research over the twentieth century, and (3) universities’ contributions to scientific discovery. These interests were then aligned to the explicit economy-centered interests of the funding agency’s call for proposals. A focus on scientific productivity emerged, with the explicit use of this language exemplifying ‘programmification’—the impact of funding agencies’ priorities on proposed research (see Zapp et al. 2018 ). A more detailed project proposal, written with a colleague who had direct contact with the funding agency, was submitted in December 2011. Half a year later, this ‘local’ PI received the five anonymous peer reviews and the first approval notification. On 15 May 2012, he informed his collaborators via e-mail across the time zones:

Hi Team: I just heard a few minutes ago that QNRF approved our application for funding. That’s about all I know at the moment. Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks. In the meantime, congratulations on a job well done. Let the games begin…(PI 2).

In fact, the to-be-assembled project team would be built upon decades-old relationships, coupled with global recruitment of country experts and young researchers—through existing networks that reflect internationalization powered by doctoral education in research universities; in this case, an American public university with substantially international graduate student population ( Fernandez et al. 2020 ). Among the main purposes of collaboration is the division of labor ( Katz and Martin 1997 ). But as science has evolved and spread around the world, researchers are even more broadly scattered geographically than in earlier eras. Here, IRC networks served as a ‘vehicle for knowledge diffusion’ ( Jeong and Choi 2015 : 462), for access to funding, and for recruitment. Due to this projects’s spatial distribution of researchers across four continents, information exchange, discussion of research goals among subteams, division of labor, and task coordination were crucial (see Lewis et al. 2012 ). All team members were employed in universities of the Northern hemisphere, distributed across seven countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia.

4.1 Team size, budget, and project duration

The team size, budget, and project duration are interrelated, because substantial financial resources are necessary to enable project investigators to form and maintain IRC teams ( Jeong and Choi 2015 : 462). Larger teams may develop contemporary and popular ideas, but have short-lived impact, on average, yet this persists longer when younger researchers are well-integrated ( Wu et al. 2019 ). By contrast, smaller teams may positively irritate science and technology studies with more radical ideas and survive longer when they build a stable core of researchers that remain active ( Palla et al. 2007 ; Fortunato et al. 2018 ). Larger international teams support visibility and information exchange in various contexts, facilitating network growth ( Horta and Austin Lacy 2011 : 459f.). The team studied consisted of ten researchers (full professors, associate professors, doctoral students), one research director, one project manager, and numerous research assistants (in several countries).

Most members participated without their positions being (fully) project-funded; thus, co-financing by research universities was essential. The budget of about US$600,000 was used mainly to fund a project manager and research stays, travel, and data acquisition. Years later, residual overhead costs supported publishing results open access. Particularly, given the brief two-year official project duration, university co-sponsorship was substantial. Financially and in terms of team size, this project was relatively small for such a globe-spanning project compared with, for example, international projects funded by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. While a no-cost six-month extension was granted, no publications based on the project’s big data and bibliometric analyses appeared during the grant period. In years since, research by various team members has appeared in book and article forms, in English and German, and won numerous awards. The project context also provided an important platform to present previously conducted research to gain visibility in other scientific communities.

4.2 Cultural and linguistic diversity and gender

The group’s national, cultural, and linguistic diversity was considerable: starting with the project’s lead PI in North America, four team members were US citizens. Three team members, representing Europe, came from Germany and Romania, and one each came from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Day-to-day project management was organized in Qatar by a woman from Iran. With the on-going and increasingly rapid globalization of science, researchers seek opportunities outside their country of origin; unsurprisingly, country of origin and current location were often different ( Anderson and Steneck 2011 ). Indeed, most team members were officially employed and/or enrolled outside their country of origin. The most common languages spoken were English, the main project language, German, and Chinese (Mandarin).

Noteworthy, the ratio of female/male researchers was 1:10, whereas project support and research assistance were provided mainly by female team members. If research shows that female scientists have different communication and leadership styles ( Jeong and Choi 2015 ), in this team gender issues were never discussed explicitly.

4.3 Division of labor and career stage

Beyond gender, differences in career stage and power relations among researchers of various status and cultural backgrounds existed. Hierarchies affected communication—from knowledge exchange to critique—as well as expectations ( Roelcke 2010 ; Kosmützky 2018 ). While project leaders often lack professional training in managing international projects, learning their skills ‘on the job’ ( Hantrais 2009 ), this was not so here: the project and ‘Subteam North America’ were led by a renowned senior scientist from that region with long-standing contact to all network members. He selected most team members, many of whom he had trained, collaborated with, or hosted at his university. The core group of PIs, well-connected for over a decade, included a former doctoral student who acted as crucial local contact securing project funding; he led ‘Subteam Middle East’. This confirms that ‘established social capital’ is necessary to successfully recruit diverse researchers from abroad to collaborate ( Melkers and Kiopa 2010 : 391). The involved subteams and their relationships reflect the extensive social interactions necessary for successful collaboration. IRC teams are increasingly the norm, but building international, intergenerational networks that provide collaboration opportunities demand tenacity.

North America is a significant partner for IRCs because of its scientific outputs and central position in global science ( Luukkonen et al. 1992 ; Powell et al. 2017a ). Culturally diverse, ‘Subteam North America’ consisted of Americans and both professors and doctoral candidates from China, Korea, and Taiwan working together at a large US research university. This subteam prepared and maintained the huge volume of raw data—Web of Science Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)—purchased from Thomson Reuters (now: Clarivate Analytics).

This database was painstakingly recoded by ‘Subteam Europe’, evolving to ensure overall data quality and meet project goals. Contributing four European case studies, this subteam integrated several senior researchers and organized a concluding international conference panel, an important step toward an edited volume collecting all country case studies ( Powell et al. 2017a ). Cultural and linguistic diversity as well as recruitment of additional experts later on ensured that the country case studies of the key science-producing regions were contributed by authors able to review domestic literature and with extensive knowledge of HE and science systems.

‘Subteam Middle East’ provided project management infrastructure and hosted all team members during three workshops. These meetings were organized from and took place in Qatar, where the funding agency required two-thirds of the project budget to be spent. Coordination by the project managers was essential to realize project goals between these rare gatherings in person.

Team members from four East Asian countries delved into national case analysis, less so explicit comparative work. These members had genuine interests and expertise in big data, taking responsibility for substantial encoding, cleaning, and preparation of the dataset for common use, and the development of methods and tools for subsequent analyses. One Asian PI, trained in and a professor in North America, coauthored the analysis of his country of origin with external collaborators. An assistant professor based in another Asian country worked on his case study alone but compared journal coverage of Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus to capture differences in selectivity of the two leading bibliometric databases. Analysis of the third and fourth Asian countries was completed in dissertations by doctoral candidates in ‘Subteam North America’, who had intermittently joined ‘Subteam Middle East’ to work on the dataset. Post-project, they returned to their East Asian countries but completed their dissertations under supervision of the project’s lead PI in the US.

4.4 Mobility

Highly mobile, the project team consisted of members of different national origins, with half of the senior PIs and all doctoral candidates working in research universities in countries other than their country of origin. Various sub-teams collaborated on different aspects and in different phases, meeting in their university or region. Particularly, the doctoral candidates—whether Asian or European—were mobile regarding both their doctoral degree granting universities and in conducting data preparation and analysis in third countries. Only three face-to-face meetings of all members occurred during the project, due to physical distance and costs (coordination, travel).The kickoff meeting was held in February 2013 in Doha, Qatar, whose national research foundation (QNRF) funded the research. This was followed by a second meeting and international conference visit and presentation of first results in November 2013. Finally, a third meeting was conceived as a ‘data workshop’ in March 2014, designed for discussion of discovered historical trends and global findings—such as the exponential rise of (international) coauthorship. Most members attended and presented findings during an international conference in Washington, DC, in March 2015, to engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue, an important but rare opportunity to meet in person ( Melkers and Kiopa 2010 : 397f.). To tackle this challenge in practice, the team organized monthly virtual meetings and communicated continuously via e-mail. Reflecting on the project, members missed personal and on-site communication between subteams. Clarifying problems took much more time than if all researchers had been locally-based, for example writing innumerable e-mails to discuss an issue related to a STATA do-file, instead of walking down the hallway to immediately clarify face-to-face. Thus, research stays by all three doctoral candidates in other subteams were crucial.

4.5 Communication and language

Doing research and producing knowledge in the lingua franca are everyday activities globally, but working in multilingual teams results in communication challenges, especially when team members aspire to publish in (leading) peer-reviewed journals ( Wöhlert 2020 ). Although English was the common project language ( Pelikan 2015 ), only three team members were native speakers. This cultural diversity became particularly obvious when analyzing project documents. Most researchers used their first language for their own research notes, but shared documents and official communications, conference presentations, and publications were mainly written in global English. The team division of labor led to diverse languages being used. Wells (2013) argues that using English as the project language gives native speakers a great advantage to express themselves linguistically, culturally, and socially. Non-native speakers felt inhibited in team interactions (see Bagshaw et al. 2007 ), but even more so in drafting publications later, overcome only through considerable investments by the native speakers in writing and proofreading. Senior scholars’ openness and patience and inclusivity were crucial for project development and facilitating the publication of results in leading English-language journals.

Nevertheless, the team’s diverse cultural, disciplinary, and academic backgrounds resulted in communication problems, both in theoretical debates and in data analysis and interpretation. Analysis of team correspondence emphasized the importance of discussing and agreeing on definitions of key terms, debating theoretical approaches, and selecting methodologies—also to develop mutual understanding and trust, which is vital for successful IRCs ( Bracken and Oughton 2006 ). Because the project strove to combine quantitative and in-depth institutional analyses, increased attention to intercultural communication would have been crucial; these challenges were underestimated.

Although the project officially ended in June 2015, after a no-cost extension, and the final report was submitted in August 2015, the research team continued to collaborate. Since then, numerous publications by diverse team member constellations have appeared, including an edited volume of contributions from regional subteams ( Powell et al. 2017a ) that won several awards. That book’s introduction was jointly written by team members from different locations and career stages to frame the country case studies and synthesize global trends ( Powell et al. 2017b ). By the end of 2020, six peer-reviewed research articles in high-quality journals had appeared. A monograph (awarded a prestigious dissertation prize) appeared in German ( Dusdal 2018 ); another book (in English) is forthcoming ( Baker and Powell, forthcoming ). Three book chapters have been published (in English; two translated into Arabic), two encyclopedia entries, one commissioned report (available in English and French), one contribution to published conference proceedings, and six transfer publications (newspaper articles, interviews, radio, and electronic media such as podcasts). Currently, three additional journal articles using the project database are under review. The project’s three doctoral candidates successfully defended their dissertations (two in 2017, 2019). These outputs and a follow-up project build upon the team members’ joint efforts to construct one of the largest longitudinal bibliometric databases, covering about 90 million entries across a 111-year period. Having specified the project’s characteristics and dynamics, we next present reflections from the autoethnographic study on the team members’ perceived benefits, motivations, and challenges of IRC.

Turning to our autoethnography, we present empirical results based on reflections and insights on conducting research, the division of labor, and social relationships in a globe-spanning project. We discuss what autoethnography may contribute to our better understanding of diverse benefits, motivations, and challenges of IRC.

The study emphasized relationships between members of different cultural, disciplinary, and status backgrounds, uncovering how crucial were the established relationships—spanning three continents and multiple generations—among the project’s PIs.

International cooperation for me is when scholars from different national backgrounds focus on one big research topic and the collaboration, which means they really could help each other to figure it out (PhD 1). On the one hand, people would just say it’s people in different countries… But you’re [interviewer] sitting here, we’re both sitting here, are we internationally collaborating? Yes, but you could do your PhD here, you could be a professor here… what’s behind it is the universalization of education, in particular of universities (PI 1).

Particularly among scholars in different countries, collaboration leads to more influential, often-cited research ( Katz and Hicks 1997 ; Fortunato et al. 2018 ). This is a key argument for further globalizing the scientific enterprise and recognizing the brain circulation and intercultural teamwork that facilitates recognition and impact across scientific communities ( Sugimoto et al. 2017 ; Wagner and Jonkers 2017 ). For these team members, the benefits of IRC were clear: in-depth global trend analysis and comparison of different national case studies would not have been possible without the knowledge and methodological expertise of collaborators from different countries, at various career stages, and with diverse know-how. The team members learned from each other about historical contexts and the scope of longitudinal trends, broadening their knowledge about higher education and science systems worldwide.

Important meanings associated with IRC were (1) support to cross disciplinary boundaries, and (2) discussions of theoretical and methodological innovation. Reflection of different scientific cultures, strongly related to researcher socialization—in their disciplines, in particular methodologies, and in contrasting cultural contexts—is necessary to engage in dialogue.

‘Learning from each other’s experiences and competencies; it’s impossible to understand a foreign system just by reading articles about it’ (PhD 1).

This example shows the significance of and mutual dependence of researchers to broaden their (comparative) knowledge and expertise. Researchers from several countries collaborating impacts team communication. Diverse understandings of hierarchies and dealing with colleagues from different status groups and cultures had important consequences. For example, ‘…different norms how team members talk to each other’ and ‘no classic boss and student relationship, but in ‘our culture’ in [Asian country] they listen to the senior scholar. No equal conversations’ (PhD 2). Furthermore, different conceptions of theoretical approaches and expertise in data coding and interpretation were among the challenges the team faced.

In addition to general reasons motivating collaboration ( Beaver 2001 , 2013 ; Sonnenwald 2007 ), team members identified numerous specific motivations: learning new methods; research topic relevance; pressure to acquire third-party funding; time to do multidisciplinary work; understanding other higher education and science systems; friendship; and the potential to advance theoretical thinking and methodological expertise. As one PhD student reported:

‘I really enjoy the time with my team because some scholars share their skills’ ; ‘I decided to participate based on these two incentives: I mean, the first is that the topic is relevant to my research… and the second is it may be interesting to work in another country’ ; ‘the topic could fit into my future career, I decided to join’ (PhD 2).

Another stated that ‘after the seminar, [PI 1] asked me to write a proposal with him’ (PhD 1).

Two additional motivations evident in the interviews were the pressure to acquire research grants and third-party funding: money (laughter)’ (PI 1). Available time to participate was essential:‘ I had heard about [the project] and the international collaboration stuff and on his team of grad students I was the only one who was doing higher education research who had time’ (PhD 1).

Further motivations included learning about other higher education and science systems. A shared history among team members promoted their wish to join forces in the project. This confirms Melkers and Kiopa’s (2010 : 391, 408) finding that growing interest in IRC also reflects the personal desire to work together and to access new and diverse resources and knowledge not available at home.

The team’s multidisciplinarity and expertise in multiple methods advanced thinking and facilitated development of new approaches, including the unique database construction. Thus, this case corroborates diverse benefits and motivations of IRC mentioned in the research literature.

Next, we address challenges faced by the team members. International and multidisciplinary projects require considerable organization and structured management of tasks (work packages). This was experienced as a major challenge.

‘Asian people always like to work overtime. But I know [PI 1] would never do that’ (PhD 2).

Working styles represent aspects of the scientific culture, cultural background, career stage, and individual personality. Cultural, organizational, and team expectations may not always be in harmony. Indeed, for some team members, it was challenging to adapt to different social situations and ways of discussing research problems across status groups. Yet experiences in different subteams helped them to overcome fears and to open up, reflecting the influence of global scientific norms.

Not only do different communication styles hinder or enhance collaboration, the geographical location of researchers across time zones and on other continents demanded flexible organization to ensure steady work progress. The distribution of labor needed to be continuously (re)negotiated to achieve the milestones and complete work packages that often relied on other sub-teams. Team members did not explicitly discuss these topics in advance, implicitly assuming that the others would understand their responsibilities to deliver on time–– ‘We never discussed it’ (PhD 1). This manifests the implicitness of norms as well as non-rational qualities of much collaborative work. More regular communication among team members about tasks and specific goals and needs of individual team members, but also about culturally variant workstyles, could have been optimized. Open communications and support by team leaders even after funding ended were essential for this IRC’s long-term success. Culturally diverse subteams with members working outside their countries of origin were responsible for a range of interlocking tasks, requiring individual members to manage different expectations—organizational and interpersonal—to meet the goals set forth in a field new to many. For those writing national case studies on their home country, collaboration proceeded more easily than for those analyzing contexts foreign to them or comparatively.

Over time, more frequent, often bilateral, exchanges within and across the subteams led to better solutions than larger, general discussions with the entire team. Furthermore, while multidisciplinary teams may facilitate innovative ideas and develop new methodological approaches, the lack of shared disciplinary grounding posed challenges. As one doctoral student noted, ‘I have never taken a real sociology course’ (PhD 1), which resulted in delays due to the necessary (and gradual) embedding of findings within the project’s theoretical approach. This comment emphasizes that recruitment processes must take into account the constellation of researchers assembled and project tasks.

As key challenges to successful collaboration, multiple members mentioned time constraints, insurmountable disciplinary differences, and diverse theoretical and methodological strengths and weaknesses. For example, ‘I need to teach them how to do STATA’’ or ‘… scholars from different backgrounds […] have their own interests. I think that is very unique’ (PhD 2). Contrasting norms and discussion cultures, communication styles, and handling of hierarchies and status differences were identified as additional challenges. Furthermore, taken-for-grantedness and the reflection of changing task distribution and subteam membership were mentioned as difficult to negotiate. By contrast, facilitators included ‘ Not making the project too tight; being generous with people; flexibility; I tried to be mellow about it; principle: everybody can use the data, you just have to communicate about it; everybody can publish their own things’ (PI 1). This last example from our interviews shows that flexibility and resilience are important skills team leaders should bring. It is important to keep the overall project goals in mind, but IRCs must also provide room to evolve and to develop new ideas, especially given varying tasks and learning processes within the team and across subteams.

Surveying team members at different career stages and in diverse higher education systems worldwide eight years after project begin, we found a range of benefits, motivations, and challenges ( Table 1 ). Among the many benefits, team members mentioned learning about other higher education and science systems and conducting global research. Learning from and helping each other was closely related to the distribution of labor across subteams that enabled results beyond what any individual or regional team could have accomplished alone. Beyond broadening knowledge, the considerable benefits deriving from the project, a perhaps surprising result is the social significance of team members’ friendships, the reinforcement of existing relationships, and networking. Thus, this social dimension should not be marginalized in future analyses of research collaboration. Further motivations to participate included the relevance of the research topic, career advancement opportunities, and––associated with the clear benefits of such international, multidisciplinary teams—the learning of new theoretical approaches and methods. Individual work does not provide similarly diverse opportunities to learn.

Simultaneously with numerous benefits and strong motivations to collaborate, the team members also reflected on more and less foundational challenges to the project as it evolved from a short-term funded project to a less formal, long-term global collaboration supported solely by intrinsic motivation to learn, to advance the common research agenda, and to maintain friendly social relations. Unsurprisingly for a truly global project with considerable empirical ambition, the organization and structured management of work packages and tasks was challenging, despite the dedicated project management and continuous usage of information technology. In fact, more challenging than actual work organization were contrasting expectations and norms relating to culture and specific organizational contexts. Obviously, individual, disciplinary, and career stage differences affected what researchers needed—and this changed over time as the younger scholars matured, completed their dissertations, and embarked on new projects, some directly building upon the project’s medium-term achievements.

Critically noted, along with different modes of working, were contrasting styles of communication and differing language skills that inhibited free exchange of information. Beyond these more individual challenges, the distribution of labor and the time constraints due to the limited duration of project funding delayed or limited the IRC’s output. Finally, while diverse theoretical and methodological backgrounds reflected team strengths and weaknesses, these also posed challenges for optimal collaboration, especially due to lack of sufficient opportunities for dialogue across considerable spatial distance.

These findings confirm the diversity and complexity of benefits, motivations, and challenges of IRC; of cultural, organizational, and individual characteristics; and of informal and formal collaboration processes leading to scientific contributions, such as coauthored publications. In team science and beyond, these topics require further attention in science, policymaking, and project-based practice. Cultural and social dynamics of collaborative research in multidisciplinary and international teams remain insufficiently investigated. We next reflect on the autoethnographic approach taken and reflect on implications for future research.

The benefits, motivations, and challenges of international collaborative research were analyzed to understand diverse subjective perspectives on the dynamics relating to such collaboration in a specific globe-spanning team. We reviewed research on IRCs on the team level, embedding therein our empirical material, based on autoethnographic interviews and a retrospective survey with the project’s researchers and managers. The case study provides diverse perspectives of members in an international, multidisciplinary team in the sociology of science. Our findings confirmed previous findings on IRCs, but also provided novel insights relating to IRC team dynamics.

For example, the significance of and mutual dependence of researchers to broaden their knowledge and expertise is an essential element of successful research collaborations. Using autoethnography, we uncovered implicit norms and non-rational qualities of collaborative work. This result emphasizes the need for more regular personal communications among team members about the contents of their work, but also about their individual goals, unique contributions, and (career development) needs. The creation of an open communication environment by team leaders is crucial, especially in projects with multilingual members (see Wöhlert 2020 ). Careful recruitment of team members reflecting project goals and approaches is necessary, questioning assumptions that recruitment should be objective or ignore existing personal relationships, as a crucial source of trust. Cultural and career stage issues should be explicitly addressed by team leaders, who attend to evolving task distribution and provide room to develop new ideas and learn to practice critique within hierarchies. Such findings suggest further research focus on IRC team dynamics.

While the presented findings derive from one case study and thus cannot be generalized, the results of this autoethnography highlight specific dimensions of IRCs in the social sciences—and confirm previous findings. Using autoethnographic methods to analyze developments over a decade, we presented insights into cultural differences and intercultural communication challenges, but also into myriad benefits and motivations of collaborating across boundaries, both spatial and social. Open questions for future research include the assessment of relevant dimensions of culture in IRCs—such as national, organizational, or epistemic—as well as discussion of the diversity of cultures within multidisciplinary and intercultural teams and its influence on IRC. The above outlined methodological critiques of autoethnography, such as lack of self-criticism and subjectivity notwithstanding, this approach acknowledges and uncovers often hidden but equally important drivers of research, namely interpersonal connections and curiosity, which are difficult to observe applying other methods, such as bibliometrics that emphasizes collaboration’s most visible outputs.

Further implications for future research include the investigation of team-level dynamics of IRCs and the specific needs of researchers at different career stages. The utilization of individual team members’ strengths and how these can be applied in team building and achieving project goals is another important strand of research. Most studies concentrate on the benefits of IRCs, discounting the challenges. Yet holistic perspectives are needed for realistic planning and durable success in (larger) collaborations that pay off (much) later than official project duration, for the individual researchers, for their organizations, and for global science. The social and networking dimensions should not be underestimated in motivating such research, which may be considered risky, as trust is a key to the sharing of ideas that lead to discoveries. The chosen mixed-methods approach combined analysis of coauthored publications and interpretative analysis of autoethnographic interviews and surveys with various team members (at PI, doctoral, postdoctoral, and project manager levels).

In contrast to the presented retrospectively-designed case study and based on the above findings, for future IRCs, we recommend implementation of accompanying team-oriented autoethnographic research throughout the project—and following researchers’ scientific careers longitudinally—to monitor and reflect on researchers’ dynamic roles within such complex project arrangements and less formal collaboration networks as their careers develop. This approach would have been beneficial for an in-depth analysis and interpretation of the presented results as well as to capture important nuances and informal processes that contribute to the development of social and intellectual capital on the team level in IRCs (see Melkers and Kiopa 2010 : 404).

While there is some variability in the duration of funded projects, the typical 2- or 3-year timeframe is often insufficient to complete empirical data-gathering or the in-depth (comparative) analysis needed for either in-depth understanding or policy recommendations. For complex international projects, teamwork is challenging; thus, necessary trust—including support and friendship—is crucial, especially beyond the official project duration, to complete publications and design follow-up projects; particularly within new settings and constellations of researchers. More explicit reflection of cultural backgrounds and language competencies as well as theoretical and methodological knowledge would facilitate teams’ overcoming key challenges, yet this is often not explicitly made a key criterion during peer review, even though such preparation and processes are essential for long-term project success.

Complex projects, and those in particular disciplines utilizing rare infrastructure, often exhibit collaboration imperatives. Comparative and global higher education and science research are hardly possible without the in-depth contextual knowledge provided by researchers from different places. Team leadership and planning—related to the division of labor and communication, work styles, and cultural and disciplinary backgrounds—demand more attention from scholars and policymakers alike. For the project members, spatial mobility was essential to achieve project goals, yet the burden was unequally distributed. The COVID-19 global pandemic has led to the broad questioning of the effects of spatial distance on IRCs as communication technologies develop even further. More than ever in highly competitive academic labor markets, explicit project planning is crucial. The key motivations and benefits of IRCs are the advancement of scientific careers via opportunities to learn new theories, develop methodological skills, and expand contextual knowledge. Building international, intergenerational networks provides the explicit collaboration opportunities necessary to ensure that the benefits outweigh the challenges of international collaborative research that, in many fields, is increasingly the norm.

We thank David P. Baker and our other SPHERE team members who contributed to our international research collaboration and to this case study. For encouragement, advice, and comments on earlier drafts, we thank Sarah-Rebecca Kienast, Anna Kosmützky, Diego Kozlowski, Marcelo Marques, Romy Wöhlert, Mike Zapp, and the anonymous reviewers. We dedicate this article to the memory of Robert D. Reisz (1964–2020), a convivial and dedicated team member and Dean of the Faculty of Political Science, Philosophy and Communication Sciences, West University of Timisoara, Romania, who passed away unexpectedly and far too young.

We acknowledge the Qatar National Research Fund, a member of Qatar Foundation, for co-funding this research (NPRP Grant No. 5-1021-5-159). The findings herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Conflict of interest statement . The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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The Research Whisperer

Just like the thesis whisperer – but with more money, how do you start a research network.

We had a question recently from Ely asking for pragmatic advice on starting an international research network. Alyssa Sbisa and Sally Grace wrote “ Setting up a professional network ” a while back and that post has heaps of relevant good advice that I’d strongly encourage you to check out!

I’d written previously on building a research network on a shoestring , and much of that still applies. I realise now, however, that the earlier post presumed a network that needed cohering and development.

I think Ely is after something that addresses a much earlier step: how do you even get a research network started?

This post aims to tackle this, and would welcome others’ input on the topic. I’m speaking very much from my HaSS (Humanities/Social Sciences) point of view, and realise that other areas may have quite different contexts and ways of doing things. One of the things I should make clear from the start is that I’m talking about how to start a research network with few to zero resources . I’m not talking about setting something up with a ready cache of funding, or the need to access such a cache.

These are the key things you need if you want to start a research network:

OK, so you may be thinking ‘what the heck?’ with this one, but bear with me. Having a personal network (scholarly or otherwise) and forming a research network are two different things. But creating a research network requires you to have a strong personal network.

A big part of being the person, or group, that starts a research network is that the most effective first step is to reach out to your immediate circle of colleagues to spread the word for you about this shiny new endeavour. They may not be the actual people who will join the network but they will be the most likely to share your stuff around and lend it their support (and I would include scholarly or professional associations and societies in this – they may not become core participants but they may give you access to the kind of people or other organisations who will be). This kind of advocacy is based on your reputation in various circles and does not exist if you haven’t been developing good connections early and often in your career. We’ve published quite a lot about networking that (hopefully) won’t make you cringe – here’s a selection across various modes so that you can see what ‘networking’ can mean:

• Creating and growing a personal industry group (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Networking that works (Tseen Khoo)
• The surprising benefits of a read-aloud reading group (Matilda Keynes and Nikita Vanderbyl)
• 3 reasons why you’d livetweet (Tseen Khoo)
• Starting/participating in a ‘Shut up and write’ group – Part 1 and Part 2 (compiled by Tseen Khoo)

RW features a stack of stuff on Twitter and its networking benefits so that’s well worth browsing, too, if this is going to be one of the main ways you connect with colleagues.

So, if you’re thinking of setting up a research network, fingers crossed that you have already been doing these types of things. Investing more time in it straight away would also work well if you’re starting your research network in the near future. Trying to create an instant and meaningful personal network however…that’s a tough row to hoe.

If you’re a PhD researcher, and there’s opportunity for it, I’d highly recommend starting a postgraduate group to cut your teeth in scholarly network and general group management!

Enough momentum and clarity of purpose

An essential part of any successful research network is having the momentum and clarity of purpose to establish and keep growing. What is the group for and does it already exist? Are you bringing together researchers in new and exciting ways who wouldn’t otherwise be in the same group? Is it a growing new area that could do with concentrated energy?

Do your research! Do not set up a snazzy ‘international research network’ for something that others are already doing. If there are very strong national networks that happen to have good international membership, should you be saying that yours is the ‘international network for such-and-such’? Chances are that you’d be targeting the same scholars for membership and you’ll just annoy colleagues who’ve already put in the work to establish those spaces.

• If you are truly setting up the only thing like it in the world and welcome international scholars in authentic ways, then go for it!
• If you can see a way to bring several smaller groups together to gain better profile for all and generate wonderful intellectual fizz, do that!
• If there’s a research network out there that covers what you’re wanting to do, think about participating more strongly in that one rather than starting your own. If you’re set on starting your own even though there’s something already out there that’s very similar, think about your reasons for doing so. There may be good and valid reasons, but you need to think them through because you’ll be trying to draw scholars to yours in particular ways.

Here are some ways to test the waters for whether there’s enough interest in the area to warrant a new research network – if you’re struggling to find enough people or interest, it’s good to know early rather than after you’ve tried to start a new network:

• See if you can convene a good stream on the area through an existing conference
• Hold a focused symposium and see what the response is like during the call for papers/interest
• Again, using an existing conference or association gathering, gauge interest in a ‘special interest group’ or ‘research focus cluster’ in that area and get people together to have a chat about it.
• If you have a large personal network through which you’re discerning strong threads of interest, find a way to bring those people together to talk further.

Down the track, it would be good for anyone you’d recruit to be core members of your research network to be collegial fellow-travellers in the area already. You’re going to have to work quite closely with them to create and grow this network so it’d be handy to get along! You don’t all have to have exactly the same opinions in the area but it helps to have aligned, sympathetic aims.

Basic infrastructure

To get a good foundation for building a research network’s profile, I’d suggest a combination of these basic digital presences:

• Website (essential) – recommended pages for the website: About | News | Membership | Resources | Contact >> would also recommend “Meetings” (or Talks or Conferences) page if there are regular ways that people in the network can gather.
• Facebook group or page
• Twitter account
• Social accounts and strong profiles for core network members

Skills : You need people who are willing and able to manage the social media faces of the research network – they need to be social media savvy and good content creators . If you’re running without a budget, this will be the major way people get to know and relate to your group so it is extremely important to make it a strong, engaging presence.

As democratic as you’d like your research network to be, the group must have strong decision-making skills , whether this is one ultimate decision-maker (designated leader) or a very efficient core group.

It would be ideal to have someone (or several people) on board who are good negotiators and adept at approaching potential sponsors (in academia and beyond). You can run mostly on a shoestring but you will occasionally need to make a bigger splash or invite sparkly people in. For this, you need colleagues who are either influential enough to be in there advocating for the network to get funding for its initiatives, or good at creating advocates among those who make the financial decisions.

Meetings ? I’m not a fan of meetings in general but I acknowledge the importance of research network meetings to ensure the smooth working and growth of the group. Meeting regularly and planning the next big things (whatever those things are) are essential tasks. It’s very easy for time to lapse between chance or hastily arranged meetings. It’s MUCH better to have, at least, monthly or quarterly discussions to ensure things are moving along and the research network is active and growing.

——————-

I’ve missed plenty in this post, I know. Creating a research network is a big undertaking and doing it successfully is all in the planning. It would be great to hear about your experiences or tips on this topic – comment below!

Share this:

I forgot to comment when this came out… but I wanted to say that I’ve run research centres before, started or been a member of research groups, I’ve been a researcher for a long time… but you raise things here (and map a pathway) that I intend to use as a model for the development of the new research group I’m starting. I often say this to Research Whisperer, but I’m so grateful for your knowledge and sharing around the development of research culture and thinking.

Like Liked by 1 person

Better late than never, right Sandy?! (I’ve only just seen your comment here)

Really appreciate your supportive words here and I’m curious to know how that research group you started is going, and whether this model of getting started worked for you!

The stakes for establishing a research centre that’s part of formal institutional infrastructure are usually high (esp the element of being ‘self-sustaining’), and it can be hard for emerging areas to gain that traction. A research network or group is a good way to test the viability of a particular focus, and to road-test potential colleagues as collaborators, too.

[…] I have engaged with has been wonderful. It has helped that I have had great people around me who advocate and support what I do. […]

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• Published: 17 October 2012

Collaborations

The rise of research networks

• Jonathan Adams 1  

Nature volume  490 ,  pages 335–336 ( 2012 ) Cite this article

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New collaboration patterns are changing the global balance of science. Established superpowers need to keep up or be left behind, says Jonathan Adams.

A fundamental shift is taking place in the geography of science. Networks of research collaboration are expanding in every region of the globe. The established science superpowers of the United States and Europe have dominated the research world since 1945. Yet this Atlantic axis is unlikely to be the main focus of research by 2045, or perhaps even by 2020.

New regional networks are reinforcing the competence and capacity of emerging research economies, and changing the global balance of research activity. This may well reveal different ways of approaching challenges, and solutions that are different to those of Western institutions. If the science superpowers are to avoid being left behind, they will need to step out of their comfort zones to keep up with the dynamism of the new players in this shifting landscape.

Collaboration is normally a good thing from a wider public perspective. Knowledge is better transferred and combined by collaboration, and co-authored papers tend to be cited more frequently 1 . But could increased global collaboration mean a blending of objectives that risks leaving bland priorities?

Co-authorship is a valid proxy for collaboration because few scientists surrender credit for their papers lightly, so we can assume that sharing of authorship reflects a tangible engagement. Such publication data are readily available, cover many countries and research disciplines to a good depth, and have reasonable consistency across decades.

Changes in the balance of research done by the lone scientist and that done by teams can be seen in co-authorship data 2 . Co-authorship has been increasing inexorably 3 , 4 . Recently it has exploded.

An issue of Nature today has a similar number of Letters to one from 60 years ago, but at least four times more authors 5 . Similar observations have been documented from clinical science to law. In the early 1980s, papers with more than 100 authors were rare. By 1990, the annual tally with that number exceeded 500 — and it has kept growing. The first paper with 1,000 authors was published in 2004; a paper with 3,000 authors came in 2008. By last year, a total of 120 physics papers had more than 1,000 authors and 44 had more than 3,000 (ref. 6 ). Many of these are from collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland.

This upwards trend in multi-authorship will continue through shared global priorities in health, energy, climate and social structures, propelled in part by international agencies such as the World Health Organization. Some of this growth will not be true collaboration but will come from independent contributions to joint efforts, usually in the form of data, that involve only weak intellectual interaction.

Blurred borders

Papers with hundreds of co-authors contribute to the apparent pervasiveness of collaboration between countries. For example, every country in Europe co-authors with every other country in the region. For the United Kingdom and Germany, this collaboration is relatively intense and represents many individual links. In 2011, the two countries had around 10,000 joint publications in journals indexed on Thomson Reuters' Web of Science — double the total in 2003 and about 10% of each country's total output. Malta, by contrast, shares only 50 papers per year with the United Kingdom, but that represents more than 25% of its total publication output. Consequently, distinguishing Malta's own science performance is already impossible. This blurring of national distinctiveness could be a growing issue.

According to data from Web of Science, the United States currently collaborates on 3–4% of its papers with each of China (now its most frequent partner, with 19,141 papers in 2011), the United Kingdom (19,090) and Germany (16,753). These totals have all roughly doubled in the past decade and have increased by half as a percentage of US total output. No country shared more than 1,000 papers in 1989 with any partner. US collaboration with Asia is rising steeply, as is collaboration between countries in western Europe. There is no reason to suppose that this will not continue.

China's rapid growth since 2000 is leading to closer research collaboration with Japan (up fourfold since 1999), Taiwan (up eightfold), South Korea (up tenfold), Australia (more than tenfold) and with every other research-active country in the Asia-Pacific region.

The rapid growth of each nation's research base and regional links, driven by relatively strong economies investing in innovation, will undoubtedly produce a regional research labour force to be reckoned with by 2020. Already, cutting-edge technology can be sourced from research developments in South Korea as well as those in Germany.

India has a growing research network with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, although it is not as frequent a collaborator with China as one might expect 7 . In the Middle East, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have a strong research partnership that is drawing in neighbours including Tunisia and Algeria. The annual tally of joint Egyptian–Saudi Arabian papers has risen tenfold in the past decade and is accelerating. Less than 5% of these papers have a co-author from the United States, the biggest partner outside the region for both countries.

Latin America has an emerging research network focused around Brazil, which — despite language differences — has doubled its collaboration with Argentina, Chile and Mexico in the past five years. By contrast, Africa has three distinct networks: in southern Africa, in French-speaking countries in West Africa and in English-speaking nations in East Africa.

These clusters indicate that proximity is just one of several factors in networks. Nigeria, for example, collaborates not with its neighbours in West Africa but with co-linguists in East Africa. This mirrors a global tendency to use paths of least resistance to partnership, rather than routes that might provide other strategic gains. Such language links have historically benefited the United Kingdom through alliances with Commonwealth countries that speak English and have adopted similar research structures. The United Kingdom cannot rely on this to continue.

This growth of regional collaboration has many implications. It amplifies the development of emergent research economies. Researchers in Asia, for example, do not need recognition from European and US authors if their research is being cited and used by partners within the region. In the short term, students will recognize attractive opportunities closer to home, with fewer alienating cultural challenges than many European campuses have offered.

Singapore, for example, is already reaping the benefits of a 1998 policy change to attract foreign students. Students from China, India and the ten countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) now comprise about 20% of Singapore's university intake — around 11,000 full-time students — with another 20,000 part-time students in other colleges. Students from those countries choose Singapore for its proximity, its lower cost of living compared with Europe and the United States and its generous government scholarships. Job opportunities are excellent: bursary holders sign a bond to work in Singapore for a fixed period after graduation and the government helps them to find a job that fits their skills 8 .

All of this means that the significance of Western research economies as preferred partners for research could dwindle. To meet this challenge, these economies need to do much more than just take fees from immigrant postgraduate students.

The maverick and the marginal may find a highly collaborative world a difficult place to flourish.

The United States and the United Kingdom must build new networks by actively exporting students to burgeoning science centres such as China and India. Researchers must stop expecting scientists from the new powerhouses to come to them, and should visit collaborators to experience different approaches — and be ready to learn, not just to teach. Travelling recently in the Pacific basin, I encountered many university leaders trying to increase collaboration with Europe, but finding it difficult to identify responsive contacts, despite having excellent facilities and staff to offer.

In short, countries in science's old guard must drop their patrician tendencies, open up clear communication channels and join in with new alliances as equal participants before they find themselves the supplicants.

Collaboration between the public and private sectors has become more apparent because of government interest in exploiting research for economic competitiveness. Some data show that industrial investment in research seems to be dropping — perhaps a reaction to the recession, but the trend seems to be long term, at least in the United Kingdom 9 . Governments need to develop an industrial policy that complements science policy. Incentives for collaborative innovation investment that draws directly on the science base would be a good start.

Patrician to participant

So what are the costs and benefits of collaboration? It provides access to resources, including funding, facilities and ideas. It will be essential for grand challenges in physics, environment and health to have large, international teams supported by major facilities and rich data, which encourage the rapid spread of knowledge.

Collaborative papers tend to get cited more often. For example, those published jointly by UK and US authors are cited on average more often than either nation domestically. It also works at the institutional level, so Harvard University gets a boost from collaborative papers with the University of Cambridge, and even in Nature the US–UK co-papers get relatively more citations 1 . And it follows through to industrial collaboration: when the University of Oxford collaborates with GlaxoSmithKline, for example, the papers are cited roughly four times as often as the world average for their field.

Research networks are a tool of international diplomacy. Germany exports excellent research equipment within its partnerships. China expands its cultural influence through the regional programmes it funds.

As for costs, collaboration takes time and travel and means a shared agenda. Of wider concern as teams proliferate is that individuals could end up working only on topics that peer consensus defines as the most interesting. The diversity of choice and opportunity may be diminished. The risk is that international, national and institutional agendas may become driven by the same bland establishment consensus.

This global tendency for convergence became obvious in 1997 when Tony Blair, then UK prime minister, adopted the same technology priorities set out by Bill Clinton and Al Gore in their 1992 presidential campaign, including biotechnology, health and environment. By 2000, the UK regional development agencies had supported the same missions rather than choose those that played to regional university strengths 10 . Leading research universities in North America, Europe and Asia identify strategic missions in similar areas.

It is difficult to go your own way in a village, even one that is global. But the success of science has been the crossing of separate strands of thought and practice that are more innovative at the edges than at the core. The iconoclastic, the maverick and the marginal may find a highly collaborative world a difficult place to flourish. Research-funding agencies should maintain a balance. Collaborative grand challenges seize headlines, but so do Nobel prizes — and only three people can share one of those.

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Understanding the Value of International Research Networks: An Evaluation of the International Cancer Screening Network of the US National Cancer Institute

Amanda l. vogel.

1 Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research Sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD

Douglas M. Puricelli Perin

2 National Institutes of Health Library, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

Stephen H. Taplin

3 National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

International research networks have the potential to accelerate scientific progress via knowledge sharing and collaboration. In 2018, the US National Cancer Institute evaluated the International Cancer Screening Network (ICSN), in operation since 1988.

ICSN hosts a biennial scientific meeting and scientific working groups. A survey was fielded to 665 ICSN participants, and a bibliometric analysis was conducted for ICSN publications.

A total of 243 individuals completed the survey (36.5%). They reported that participating in the ICSN helped advance their knowledge of cancer screening research (75.7%), policy development (56%), and implementation (47.7%). Approximately three-quarters agreed that ICSN facilitated knowledge sharing and networking among researchers and implementers (79.9%) and those working on different continents (74.0%) and cancer sites (73.7%). More than half reported that participating helped them form new collaborations in screening implementation (58.0%) or research (57.6%). Most agreed that ICSN helped to advance screening research and evaluation (75.4%), effective screening practices (71.2%), and screening policies (60.9%). Many reported that participating informed advances in their own research (68.7%) and screening implementation (50.2%) and policies (49.4%) in their settings. Approximately two-thirds agreed that ICSN helped advance career development among current experts (66.6%) and train the next generation (62.2%). Half (51.4%) reported that participating advanced their own careers. The 20 ICSN publications included 75 coauthors. They were cited in 589 publications with more than 2,000 coauthors.

Findings provide evidence of the influence of ICSN on international knowledge dissemination, collaboration, and advances in cancer screening research, implementation, and policies and highlight the potential value of longstanding international research networks.

INTRODUCTION

International research networks and consortia are accelerating advances in cancer science by facilitating international knowledge sharing, data harmonization and integration, and research collaboration. Through these approaches, these organizations are enhancing research rigor, enabling discoveries around rare events, and producing knowledge about the influence of multilevel interacting variables on health outcomes (eg, genetic, behavioral, community, and health system factors). 1 - 5

Given these potential outcomes, new international networks and consortia continue to form, taking on new subjects and themes. 6 , 7 However, these large research collaborations also require unique investments in the leadership, management, and conduct of the science—for example, leading development of a shared scientific vision and goals, facilitating communication, coordinating workflow, and establishing interoperability of data systems. 8 These processes are critical to achieving scientific goals and also require additional investments of both financial and human resources. 9 , 10

It is important to evaluate the outcomes and impacts of networks and consortia to better understand the added value of these approaches, in light of the resources required for their successful implementation. In 2018 to 2019, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US National Institutes of Health evaluated the International Cancer Screening Network (ICSN). An NCI-supported international research network, the ICSN has been in continuous operation since 1988, making it one of the longest-standing international research networks. Evaluation findings are reported here, and implications are discussed for understanding the value of longstanding international research networks.

The ICSN aims to reduce the global burden of cancer by advancing research that improves the reach and effectiveness of cancer screening. 11 It pursues this aim by facilitating international knowledge sharing and research collaboration. The core activities of the ICSN are a biennial international scientific meeting and international scientific working groups. The ICSN is led and administered by the NCI. Biennial meetings and working groups are chaired by volunteer ICSN members.

The first ICSN meeting, held in 1988, was attended by an invited group of 24 cancer screening researchers from 11 countries who convened to discuss the potential for cross-national efforts to assess screening mammography diffusion and effectiveness. 11 Since then, the ICSN has grown into a global cancer screening research network. The 2019 biennial scientific meeting was attended by 311 individuals from 37 countries.

ICSN biennial meetings are open to the cancer screening community and provide a forum for scientific discussion and dissemination of the most current cancer screening research methods and findings. Content emphasizes evaluating the effectiveness of screening for cancer sites where screening has been documented to reduce mortality (breast, colorectal, cervical, and lung).

ICSN scientific working groups identify key scientific priority areas in cancer screening and conduct international collaborative research on these topics. Currently active working groups are conducting research on international mammography screening skills, failures in the cervical cancer screening process, longitudinal adherence to fecal immunochemical testing for colorectal cancer screening, and overdiagnosis. Former ICSN working groups have conducted research on screening participation rates, health communication, performance evaluation, quality assurance, and other key topics. For a list of working group publications, see Appendix Table A1 .

Study Design

In 2018, the US NCI evaluated the ICSN to assess the outcomes and impacts of this long-running international research network. Research questions were:

• What are ICSN participants’ professional experiences and interests in the cancer screening field? and
• ○ Participants’ knowledge of cancer screening research and implementation;
• ○ Knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration in the cancer screening field;
• ○ Participants’ professional activities in cancer screening;
• ○ Training and career development for the cancer screening community;
• ○ Cancer screening research and evaluation; and
• ○ Cancer screening implementation and policy?

The study design included a survey of ICSN participants and a bibliometric analysis of ICSN-produced publications. The survey was fielded in the spring of 2018 to 665 individuals who had participated in the 2015 and/or 2017 ICSN biennial meetings and/or who had subscribed to the ICSN listserv. The survey invitation was sent via e-mail and included an embedded link to the online self-administered survey. To incentivize participation, five survey respondents were randomly selected to receive a US$100 gift card.

The survey instrument included 43 questions (Data Supplement) in two sections. Section 1 addressed respondents’ professional experiences and interests in cancer screening and their attendance at ICSN meetings. Section 2 addressed the remaining research questions. The survey instrument was developed on the basis of formative interviews conducted by one of the coauthors (A.L.V.) with 14 current and former members of the ICSN Steering Committee. In addition, members of the ICSN Steering Committee and the ICSN directors at the NCI (coauthors S.H.T. and D.M.P.P.) reviewed drafts of the instrument. It was then pretested with global health professionals and finalized. Quantitative responses were analyzed in SAS (SAS Institute, Cary, NC) and qualitative responses were analyzed in Excel (Microsoft, Redmond, WA). The National Institutes of Health Office of Human Subjects Research Protections approved this study.

The bibliometric analysis addressed the impact of ICSN on international research collaboration and dissemination of knowledge in cancer screening. Bibliometric analyses examined coauthor country affiliations and coauthorship networks of ICSN-produced publications and citing publications. The base set of ICSN-produced publications was composed of articles attributed to the ICSN or an ICSN working group in the coauthor list or the acknowledgments section. Web of Science was used to identify citing articles through 2018. Income levels for coauthors’ countries were classified on the basis of the Atlas method defined by the World Bank. 12 The Science of Science Tool was used to analyze coauthor data, and Gephi was used to draw coauthorship networks.

ICSN Participants’ Professional Experiences and Interests

A total of 265 individuals completed the first part of the survey (39.8% response rate), and 243 individuals completed the full survey (36.5% response rate). Just under half had 10 or fewer years of experience in the cancer screening field (46.5%), and the remaining respondents had 11 or more years of experience ( Table 1 ). Most respondents expressed interest in breast (74.3%), bowel/colorectal (61.9%), and/or cervical cancers (57.4%). They worked primarily at academic institutions (37.4%) and government institutions (33.6%). Approximately two-thirds (64.5%) spent more than 25% of their work time conducting cancer screening research, and approximately a third spent more than 25% of their work time on policy development or advocacy (35.1%) or quality assurance (31.3%), respectively.

Respondents’ Professional Experiences and Interests

When asked what country they worked in, primarily, respondents named 95 countries in all seven world regions. 12 Just more than one third worked primarily in Europe and Central Asia (39.6%) or North America (36.2%), respectively, and the remaining quarter (24.2%) were from the other five world regions combined. Approximately one third (32.5%) spent more than 25% of their work time focused on cancer screening in lower-resource settings in their home country or elsewhere. Approximately three quarters (72.5%) did most of their cancer screening work in the context of organized screening programs.

All respondents had participated in one or more ICSN biennial meetings. Most (83.0%) attended the 2015 and/or 2017 meeting. Approximately one quarter (26.4%) participated in the 2012 meeting, and approximately one third (32.5%) participated in prior meetings, where attendance was capped (2010) or by invitation only (2008 and earlier).

Impacts of ICSN Participation on Knowledge Acquisition

Respondents were asked whether participating in the ICSN had helped to advance their knowledge of a range of professional activities in cancer screening ( Table 2 ). Three quarters (75.7%) agreed that participating had helped to advance their knowledge regarding conducting cancer screening research, and approximately half agreed that participating had helped to advance their knowledge regarding conducting quality assurance (56.8%), engaging in policy development or advocacy (56%), managing cancer screening implementation (47.7%), and developing and/or testing new technologies/tests for cancer screening (47.7%). Only approximately a fifth (22.2%) agreed that participating had helped to advance their knowledge regarding delivering cancer screening services, as a clinician.

ICSN Contribution to Advancing Participants’ Knowledge

Responses to an open-ended question about whether participating in the ICSN had advanced their knowledge in other topic areas highlighted four key topics: cancer risk, including risk prediction modeling; risks of screening, including overdiagnosis and adverse events; principles of and key issues in screening for specific cancer sites, including those within and outside of one’s area(s) of expertise; and knowledge of the range of screening practices internationally.

Impact of ICSN on International Knowledge Sharing, Networking, and Collaboration

Most respondents agreed that ICSN facilitated knowledge sharing and networking among diverse participants, including individuals engaged in cancer screening research and implementation (79.9%), living and working on different continents (74.0%), focused on different cancer sites (73.7%), and working in both high- and low-resource settings (62.2%). In addition, approximately three quarters (74.9%) of respondents agreed that ICSN has helped to form new international collaborations among cancer screening researchers, and approximately half (56.4%) agreed that ICSN had helped to form new international collaborations among cancer screening implementers ( Table 3 ).

Benefits of ICSN for Knowledge Sharing, Networking, and Collaboration in the Cancer Screening Field

Most respondents also reported that participating in the ICSN produced benefits for them, personally, regarding knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration ( Table 4 ). They reported that participating had provided opportunities to contribute their knowledge and expertise to assist others (70.4%) and to form new collaborations related to cancer screening implementation (58.0%) and/or research (57.6%). Less than one fifth (18.1%) reported that participating had helped them to secure technical assistance for screening implementation.

Personal Benefits of ICSN Participation for Knowledge Sharing, Networking, and Collaboration

Impact of ICSN on Training and Career Development

Approximately two-thirds of respondents agreed that ICSN has helped to advance the career development of current cancer screening experts (66.6%) and train the next generation of cancer screening experts (62.2%). In addition, approximately half of respondents (51.4%) reported that participating in the ICSN had advanced their own career development.

Impact of ICSN on Cancer Screening Research and Implementation

Approximately three quarters of respondents agreed that ICSN has helped to advance screening research and evaluation (75.4%), and nearly as many respondents (68.7%) reported that their own participation in the ICSN had informed advances in screening research or evaluation approaches and/or methods they used in their own work ( Table 5 ).

Benefits of ICSN for Cancer Screening Research and Implementation

Focusing on screening implementation, most respondents agreed that the ICSN had helped to advance effective practices in cancer screening (71.2%) and cancer screening policies (60.9%). In addition, approximately half of respondents reported that their participation in the ICSN had informed advances in screening implementation (50.2%) and policies (49.4%) in their own work settings. In an overall assessment of the value of the ICSN, nearly three quarters of respondents agreed that the ICSN had helped to shape the field of cancer screening (73.6%).

In open-ended comments, respondents attributed key successes of the ICSN—around facilitating knowledge acquisition, networking, collaboration, and advances in cancer screening research and implementation—in part to the design of the ICSN, including the network’s specialized focus on screening only, and the diversity of ICSN participants. In particular, they highlighted the value of including individuals from all over the world whose interests spanned cancer sites and whose professional activities, as a group, focused on both research and implementation. They also described how these characteristics enabled dissemination of effective policies and practices for cancer screening ( Table 6 ).

Characteristics of ICSN That Facilitate Knowledge Sharing, Networking, Collaboration, and Advancement of Cancer Screening Policies and Practices: Qualitative Responses

Bibliometric analyses identified 20 publications produced by ICSN scientific working groups and the ICSN leadership group (Appendix Table A1 ). These publications included a total of 75 coauthors located in 23 countries. This included 21 high-income countries (HICs) as well as two lower-middle income countries, both of which were included in only one of the 20 publications ( Fig 1 ).

Countries represented among coauthors of International Cancer Screening Network–produced publications, by number of publications.

These 20 publications were cited in 589 other publications, which together had more than 2,000 coauthors located in 57 countries. These included 39 HICs and 18 low- and middle-income countries, of which 14 were upper-middle–income countries and four were lower-middle–income countries. Of these 589 citing publications, 16 were other ICSN publications. Figure 2 shows the 30 countries that were represented in five or more citing publications. The remaining 27 countries were represented in fewer than five publications each.

Countries represented among coauthors of citing publications, by number of citing publications. A cutoff point of five or more citing articles was used for this figure. As such, the figure does not represent all 589 citing publications and all 57 countries represented among coauthors of these citing publications.

The coauthorship network diagram for ICSN publications depicts collaboration patterns among countries represented by coauthors of the 20 ICSN publications, in conjunction with country income categories ( Fig 3 ). It highlights the relative frequency of coauthorships among represented countries, ranging from one to 11 coauthored articles. The countries in the top half of this distribution are: the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, and Canada ( Fig 3 ).

Each circle in the network graphic represents a country represented among the coauthors of the 20 International Cancer Screening Network publications. The size of a circle is proportional to the number of publications in which the country is represented. The color of a circle represents the country’s income level (World Bank Atlas method of classification). The lines connecting the circles represent coauthorships, with a gray line representing one coauthorship and a dark blue line representing 11 coauthorships, which was the maximum number found. The color gradient between gray and dark blue represents the range from one to 11 coauthorships.

The coauthorship network diagram for citing publications likewise highlights collaboration patterns, this time among countries represented among citing publication coauthors ( Fig 4 ). It shows a range of one to 12 coauthored articles. The countries in the top half of this distribution include, once again, the United States, the Netherlands, Italy, and Canada, as well as the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, Spain, France, Germany, China, and Sweden. In the citing articles’ network map, collaborations across country income levels are now visible.

Each circle in the network graphic represents a country represented among the coauthors of the 589 citing publications. The size of a circle is proportional to the number of publications in which that country is represented. The color of a circle represent the country’s income level (World Bank Atlas method of classification). The lines connecting the circles represent coauthorships, with a gray line representing one coauthorship and a dark blue line representing 12 coauthorships, which was the maximum number found. The color gradient between gray and dark blue represents the range from one to 12 coauthorships.

The current evaluation of the ICSN provided an opportunity to assess a 30-year-old international research group for participants, the science, and translational applications. In doing so, it addressed the question: what is the value of longstanding investments in international research collaboration?

Findings reflect ICSN participants’ strong professional focus on cancer screening research, as expected given the research focus of the network ( Table 1 ). They also document that participants vary in their research, evaluation, and implementation activities, cancer sites of interest, and country locations—enriching the knowledge exchange that occurs via the ICSN ( Table 1 ).

Survey results documented the contributions of the ICSN to knowledge acquisition, with particularly strong agreement that ICSN advanced participants’ knowledge of conducting cancer screening research, conducting quality assurance, and engaging in policy development or advocacy ( Table 2 ). Topics on which respondents were less likely to agree that ICSN advanced their knowledge were those that focused on screening implementation, technology development, education of target populations, and delivery of clinical services. This pattern generally aligns with reported professional time spent on these activities and reflects the research focus of the network ( Table 1 ).

There was strong agreement that ICSN facilitated knowledge sharing and networking across diverse participants and helped to form new international collaborations among screening researchers and implementers ( Table 3 ). This was corroborated by reported personal benefits of ICSN participation ( Table 4 ). Although few respondents reported that ICSN participation helped them secure technical assistance, nearly three quarters reported that it helped them contribute their knowledge and expertise to assist others ( Table 4 ). This may reflect the fact that most participants in the survey were located in HICs ( Table 1 ).

There was strong agreement that the ICSN has helped to advance cancer screening research and evaluation, shape the field of cancer screening, advance effective screening implementation, and advance effective screening policies ( Table 5 ). Reported personal benefits of participation, and benefits of participation to one’s work setting, reinforced these findings ( Table 5 ). The network diagram for citing publications also highlights the influence of the ICSN on the field of cancer screening, as evidenced by citations of ICSN publications in nearly 600 publications with coauthors from 57 countries—many more than the 23 countries represented by coauthors of ICSN publications ( Figs 3 and ​ and4 4 ).

Bibliometrics showed that the ICSN working groups and leadership group produced 20 publications. This modest number reflects the fact that publications are only one component of ICSN’s activities. In addition, many of these publications report on complex multinational comparative research requiring years to implement. The citing publication data show that ICSN publications, although few in number, have had an important influence on the field in both HICs and low- and middle-income countries ( Fig 4 ). Furthermore, ICSN may have benefits beyond those addressed in this evaluation. For example, participants may have developed research questions, study designs, and/or publications that were inspired by topics, methods, or questions they learned about via ICSN.

Qualitative findings attributed the effectiveness of the ICSN to the combination of its specific focus on cancer screening and the diversity of participants’ professional experiences and knowledge within this field—across cancer screening sites, countries, high- and low-resource settings, and both research and implementation ( Table 6 ). Participants emphasized that this research exchange helped to create evidence-informed practice and policy.

A key limitation of this evaluation was that the sampling frame excluded individuals who have not attended ICSN, who may have different perceptions of the network’s value. In addition, bibliometrics documented, to some extent, the impact of the ICSN on the screening literature but cannot measure impact on cancer screening implementation. Finally, this evaluation lacked a comparison group.

Future evaluations of other research networks and consortia might answer questions such as: How do these groups influence translational outcomes, and what outcomes do they influence? How do voluntary networks, funded networks, and funded portfolios of investigator-driven research compare in their influence on the science and translational applications? And how do varied approaches to the leadership, management, and administration of these groups, as well as varied scientific goals (eg, basic, translational), influence outcomes?

Recent scientific trends are amplifying the potential of international research consortia and networks to advance screening research. We are therefore likely to see an increase in these approaches. Evaluation of these initiatives is essential to fully understand their value. Findings from this evaluation suggest the potential for longstanding international research networks to contribute to knowledge sharing and collaboration and advancement of research methods and findings, related policies and practices, and fields of science.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank members of the International Cancer Screening Network Steering Committee for their participation in formative interviews that contributed to survey development and for their review of the draft survey instrument. Our thanks also go to Paul Doria-Rose, PhD, who reviewed an earlier draft of this manuscript, and Jordan Freeman, MPH, who programmed the survey instrument and maintained the dataset.

International Cancer Screening Network Working Group and Leadership Group Publications (alphabetical order by first author)

Presented at the International Cancer Screening Network 2019 Biennial Meeting, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, June 3-5, 2019; the Evaluation 2018 Conference, Cleveland, OH, October 28-November 3, 2018; and the World Cancer Congress 2018, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 1-4, 2018.

Supported in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. HHSN261200800001E. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the US Government.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Conception and design : Amanda L. Vogel, Douglas M. Puricelli Perin, Stephen H. Taplin

Collection and assembly of data: Amanda L. Vogel, Douglas M. Puricelli Perin, Stephen H. Taplin

Data analysis and interpretation: All authors

Manuscript writing: All authors

Final approval of manuscript: All authors

Accountable for all aspects of the work: All authors

AUTHORS' DISCLOSURES OF POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The following represents disclosure information provided by authors of this manuscript. All relationships are considered compensated. Relationships are self-held unless noted. I = Immediate Family Member, Inst = My Institution. Relationships may not relate to the subject matter of this manuscript. For more information about ASCO's conflict of interest policy, please refer to www.asco.org/rwc or ascopubs.org/jgo/site/misc/authors.html .

No potential conflicts of interest were reported.

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Understanding the Value of International Research Networks: An Evaluation of the International Cancer Screening Network of the US National Cancer Institute

Affiliations.

• 1 Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research Sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD.
• 2 National Institutes of Health Library, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
• 3 National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
• PMID: 31600086
• PMCID: PMC6825249
• DOI: 10.1200/JGO.19.00197

Purpose: International research networks have the potential to accelerate scientific progress via knowledge sharing and collaboration. In 2018, the US National Cancer Institute evaluated the International Cancer Screening Network (ICSN), in operation since 1988.

Methods: ICSN hosts a biennial scientific meeting and scientific working groups. A survey was fielded to 665 ICSN participants, and a bibliometric analysis was conducted for ICSN publications.

Results: A total of 243 individuals completed the survey (36.5%). They reported that participating in the ICSN helped advance their knowledge of cancer screening research (75.7%), policy development (56%), and implementation (47.7%). Approximately three-quarters agreed that ICSN facilitated knowledge sharing and networking among researchers and implementers (79.9%) and those working on different continents (74.0%) and cancer sites (73.7%). More than half reported that participating helped them form new collaborations in screening implementation (58.0%) or research (57.6%). Most agreed that ICSN helped to advance screening research and evaluation (75.4%), effective screening practices (71.2%), and screening policies (60.9%). Many reported that participating informed advances in their own research (68.7%) and screening implementation (50.2%) and policies (49.4%) in their settings. Approximately two-thirds agreed that ICSN helped advance career development among current experts (66.6%) and train the next generation (62.2%). Half (51.4%) reported that participating advanced their own careers. The 20 ICSN publications included 75 coauthors. They were cited in 589 publications with more than 2,000 coauthors.

Conclusion: Findings provide evidence of the influence of ICSN on international knowledge dissemination, collaboration, and advances in cancer screening research, implementation, and policies and highlight the potential value of longstanding international research networks.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The following represents disclosure information provided by authors of this manuscript. All relationships are considered compensated. Relationships are self-held unless noted. I = Immediate Family Member, Inst = My Institution. Relationships may not relate to the subject matter of this manuscript. For more information about ASCO's conflict of interest policy, please refer to www.asco.org/rwc or ascopubs.org/jgo/site/misc/authors.html .

No potential conflicts of interest were reported.

Countries represented among coauthors of…

Countries represented among coauthors of International Cancer Screening Network–produced publications, by number of…

Countries represented among coauthors of citing publications, by number of citing publications. A…

Each circle in the network…

Each circle in the network graphic represents a country represented among the coauthors…

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International Research Network for NOD2 Associated Diseases (IRNNOD2AD)

Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 2 (NOD2) associated  diseases are a rapidly expanding group of inflammatory conditions including Crohn’s disease (CD), Blau syndrome (BS), and Yao syndrome (YAOS). While these disorders share some overlapping clinical manifestations, their clinical features, treatments, and outcomes are distinct. Among these conditions, YAOS has been recently characterized and involves multi-organ systems, which can easily lead to misdiagnosis and confusion with systemic autoimmune and other systemic auto-inflammatory diseases. YAOS does not seem uncommon. To raise more awareness and further our understanding of NOD2-associated diseases, especially YAOS and BS, the International Research Network for NOD2 Associated Diseases (IRNNOD2AD) has been formed under the leadership of Dr. Qingping Yao, Stony Brook University. The network consists of multi-disciplinary world-renowned clinicians/researchers and research scientists with interest in studying these diseases. The first meeting was held virtually on December 8, 2021, with the purpose of setting the long-term objectives of the network. The initial goals discussed and prioritized by the network members are the following:

1) Broadcasting relevant knowledge about the group of diseases in the medical community and the public to meet the needs of patients. 2) Publishing position papers or developing consensus guidelines for YAOS and BS. 3) Creating collaborations among clinicians, researchers/scientists, and patients to advance basic, translational and clinical research of these diseases. 4) Generating research ideas for future grant funding opportunities.

The ultimate objective of the network is to provide easily accessible, multi-disciplinary, standardized, and high-quality information that would accelerate research discoveries, improve diagnosis, and offer effective care for patients.

Upper panelists: from left to right

Dr. Ruth Napier, Research Scientist, Oregon Health & Science University, US Dr. Qingping Yao, Rheumatologist, Stony Brook University, US. Dr. John Davis, Rheumatologist, Mayo Clinic, US Dr. Garabet Yeretssian, Research Scientist, NY, US

Mid panelists: from left to right

Dr. Min Shen, Rheumatologist, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, China Dr. Naotomo Kambe, Dermatologist, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan Dr. Christine McDonald, Research Scientist, Cleveland Clinic, US Dr. Brianne Navetta-Modrov, Allergist/Immunologist, Stony Brook University, US

Lower panelists: from left to right Dr. Karoline Krause, Dermatologist/Allergist, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany Dr. Bo Shen, gastroenterologist, Columbia University, US Dr. Lawrence Afrin, Hematologist/Oncologist, AIM Center for Personalized Medicine, US

The integration of African countries in international research networks

• Published: 02 March 2022
• Volume 127 , pages 1995–2021, ( 2022 )

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• Elizabeth S. Vieira   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2240-110X 1 , 2 &
• Jorge Cerdeira   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-0557 3 , 4 , 5  

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In Africa, the production of scientific knowledge in an international context has been widely studied over time. However, the existing literature lacks a deeper understanding of the integration of African countries into international networks at the global level. This enables the identification of strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of African countries in scientific production. Thus, we looked at the dynamics of international research collaboration (IRC) of African countries from the perspective of the evolution of IRC, the presence of African countries in international research networks, and the collaboration networks among African countries. We examined these perspectives through the co-publications in Natural Sciences (NS), Engineering and Technology (E&T), Medical and Health Sciences (M&HS), Agricultural Sciences (AS) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SS&H) over three periods (1990–1999, 2000–2009, 2010–2018). The study revealed the continuous integration of African countries into global networks, although this integration is higher in NS and M&HS. Today, African countries can contribute more to the exchange and creation of knowledge at the international level, and they have more opportunities for boosting their research networks, exchanging information, and exploring new scientific problems. Nevertheless, most African countries occupy a fragile position in these networks, especially in E&T, AS and SS&H. Concerning IRC between and within African regions, the results indicated weak inter/intraregional integration, especially in E&T, AS and SS&H.

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Acknowledgements

Elizabeth S. Vieira thanks FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) for funding through program DL 57/2016—Norma transitória (DL 57/2016/CP1346/CT0017). This work received financial support from PT national funds (FCT/MCTES, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior) through the project UIDB/50006/2020. The research by Jorge Cerdeira has been supported by FCT within the scope of UIDB/00727/2020.

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Vieira, E.S., Cerdeira, J. The integration of African countries in international research networks. Scientometrics 127 , 1995–2021 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04297-7

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Received : 07 September 2021

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04297-7

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