International collaborations account for nearly a quarter of all publications and produce significant citations and influence. But the coronavirus pandemic will likely stifle much of this momentum: investigators cannot come face-to-face when potential travelers are warned about a robbery or banned from entering certain destinations. The effect of COVID-19 threatens to derail decades of shared clinical progress in many parts of the world, namely in the United States and Western Europe, where foreign associations have evolved rapidly.
Since 1991, science has benefited from increased investment and ease of communication, as well as the dismantling of geopolitical barriers. Richer countries such as the UK, the United States, France and Germany saw a 10-fold increase in co-authored goods worldwide, and Brazil, Russia, India and China multiplied by 20. The United States and China are the world’s leading study partners and partner more with other countries than any other.
Researchers seek to locate tactics for this productivity in the existing crisis, by finding associations and clinical projects. But many, especially those in emerging countries, are experiencing primary setbacks. Nature spoke to five scientists about the truth of corporations for collective studies in the face of a pandemic.
Katy Soapi, Director (currently licensed), Pacific Natural Products Research Center, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji.
People from other countries are asking for paintings with scientists at my university, but they only need us to provide them with samples, while we need to do studies and collaborate on articles. We need to paint and we need our contributions to be valued. It is vital to come with the voice of scientists from small island states.
Since 2005, my medium has been funded through a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. For paintings with two U.S. facilities (The Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California) to look for possible antibiotics and other drugs in South Pacific marine organizations. This delight has led us to provide key clinical data for the Fijian government to expand the key law for foreign treaties that oversee the use and conservation of biodiversity. The progress of policies that will advise bioprospecting and bio-discovery is a sensitive and debatable field of research, but we now have that capability.
The collaboration should end in August, but we were able to get a loose extension with COVID-19. However, we don’t know what will happen after that. I don’t know how we’re going to build new collaborations, and it’s probably going to be harder.
To be more excited about potential collaborators, we have expanded and diversified our study skills to track ocean acidification and “blue carbon” stocks captured in our oceans. In addition, we collected several thousand samples from marine organisms, adding extracts of sponges, algae, soft corals and sedimentary bacteria, which were not fully analyzed. We have the ability to continue analyzing those local plants and medicinal plants for their antimicrobial or fitness editing properties. But we cannot, even if Fiji has declared itself without COVID and the laboratories are open again, because we want investments and partnerships to do so.
Caroline Wagner, Public Science Scientist, Ohio State University, Columbus.
In my own research, more than 90% of foreign collaborations start face-to-face. But now it makes sense to be more planned in terms of conscience. While social media does not replace human relations, they are likely to play a more vital role in the pandemic. On LinkedIn’s enterprise network, for example, connections to your contacts become much more vital (an icon indicating a second or third degree connection appears next to people’s names).
Data is also a vital resource that can attract a contributor. Visibility is very vital, so make sure others can locate the social media team of your task, such as Twitter and knowledge repositories, by adding figshare. (Figshare is owned by Digital Science, a company controlled through Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which owns a stake in Nature’s publishing house, Springer Nature).
When COVID-19 invaded the world, my colleagues and I reviewed foreign collaborations in coronavirus studies in the 24 months before the outbreak and the few months following. We found that COVID study groups are smaller than those who described coronaviruses in the past era and constitute fewer nations1. It is more likely that people who already knew each other were in favor of the combined paintings in the course of a crisis. To collaborate remotely, you need to talk hard enough to create something new.
In unpublished research, we have also noticed that these groups consolidate their groups. Researchers in emerging countries, who do not have as many resources or access to knowledge, have lost and are much less likely to participate. Scientists from countries that are not only funded, but also a wide variety of others they can turn to to download contributions, appliances, and knowledge from previous reports, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and China, are working in a combination more intensively. But other people’s contributions to countries without these resources, adding Saudi Arabia and Thailand, have declined. Six months after COVID appeared, these groups almost disappeared from the camp. And it will be more difficult for emerging countries to return; when existing connections are strengthened, it will be more complicated for someone else to sign up for them.
There has also been a great rush to examine public health and infectious diseases. The number of newspapers in these spaces has increased considerably. In that sense, the pandemic affects what other people are about, a long-running outcome.
Sam Dupont, marine biologist, Gothenburg University, Sweden.
Five or six years ago, I was traveling part of the time. As I rely on the weather, I learned that it wasn’t good, so I reduced my time to 20-25% of what I had been. I decided not to attend meetings unless they were really important.
In April, after the coronavirus, I closed my lab, the precise era in which I conduct my ocean acidification experiments. Everything’s going to be late now. Instead of gathering new knowledge or using existing knowledge to create new ideas, I spent more time thinking about long-term reports and delving into literature to re-analyze existing knowledge.
I have a long-term collaboration with Chilean colleagues. This year, we had planned a joint experiment to verify a theoretical concept that we had published in 2017 in Nature Ecology and Evolution2. But without being able to travel, we had no way of conducting these experiments, so we expanded the literature review in our article to gain more existing knowledge. The original conceptual document was based on about five studies. Now we’re expanding that number to at least 100. This technique, the re-evaluation of knowledge in literature, is underutilized in science.
Having limited ability to generate new science, especially on the ground, puts me in a scenario similar to that of many colleagues in emerging countries. Normally, I spend a quarter of my time on science education in emerging countries. In the future, I plan to teach them how to analyze existing literature, for example, by performing meta-analysis, so that they are better able to produce concepts when resources are limited.
My recommendation to the investigators starting their careers is to be brave. Recently, someone I didn’t know sent me a message and his cv, wondering if I was looking to paint with him. We’ve arranged a virtual meeting, we’ve been discussing for about an hour, and now we have normal touches and we’re drafting an assignment proposal to bring it here when needed. He had the audacity to touch me. Sometimes you have to be insistent. Self-isolation does not mean that you cannot enroll in the online meeting organization.
Alex Moore, Coastal Wetlands Environmentalist, American Museum of Natural History, New York.
Late last year, I visited American Samoa twice to meet with collaborators and where to conduct cash studies on how the country’s mangrove systems paint and gain advantages from local communities.
I had to return in May this year to assess the importance of certain species in the functioning of the ecosystem. He had also planned to spend august to measure the effects of the experiments. He hoped to be informed about how local citizens value and use their landscapes, document the adjustments they have noticed over time, and incorporate this Aboriginal wisdom into control recommendations.
Now, instead of meeting in person, I sought remote tactics to interact with other people and ask the same questions. It is difficult to ensure a meaningful connection and verbal exchange on platforms like Zoom.
For box paints, I explore two options. If COVID numbers are flattened in the next six to 8 months, you may simply move to American Samoa for a one-month truncated cash season in May or June. I’ll have less time to collect data, but it’s bigger than anything. The option is to send all the curtains to my collaborators on the island, who would paint with the academics there to collect samples that they can send me to process. It would be slower and less effective. But I realize that I am flexible on the ground, nothing has ever happened as planned. If you start to recognize that things are out of your control, it’s less difficult to expand a plan B, C, or D.
My main purpose is to make sure that everything I do is meaningful to local communities. I learned that for the task to be a success, I had to get back in touch with other people to find the most productive way to make the studies applicable to the new circumstances. I make contact once a month with my ten employees in the field.
Hasnawati Saleh, research coordinator, Australia-Indonesia Research Association, Australia-Indonesia Centre, Makassar, Indonesia.
I am coordinating a consortium of 51 researchers at 11 universities in Australia and Indonesia that was introduced in 2019. Our goal is to examine how the first railway south of Sulawesi, Indonesia, a great infrastructure, will connect the entire island and everything from the economy to public health. We are particularly interested in influencing young people, i.e. the maximum unemployment rate among other people over 18 to 24 in southern Sulawesi.
The first assembly attended by almost all of our researchers took place in Makassar in February this year; The first case of COVID-19 in Indonesia was announced on 2 March. From now on, our researchers will no longer be able to travel. Australia has closed its borders, so investigators can’t come here either.
Southern Sulawesi is among the most affected in the provinces of Indonesia. But we temporarily adapted the assignment to come with COVID-19. We see how the virus affects health, connectivity and economic recovery.
However, the structure of the railway continued. Lately we are running in a series of scenarios in case COVID-19 is extended. We made the decision that there would be no investigators for the remainder of 2020. And instead of bringing other people together in person, we talk on the phone, WhatsApp, Zoom and email.
These interviews have been modified for clarity and extension.
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