Consolidation in a crisis: Patterns of international collaboration in early COVID-19 research

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand whether a catastrophic and urgent event, such as the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerates or reverses trends in international collaboration, especially in and between China and the United States. A review of research articles produced in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that COVID-19 research had smaller teams and involved fewer nations than pre-COVID-19 coronavirus research. The United States and China were, and continue to be in the pandemic era, at the center of the global network in coronavirus related research, while developing countries are relatively absent from early research activities in the COVID-19 period. Not only are China and the United States at the center of the global network of coronavirus research, but they strengthen their bilateral research relationship during COVID-19, producing more than 4.9% of all global articles together, in contrast to 3.6% before the pandemic. In addition, in the COVID-19 period, joined by the United Kingdom, China and the United States continued their roles as the largest contributors to, and home to the main funders of, coronavirus related research. These findings suggest that the global COVID-19 pandemic shifted the geographic loci of coronavirus research, as well as the structure of scientific teams, narrowing team membership and favoring elite structures. These findings raise further questions over the decisions that scientists face in the formation of teams to maximize a speed, skill trade-off. Policy implications are discussed.

International collaboration during the COVID-19 crisis: autumn 2020 developments

“…Zhang et al ( 2020a ) noted that historical patterns show that researchers have always responded quickly to public health emergencies with a sharp increase in the number of publications on the emergency topic, a finding we can confirm in the COVID-19 era. In updating our earlier work (Fry et al 2020 ), we find that the number of coronavirus publications has seen a great boom in 2020, rising at a spectacular rate from a total of 4,875 articles produced on the topic (preprint and peer reviewed) between January and mid-April to an overall sum of 44,013 by mid-July, and 87,515 by the start of October 2020 (in comparison, nanoscale science was a rapidly growing field in the 1990s, but it took more than 19 years to go from 4000 to 90,000 articles (Grieneisen and Zhang, 2011 )). Given that the crisis is ongoing, that the world continues to require solutions, and that a travel ban remains in place, we expect to find that the trend towards smaller, more elite teams has continued, and that patterns of international collaborative partnerships mirror the trends in the rise and fall of COVID-19 cases.…”

Impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on scientific research and implications for clinical academic training – A review

“…The most pertinent of these can be summarised in two words - collaboration and speed. International research efforts, built on collaboration, have allowed for significant breakthroughs to be made regarding our understanding of the pandemic [ 69 ]. The open sharing of knowledge and research efforts has stimulated global collaborative bonds with common purpose.…”

COVID-19 and Quality of Life: Twelve Reflections

“…Susskind and Brown ( 2020 ) argued that infectious diseases control such as COVID-19 should be treated as “global public goods”, and international cooperation is key to the successful implementation of the related tasks. Fry et al ( 2020 ) pointed out that smaller teams, narrowed membership, elitism and fewer societies were involved in COVID-19 research compared to pre-COVID research in coronavirus. Considering the high failure rate of development COVID-19 research, Zhou ( 2020 ) argued for the stepping up of effort for international collaboration involving different stakeholders should be promoted.…”