Science & technology

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‘Hotspots’ and international scientific collaboration

The OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011: Innovation and Growth in Knowledge Economies report was released on 20 September.  While I’ve only seen the summary (which is the source for the first three images below) and an informative entry (‘A Changing Landscape: University hotspots for science and technology‘) in the OECD’s Education Today weblog, it is interesting to see a now common pattern and message emerging in these types of reports, and in a series of like-minded conferences, workshops, and associated reports (e.g. the Royal Society’s excellent Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific collaboration in the 21st century, March 2011):

(a) relative stasis or decline in the OECD member countries (though they still do dominate, and will for decades to come);

(b) relatively fast growth within the so-called BRIC countries; and

(c) increased international collaboration, both as outcome and as aspiration.

And it is the aspiration for international collaboration that is particularly fascinating to ponder, for these types of scoreboards — analytical benchmarking cum geostrategic reframing exercises really — help produce insights on the evolving ‘lie of the land,’ while also flagging the ideal target spaces (countries, regions, institutions) for prospective future collaboration. National development processes and patterns thus drive change, but they interact in fascinating ways with the international collaborative process, which drives more international collaboration, and on it goes. As Alessandra Colecchia of the OECD puts it:

What does this [the changing landscape, and emerging ‘hotspots’] mean and why is it important? As students and researchers become more mobile, new sets of elite universities outside of the US could materialize. Whether or not we call it the “Banyan” or “Bonsai” League is yet to be determined, but it is clear that OECD countries may no longer have the monopoly on scientific excellence in higher education.

Luckily for us, education is generally not a zero-sum game. When others gain important insights and breakthroughs in science and technology, the entire field benefits. So wherever you are in the world, you can wear your college sweatshirt with pride.

True, though questions remain about the principles/missions/agendas driving international collaboration. For example, there is an ongoing scramble in Europe and North America to link up with research-active Brazilian institutions of higher education; an issue nicely summarized in today’s OBHE story titled ‘Brazil leads the charge from Latin America.’

As noted in the fourth image below (which was extracted from the Royal Society’s Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific collaboration in the 21st century), the nature of coauthor-based collaboration with Brazil is changing, with some countries edging closer because scholar-to-scholar ties are deepening or thinning. The reconfiguration is most likely deepening from 2008 on as a slew of new policies, programs and projects get promoted and funded in both Brazil and actual or potential partner countries.

Some of the questions that come to my mind, after participating in some workshops where relations with Brazil are discussed include:

  • What values drive these new initiatives to reach out across space into and out of Brazil?
  • What disciplines are factored in (or not), and what types of researchers (junior? senior? elite? emerging?) get supported?
  • What languages are they dependent upon, and what languages will they indirectly promote?
  • Are these international collaboration drives built on the principle of ‘you are only as strong as your weakest link’ (i.e. an exclusive one), or are they attendant to the need for capacity building and longer time horizons for knowledge development?
  • Are these international collaboration drives built upon implicit and explicit principles of reciprocity, or otherwise?
  • What about the territorial dimensions of the development process? Will we see hotspot to ’emerging hotspot’ linkages deepen, or will hotspots be linked up with non-hotspots and if so how, and why? Can an archipelago-like landscape of linked up hotspots ‘serve’ nations/regions/the world, or is it generative of exclusionary developmental tendencies?

These are but a few of many questions to ponder as we observe, and jointly construct, emerging ‘hotspots’ in the global higher education and research landscape.

Kris Olds

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Note: the first three images were extracted from the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011: Innovation and Growth in Knowledge Economies (Sept 2011). The fourth image was extracted from the Royal Society’s Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific collaboration in the 21st century (March 2011).

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Graphic feed: CREATE – an international multi-institution research campus in Singapore/Asia

Source: National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Republic of Singapore.

Note: Further information on the Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise (CREATE) is available via the CREATE Project Brief.

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5

Note: the image above is a Worldle word cloud of the Executive Summary of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, a report released today by the US’ National Academies Press.

See this NatureNews story (‘“Gathering Storm” back on the radar‘) for one perspective the report development process and (alarmist) message, as well as below for the official summary description:

In the face of so many daunting near-term challenges, U.S. government and industry are letting the crucial strategic issues of U.S. competitiveness slip below the surface. Five years ago, the National Academies prepared Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a book that cautioned: “Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position.” Since that time we find ourselves in a country where much has changed–and a great deal has not changed.

So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous view of the authors is that our nation’s outlook has worsened. The present volume, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, explores the tipping point America now faces. Addressing America’s competitiveness challenge will require many years if not decades; however, the requisite federal funding of much of that effort is about to terminate.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited provides a snapshot of the work of the government and the private sector in the past five years, analyzing how the original recommendations have or have not been acted upon, what consequences this may have on future competitiveness, and priorities going forward. In addition, readers will find a series of thought- and discussion-provoking factoids–many of them alarming–about the state of science and innovation in America.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited is a wake-up call. To reverse the foreboding outlook will require a sustained commitment by both individual citizens and government officials–at all levels. This book, together with the original Gathering Storm volume, provides the roadmap to meet that goal. While this book is essential for policy makers, anyone concerned with the future of innovation, competitiveness, and the standard of living in the United States will find this book an ideal tool for engaging their government representatives, peers, and community about this momentous issue.

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Multidisciplinary research – an essential driver for innovation

TrewhellaEditor’s note: today’s entry was written by Professor Jill Trewhella (pictured to the right), Deputy Vice Chancellor – Research, University of Sydney, Australia. It was originally delivered at the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Conference, 9 March 2009. Our thanks to Nicholas Haskins, Program Manager (International Networks), Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International), for bringing this interesting text to our attention, and to Professor Trewhella for allowing us to post it here. Professor Trewhella is Professor of Molecular and Microbial Bioscience and a former Director of Bioscience at America’s top nuclear research facility, the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

I’ve included some relevant images below, that were taken today, of two of UW-Madison’s new multidisciplinary research complexes — the nearly finished Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research (the top 2 images) and the under-construction Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (the bottom 2 images). Kris Olds

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The Challenges and Opportunities for Multidisciplinary Research in a World of Complex, Interdependent Systems

For 2000 years, the advancement of knowledge in western civilization has taken a path of increasing specialization.  We have approached understanding our world by deconstructing it into smaller and smaller fragments creating the disciplines and subdisciplines in order to be able to predict, or at least to explain, behaviour in nature, individuals, and society.

UWmed1In today’s knowledge landscape there are powerful drivers for multidisciplinary research.  Through simple collaboration, researchers from different disciplines can accomplish more by teaming.  Interdisciplinary research moves beyond simple collaboration and teaming to integrate data, methodologies, perspectives, and concepts from multiple disciplines in order to advance fundamental understanding or to solve real world problems.  Interdisciplinary research requires either that an individual researcher gains a depth of understanding two or more than one discipline and be fluent in their languages and methodologies, or more frequently that multidisciplinary teams assemble and create a common language and framework for discovery and innovation.

The drivers for interdisciplinary research are varied.

  • In the first instance, nature and society are complex, and our innate curiosity to understand the elements and forces within them requires examination from the perspective of multiple disciplines.
  • Importantly, we have a critical need to solve societal problems in a world that is subject to many forces:
    • The example most urgently felt at this time is the consequence of failing to fully understand all of the forces unleashed by the free movement of capital and globalization.
    • Only a short time ago, our urgent focus was on climate change, where we must consider, among other things, how oceans and rivers are influenced by land use and the products of industrialization, atmospheric constituents and solar radiation.  These subsystems are linked in time and space and have embedded in them multiple feedback mechanisms.
  • The complexity presented in each of these real world examples requires interdisciplinary research that spans the natural and social sciences if we are to attain the kind of predictive capability that could inform policy makers.
  • Finally, we know that the tools that we have available to examine our world are most often transformational when drawn from outside the discipline that developed them; such as the discovery of X-rays by physicists and their impact on medicine, or the creation of the internet by the military and its impact on communication in society at large.

Academic institutions are largely organized in ways that promote the advancement of individual disciplines, or sub-disciplines.  Policies that govern hiring, promotion, and the allocation of resources often work against interdisciplinary research.  If interdisciplinary research is to flourish in academia, then the reward systems in academia have to recognize the different pace with which interdisciplinary research may proceed and the fact that it is often a team rather than individual accomplishment.  There also is a need for flexible organizational structures that can operate across discipline-focused departments.  Directed institutes and centres with seed funding can encourage interdisciplinary research.  But more fundamental advances may emerge from creating a body of scholarly work that establishes common languages and frameworks in specific areas and examines what makes successful interdisciplinary research.  This approach is one we are pursuing at the University of Sydney with our newly established Social Sciences Institute and our Institute for Sustainable Solutions.

UWmed2Funding agencies also encounter difficulties in facilitating interdisciplinary research, and must find creative mechanisms for overcome barriers, such as:

  • Peer review systems that depend heavily on experts from single disciplines, and the reality that interdisciplinary peer review panels are not easy to assemble and operate.
  • The extra time needed for interdisciplinary teams to learn develop a common language and framework for study is an impediment in a competitive system that is research output driven.
  • How do we set performance goals for evaluating an interdisciplinary research program.
  • Interdisciplinary research is likely to be expensive; multiple chief investigators have to come together with disparate capabilities.
  • Supporting interdisciplinary research requires an increased tolerance of risk.
  • It is often the case that when an agency puts out a call for an interdisciplinary program, pressure is felt from all sides to over-promise and under-budget, leading to the inevitable problem of under-performance.

Benchmarking the mechanisms by which successful interdisciplinary programs have been supported is essential to ensuring the most return for investment in this challenging area.  Looking at home and abroad at the results of using problem focused calls, seed funding, sustained funding over a longer term, targeted fellowships, etc, is essential for future planning.

Training researchers to work at the interfaces of the disciplines

Training researchers who can transcend the barriers that exist between the disciplines requires innovation in teaching and learning.   In the University setting, our training programs largely focus on in depth training in a discipline or a set of closely related sub-disciplines.  To develop the pool of researchers who are best prepared for interdisciplinary research, we need undergraduate programs that provide depth in the major discipline(s) while also enabling students to participate in interdisciplinary courses and be exposed to research experiences that transcend the discipline of their major.

The earlier in our training that we are exposed to different languages and methodologies, the better we are able to understand the potential contributions that may come from outside our discipline.  The better we are able to formulate complex questions and then integrate data, ideas, and perspectives as we seek answers.

WID1PhD programs need to consider the benefits of broader exposure.  Lowering the barriers to students moving between institutions and even disciplines could have great benefits for our ability to train the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers and researchers who are facile at participating in interdisciplinary teaming.  We need to recognize the benefits for students who gain training in one discipline to be able to acquire training in another – and enable it to happen.

There are examples of successful programs aimed at encouraging interdisciplinary training.  I once hosted in my Biophysics laboratory (which was in a Chemistry Department!) a young graduate student from the Mathematical Biology Department who was participating in the Integrated Graduate Education Research Traineeship (IGERT) program sponsored by the US National Science Foundation.  The idea was, in this case, for the student to learn the difficulties involved in acquiring accurate biophysical data.  The student had no aspirations to become an experimentalist, but he left my laboratory understanding how the data were generated and what its limitations and strengths were; and importantly what he would be asking of his collaborators to produce more data!  He could use this knowledge to formulate the questions he needed to ask of other kinds of experimental data that would be the ultimate test of his theoretical frameworks.  This example may seem a very modest one, as the distance between mathematical biology and experimental biophysics seems not so great, but as such it is a good demonstration of how difficult it can be to become truly interdisciplinary.  The languages, cultures and goals of what might be thought of as subdisciplines here, often make what is learned in one of no value to the other; the theorist’s spherical cow being the anecdotal example epitomizing the gulf of understanding between theory and experiment in the study of biological systems.

WID3The potential for interdisciplinary research ultimately hinges on the extent to which individuals want to engage in it, and equally importantly if they have the opportunity to do so.  Academia, national laboratories, and industry can create the opportunities and incentives to attract our best and brightest to this frontier.  The individual interdisciplinary researcher is likely to be a relatively rare bird, and it will be the teams of researchers that are more the norm for advancing interdisciplinary research.  Research teams are in themselves modestly complex social entities and in their 2004 study entitled Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, a panel of the US National Academy of Sciences found that they were limited by the lack of a body of peer reviewed research in the social sciences that “elucidated the complex social and intellectual processes that make for successful interdisciplinary research.”  While we have made some strides in thinking about the role of flexible structures and funding incentives to facilitate multidisciplinary teams coming together for a problem focussed effort or an area study, there is a need for social scientists to grapple with the more fundamental aspects of what facilitates successful interdisciplinary research; that is what enables high performance teams breaking down the barriers of language and culture and create knowledge that drives innovation.

References

National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute Medicine. (2004) Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, Washington DC, National Academies Press.

David Easton (1991) The Division, Integration, and Transfer of Knowledge, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol 44, No 4, pp 8-27, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jill Trewhella

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The global geographies of stem cell research activity and policy

Today’s Financial Times includes a full page analysis (‘An industry to grow‘) that examines aspects of state-society-economy relations with respect to stem cell research.

The author, Clive Cookson (who also runs the FT.com Science Blog), deftly weaves five threads through the article: the role of the state, and inter-state competition, in shaping a very geographically uneven development process; the role of key university-based researchers (like UW-Madison’s James Thomson) in spurring on innovation; the evolution of technology in shaping the research process and associated ethical debates; the evolving role of the private sector in fueling (or not) stem cell research and associated commercialization dynamics; and the factors shaping the actual and perceived temporal dimensions of stem cell research.

See below for some fascinating maps that the FT drew upon for their associated graphic in ‘An industry to grow‘. Our sincere gratitude to William Hoffman of the University of Minnesota’s Medical School for permission to reprint his maps.

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Kris Olds

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IBM and collaborators open a new rail innovation centre in Beijing

As someone who loves taking the train, misses the TGV, Eurostar, and Thalys systems (having lived in France last year), and is perplexed why the world’s wealthiest country does not get serious about fast speed rail, this news story caught my eye.

I’ll paste in most of the accompanying text below, from IBM’s Smarter Planet website.  What is interesting, from a GlobalHigherEd perspective, is the nature of the array of institutions that have been brought together to create such space of innovation, and where it is based.

Today IBM opened a worldwide rail innovation center in Beijing, China.  We’re excited because it’s the first time rail companies, universities, government leaders and a wide range of rail experts are gathering to figure out what it will take to bring the best rail systems to every country in the world….

Already members include Tsinghua University, Michigan Technological University, Professor Joseph M. Sussman of MIT, Railinc, RMI, Motorola, Sabre, the California High Speed Rail Authority, and Olivier G. Maurel, CIO of ILOG (an IBM company) and former CIO of SNCF in France.

The kinds of things we’ll work on are advanced data analytics for scheduling and predictive maintenance, cell phone enabled passenger service, wireless sensors on bearings and axles, digital video systems that ensure a clear track ahead and automatically respond to danger — to create rail systems that will support economic vitality, improved quality of life through reduced road congestion, and environmental sustainability.

The idea is when the best minds get together, everyone benefits.  That means better, faster on-time performance, far more efficient scheduling, maximized equipment usage and fewer vehicles congesting cities.

Think about this:  A single freight train on a track can replace 280 trucks on a road, reducing fuel use, congestion and emissions.  And considering every year nine billion gallons of fuel is wasted in traffic congestion we need all the help we can get.

Here’s to breathing easier, relaxing more and getting from city center to city center in the most efficient way possible.

Kris Olds

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Mapping out Europe’s progress towards a knowledge-based economy

erareportcoverThe European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research has just published an informative and data-laden report titled Science, Technology and Competitiveness Key Figures Report 2008/2009. As the press release notes, the main findings are:

1. Research is a key competitive asset in a globalised world.

Major S&T players have emerged, notably in Asia. Knowledge is more and more evenly distributed with the EU now accounting for a share of less than 25%. The ERA must become more attractive, open and competitive on the global scene.

2. The overall EU R&D intensity is stagnating but this hides diversity at the national level.

All EU Member States have increased their expenditure in R&D from 2000 to 2006, which shows their commitment to the Lisbon strategy. However, GDP experienced the same rate of growth over the period, which meant that R&D intensity stayed at around 1.84% since 2005. Between 2000 and 2006, 17 Member States, mainly those which are catching up, have increased their R&D intensity, but 10, representing 47% of EU GDP, have seen their R&D intensities decrease. Japan has increased its R&D intensity from 3.04% to 3.39%, Korea from 2.39% to 3.23% and China is catching up fast, going from 0.90% to 1.42%.

3. Private Sector Investment intensity still too low.

The main reason for the R&D intensity gap between the EU and its competitors is the difference in business sector R&D financing, which decreased in the EU from 2000 to 2005 while it increased substantially in the US, Japan and China. This is mostly due to the smaller size of the research-intensive high-tech industry in the EU. Building the knowledge intensive economy requires structural changes towards higher R&D intensities within sectors and a greater share of high-tech sectors in the EU economy. This requires framework conditions that favour the development of fast-growing high-tech SMEs, the development of innovation-friendly markets in Europe and cheaper access to EU-wide patenting.

4. Excellence in research: a growing pool of researchers a still lower capacity of knowledge exploitation than competitors.

The number of researchers has grown twice as fast in the EU as in the US and Japan since 2000, even if the share of researchers in the labour force is still lower. As regards impact of research, the EU still ranks as the world’s largest producer of scientific knowledge (measured by publications), but contributes less than the US to high impact publications.

5. An increased attractiveness to foreign investments and S&T professionals.

The EU has been attracting a growing share of private R&D investments from the US despite the rise of Asia as a new R&D location. In 2005, US affiliates made 62.5% of their R&D investments in the EU and only 3.3% in China. It has also been attracting a growing number of S&T professionals from third countries.

This 169 page report is a multi-scalar mapping of sorts; a distillation of the agendas and impacts associated with efforts to (a) integrate the European Research Area (ERA), while also (b) deepening collaborative relations with select geographies of the global research landscape. As some sample figures from the ‘international’ section of the report indicate, this is indeed a very uneven global research landscape on a number of axes, yet a fast changing one too.

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Science, Technology and Competitiveness Key Figures Report 2008/2009 should be read in association with Europe’s new (2008) Strategic Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation, as well as the very important Council ‘Conclusions concerning a European partnership for international scientific and technological cooperation‘ (2 December 2008).

In addition, please recall our 4 August 2008 entry (‘Globalizing research: forces, patterns, and collaborative practices‘), which also refers to some related research reports.

We’ll be returning to the topic of the global dimensions of the ERA over the next few months, and we’re also planning a series of entries related to regionalism, interregionalism, and the complex relationship between higher education and research.

Kris Olds

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Europe’s new Strategic Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation

Over the course of the last several years, it has become abundantly clear that the people guiding the future-oriented development strategies of many universities, virtually all national funding agencies, and most ministries of higher education and research (or equivalent), are seeking to facilitate the creation of global research imaginations and networks. This is a theme we have incrementally addressed in GlobalHigherEd, including in ‘Globalizing research: forces, patterns, and collaborative practices’. Since this 4 August 2008 entry was posted, Brandeis University kindly let us know about a related event (a 2008 symposium titled ‘The Global: Implications for Research and the Curriculum‘), which highlights one of the more exemplary examples of rethinking underway right now at the university level.

A global research imagination, and its associated research practices and networks, are posited to enable ‘global challenges’ to be addressed, to bring together complimentary expertise (which is not always distributed evenly across space), and to facilitate greater innovation in the research process. The forging of global research networks also enables ties to be created, maintained, or perhaps rekindled; a process that ostensibly brings concepts like ‘brain circulation’, versus ‘brain drain’, to life, as well as geographically dispersed virtual communities.

euflagsA new Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation

It is in such a context that we need to view the European Union’s 29 September 2008 Communication, titled A Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation. For the non-European readers of this entry, a Communication is a paper produced by the European Commission (EC), most often to the key institutions (e.g., Council of the European Union or the European Parliament). It is generally the outcome of a series of initiatives that might follow this sequence: the production of (i) a staff working paper, (ii) the development of a consultation paper that asks for wider inputs and views, and then, if it keeps proceeding it is in the form of (iii) a Communication. The decision to move to this stage is generally if the EC thinks it can get some traction on an issue to be discussed by these other agencies. This is not the only pattern or route, but it does register that issue has wider internal EC backing (that is in the nerve centres of power), and a sense that it might get traction with the Member States.

These forms of ‘white paper’ style policy documents are fascinating, but sometimes challenging to make sense of given all of the messages they need to convey. One vehicle to do so is to simply identify the sections and subsections for they themselves send out a message about what really matters. In the case of this 14 page long Communication, we see the following structure presented:

Key strategic goal for international cooperation in science and technology and universal access to ICTs

1. PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK FOR INTERNATIONAL S&T COOPERATION AND THE NEW INFORMATION SOCIETY PARTNERSHIPS

Widening the ERA and making it more open to the world

Ensuring coherence of policies and complementarity of programmes

Fostering strategic S&T cooperation with key third countries

Developing the attractiveness of Europe as a research partner

Launching results-oriented partnerships on information society regulation

The European Community and Member States working together

2. ORIENTATIONS FOR ACTION TO MAKE THE ERA MORE OPEN TO THE WORLD

2.1. Strengthening the international dimension of the ERA
• Integrating Europe’s neighbours into the ERA
• Fostering strategic cooperation with key third countries through geographic and thematic targeting

2.2. Improving the framework conditions for international S&T cooperation
• Tackling scientific challenges through global research infrastructures
• Mobility of researchers and global networking
• More open research programmes
• Intellectual Property Issues
• Pre-standardization

3. IMPLEMENTING A SUSTAINABLE PARTNERSHIP

era-logoscreenThe Communication, which is designed to help advance the development of the European Research Area (ERA), speaks to Member and Associated States, but also the rest of the world. This said, it is our sense that the core audiences of this document are Member States, which are being asked to work with the Commission in a much more coordinated manner, and select countries that have a significant presence in the global research landscape.

While this is not the place to outline the historical path that led to the creation of the Communication, it is important to note that it was developed in the aftermath of:

  • The emergence (2000), review, and relaunch (2005) of the Lisbon strategy, all of which provide impetus and traction for a more expansive research imagination and development agenda;
  • A broad 2007-2008 consultative process to rethink the ERA, some seven years after it was formally established in 2000 (readers interested in this consultative process should see this site, and the associated Green Paper, for further details).

The Communication also ties into related initiatives that we have profiled on GlobalHigherEd, including the so-called “Fifth Freedom” (see ‘Mobility and knowledge as the “Fifth Freedom” in Europe: embedding market liberalism?’), and is a follow up, of sorts, to the 2006 Commission Communication “Towards a Global Partnership in the Information Society” and the public consultation launched in July 2007 regarding how to open up new global markets for Europe’s ICT industry.

Now, the broad tenor of this well crafted Communication is in some ways nothing new. For years the EU has sought to facilitate a global research imagination, and enhance researcher mobility and expansive networks. Related initiatives like ERA-Link have been developed to forge ties with the many expatriate European researchers who reside around the world, especially in countries like the US. But, and this is a key but, the Communication deepens and refines thinking about how to build a global research imagination, and extend research networks:

  • inside Member States;
  • out to “Neighbouring countries” to build a “broader ERA”;
  • out to “Developing countries” to build “S&T capacity, sustainable development, global initiatives”, and
  • out to “Industrialised” and “emerging economies” to enhance “mutual benefit” and better address “global challenges”,

all of which theoretically provides feedback loops that simultaneously build the ERA and Europe’s standing in the global research landscape. It is not for nothing that Brussels released a summary of the Communication titled ‘Putting Europe high on the global map of science and technology: Commission advocates new international strategy‘ (24 September 2008).

While many elements of the Communication are worth noting, we will only focus on one right now – the principle of reciprocity. In a subsequent entry we will focus on the issue of how such region-derived frameworks for international science and technology cooperation generate structural pressure on less-developed countries to create supra-national regional structures when engaging about such issues.

eufp7The principle of “reciprocity”

What this means is that the EU will actually open up its research largesse to non-Europeans if their funding agencies do the same, subject to negotiations that end in consensus. As the Communication (p. 13) puts it:

EC bilateral S&T agreements are based on the principles of equitable partnership, common ownership, mutual advantage, shared objectives and reciprocity. While these principles have not always been fully implemented, reciprocal access to research programmes and funds should be pursued to enhance the mutual benefit of international S&T cooperation. FP7 [Seventh Research Framework Programme] is open to third country partners. Funding is normally limited to participants from international cooperation partner countries. However, since open competition promotes excellence in research, funding for collaborative projects could be extended to include research organisations and researchers located in industrialised third countries where reciprocal funding is made available for European researchers.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, received a 30 September notice that profiled the new Communication. In this notice, the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington DC stated:

US research teams are eligible to receive EC funding when the research component is deemed essential for the success of the project.

This is a significant shift in policy and especially practice. And while the specific details of what “reciprocity” means remain to be formally developed, it highlights a willingness to use material resources to create and/or deepen new transnational research networks. Thus foreign researchers, and research teams, will be enrolled in European networks much more easily. Yet, it is also important to be cognizant that the criteria underlying the granting of access to said monies are first and foremost those of an intellectual nature, and only if the EU views the projects to be associated with strategically important themes/sectors. It is also worth noting that the elevation of reciprocity enables the European Commission to create Europe-led virtual research teams; a strategy that helps overcome the ongoing challenges of creating the Blue Card scheme in Europe, a scheme somewhat similar to the US’ Green Card (a card Kris holds, which grants permanent residence, and virtually all rights except for voting). In other words, this initiative weaves together intellectual and labour market logics in some creative and realpolitik ways given intra-European debates about immigration and mobility (even of skilled labour).

In closing, A Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation is a strategy document that seeks to enhance international cooperation in science and technology, and thereby facilitate the creation of a global research imagination and associated research practices. “Strategic cooperation” with third countries, this said, needs to be enhanced through much more that fashioning frameworks: cooperation needs to be brought to life at a range of levels, and in a variety of forms, and this involves bodily presence and face-to-face.

euusworkshoplogo2One mechanism to do so is the sponsorship of policy dialogues. One of us will be attending such a dialogue – the EU/US Research and Education Workshop: Internationalization of Research and Graduate Studies and its Implications in the Transatlantic Context – which will be held in Atlanta Georgia on 17-18 November. This workshop will deal with a range of transatlantic development topics, including the new framework, the Global Dimensions of the Bologna Process, and other related issues.

euusworkshoplogoWorkshops such as these get the word out about the various dimensions of new frameworks, and build trust and mutual understanding between stakeholders about opportunities for cooperation.

In the light of Barack Obama’s recent election, and abundant evidence of European support for him at the end of eight years of strained Europe/US relations, it will be interesting to see how the discussions unfold. The US is, after all, a key element of the global research landscape; one of the few countries with capacity to create the so-called “global research infrastructures” that are needed for “major scientific advances”. Yet this is also a time of considerable financial turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic, and the new fiscal austerity realities that will inevitably emerge cannot help but dampen the euphoria that is sure to be in evidence.

In an experiment of sorts, an attempt will be made to provide some insights about the deliberations in Atlanta. For now, though, take a read of A Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation, for it is an important document that reflects new thinking about the logics and strategies associated with furthering collaboration across space; collaboration that, the Commission hopes, will put Europe “high on the global map of science and technology”.

Additional links

Kris Olds & Susan Robertson