During a recent afternoon lab, my professor pointed out that my class could be designing DNA primers that no one has made before— unless other student researchers synthesize these sequences before we finish ours. It was a playful but pragmatic reminder that researchers often develop novel questions from foundational work that crosses labs, campuses, and borders.
In academia, it’s common for different research groups within and between countries to pursue the next line of inquiry at the same time. However, what starts as competition often morphs into collaboration. My classmates and I could view those hypothetical “other students” as competition and scramble to publish first so that my class and my college get the glory—or we could look past individualism and recognize how our scientific endeavors plug us into a community far bigger than our own lab or campus.
If we move beyond the individual lab, as Dr. Ninad Bondre (a writer for The Philosophical Salon) argues, we see that “there is a difference between a scientific endeavor that is embedded in and speaks to a national community and one that whips up nationalistic sentiments uncritically while claiming to hold a universalist view of science.”
When ambiguous regulatory policies seek to protect national competitiveness, they complicate attempts to collaborate across borders. For example, the US federal government restricts which foreign institutions can collaborate with American scientists but does not provide a transparent and comprehensive list of acceptable ones. Limited details on general security standards amplify concerns of university research offices about protecting data produced from global collaborations. Norms about reproducibility of research do continue to evolve among scholars and research funders. These norms, however, can conflict with controls on software, data sharing, and analysis systems that grow out of fear that other nations’ researchers might destroy or steal research findings.
Instead of imposing barriers to success, these challenges can serve as the next focus for policymakers and scientists interested in improving global cooperation. Many notable past initiatives demonstrate how an intentional emphasis on collaboration yields great success. Three examples follow:
In 1964, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics was established in Trieste, Italy. This collaboration among the Italian government, UNESCO, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has “welcomed more than 180,000 scientists from about 188 countries” in the enthusiastic, rigorous pursuit of knowledge in physics and mathematics, according to the research center.
Similarly, in 1961, UNESCO and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization started a Soil Map of the World project to standardize international soil classification so that researchers across the globe could converse about the threats of soil erosion with a shared language. A 65-page report available in English, Spanish, French, and Russian accompanies the detailed maps and has become a common standard for international cooperation in soil science and climate-change research.
A third, more recent example is COVAX, which united the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), the World Health Organization, and UNICEF to accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Between January 2021 and the end of 2022, COVAX delivered “nearly 1.9 billion doses of vaccine to people in 146 economies,” with 90% in “lower-income economies,” according to its website. This achievement marked the “fastest and most complex global deployment of vaccines ever.” COVAX continued to be a “lifeline as new strains emerged, delivering 73% of all doses received by low-income countries by December 2022.”
All these projects share the common theme of making international cooperation the centerpiece of scientific inquiry. Now we should ask ourselves: How can we build upon such past successes to strengthen and standardize modern global scientific cooperation?
In December 2020, the Coalition for Networked Information Executive Roundtable convened higher education representatives to discuss challenges in answering this question.
One area of concern they reported centers on the fact that “US researchers and students [abroad] increasingly face barriers to data and tools provided by their home institutions due to access blocks enforced by some host countries.” Another area of concern focuses on the ambiguity that exists between “what government agencies and funders expect of individual investigators and what is expected of institutions doing ‘due diligence’ on disclosure attestations.” When the benchmarks for appropriate collaboration remain reactive to barriers on scientists, as opposed to proactive and globally cooperative, frustration and confusion can run rampant and impede progress.
A broad-scale, intensely focused effort to establish policies that standardize global cooperation would likely benefit international researchers, and many organizations currently work toward this goal. The 2025 “Vision for American Science and Technology” report provides a fifteen-page action plan to strengthen the future of the science and technology enterprise. The VAST Task Force behind the report unites the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Public Health Association, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and dozens more scientific agencies, as well as over 100 organizations and coalitions and more than 15 federal agencies and offices that all provided input. Together, these groups and institutions call attention to the “bureaucratic barriers,” “structural obstacles,” and “obsolete policies and regulations” holding progress hostage.
The VAST action plan represents an ideal approach to strengthening global cooperation because it proposes concrete tasks to reduce structural frictions, not only among domestic researchers but in ways that can support better international alignment. By prioritizing regulatory modernization, streamlining approval pathways, and encouraging cross-sector coordination, VAST offers a blueprint for how national systems can become more consistent and reliable—qualities essential for seamless global collaboration. By taking the following steps, we can forge a stronger path for global cooperation:
- diagnose the barriers;
- convene cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional stakeholders; and
- propose pragmatic, implementable reforms that reduce ambiguity and build mutual trust across borders.
As a student at a top research university, I see no competitiveness among my friends working in research labs. Instead, I see joy on my friend’s face as she prepares for her first-ever poster presentation at an international neuroscience conference. And when my classmates and I are excitedly discussing a new piece of primary literature, we don’t remember that paper for its location or its copyright: We fall in love with its ideas. At the end of the day, research stands for the collective endeavor of passionate, brilliant humans to answer questions and probe deeper and deeper into possibility.
My position may be idealistic in the data-driven, statistics-saturated arena of research. Nonetheless, I believe that collaborative work makes up the inextinguishable core of any and all constructive research conversations. The persistence of productive collaborations through time proves that attempting to quantify the value of research as solely monetary falls short of its true impact. Of course, companies and the national economy undeniably benefit financially from research. However, some people, like economist John P. Ogier, identify intellectual property as “the most valuable asset class on the planet.”
Regardless of your view of what drives research, exciting new ideas or financial benefits, we must agree on the importance of transparent standards. As Ogier notes, “The absence of international standards to provide greater clarity and certainty regarding charges or securitization of IP assets” slows the pace of securing investment and business loans against such assets.
Strengthening these standards presents an opportunity to enhance the monetary value of research while also encouraging international collaboration that supports the health of our national research enterprise. In addition, open conversations about how to safely, securely, and scientifically cross borders can transform ambiguous restrictions into clear guidelines, helping organizations and scientists alike. This approach creates greater clarity, stability, and cooperation to ensure that global collaboration continues to grow as a positive force in advancing research and innovation.
Relying on a playbook of standards minimizes knowledge gaps, conflicted decision-making, and malicious intentions that go unchecked. We solidify our place in the global research community most powerfully when we confidently commit to protecting and investing in the entire research enterprise.
Aynsley Szczesniak studies biology, chemistry, and entrepreneurship on the premedical track at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also serves as the Executive Director of the Student Success in STEM Task Force in the UNC Undergraduate Student Government and as the Founder and CEO of Speak Out Sisterhood, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit for young professional women in STEM.
This article was originally published in AWIS Magazine. Join AWIS to access the full issue of AWIS Magazine and more member benefits.