Co-operation key to frontier research, says Science Europe
A new paper has been published by Science Europe’s Scientific Committee on Life, Environmental and Geo Sciences highlighting the need for rapidly growing international collaborations in science and technology that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries.
The publication, entitled ‘The Importance of International Collaboration for Fostering Frontier Research’, outlines the Committee’s opinions on the current barriers to achieving international collaboration. Difficulties highlighted in the paper include limited funding opportunities for collaborative frontier research at EU level, an insufficient degree of interdisciplinarity in research funding programmes, limited opportunities for multilateral funding in comparison to bilateral agreements, and a low number of international partners involved in current collaborative schemes.
One of the key arguments made by the Committee is that in order to strengthen international collaborative research, national research funding organisations should consider increasing their efforts to widen the participation of various European countries and global partners in multilateral schemes, whilst fostering interdisciplinarity and knowledge integration. Moreover, a bottom-up approach should be adopted in order to collect research proposals that contain novel ideas and solutions, captured directly from the research community and users, thus enabling open innovation.
By producing this paper, the Committee aims to inspire research funding organisations in Europe to reflect on the ways in which they could play a crucial role in support of frontier research, interdisciplinarity and international collaboration on a global scale. The full paper can be read here.
