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Collaborating internationally is often an important part of building strong academic relationships and developing your research. As experienced researchers, engaging in these collaborations raises questions of ethics, research integrity and potential risks, particularly those including researchers across the
Working with international partners may bring up "moral challenges" (Evans et al., 2021), as those with more resources have greater access to funding and grants compared to research colleagues in other parts of the world. Researchers in the Global North may have greater control of projects and their dissemination, so you need to ensure equal distribution of responsibilities with international research collaborators and consider your understanding of cultural norms and expectations in global research contexts outside of your own, so that you can take those into account.
Transparency is an important part of research integrity, but some international institutions may have different research practices available to support this: they may lack the required procedures to adhere to the same principles of transparent research that you do, or have insufficient resources to fulfil your open research requirements (see Transparency and reproducibility and Open research). When working internationally, reflect on how you will employ your research integrity and ethics protocols in different contexts with different institutional procedures. As well as considerations such as power differentials and cultural dynamics, questions of
Reflect on the following three questions about ethical approaches to international collaborations. Consider the hint to prompt your thoughts and then continue on for some feedback.
What data protection rules or laws apply to data collection in your research area and geographic region? Do you think these rules ensure sufficient data protection?
Are you aware of these data protection laws? Are they effective in protecting data, or do they limit who you can approach for international collaborations?
Legislation that guides data sharing practices can impact a research institute's capacity to collaborate with partners across the world. For example, GDPR in Europe may influence which countries can be included as partners for European institutions, or stricter regulations on international funds entering India can limit possibilities for research collaboration there.
At what stage of the research process do you contact potential partners for collaboration?
Does the stage that you choose to consult potential collaborators impact who has input and ownership of the project?
Contacting collaborators at an early stage is the best way of ensuring an equal partnership, with mutual participation in project planning. Any limitations of resources or capacity can be addressed early on, to ensure an equitable partnership (see Equitable partnerships).
In what ways do you collaborate on outputs and dissemination?
Does your discipline encourage author equality through co-authorship? Do you use the CRediT taxonomy? Is it important that everyone equally contributes to your outputs? Is language or access a barrier for international collaborators?
Make ethical considerations when working with international researchers to ensure equal collaboration throughout the process, including dissemination, whether this relates to publications, patents, conferences or other forms. See Authorship issues and disputes for information on ensuring equal and transparent authorship.
To strengthen collaborations, adjustments to ensure an ethical approach need to be employed across different stages of research. When leading or participating in international collaboration, it is important to consider your position and any potential imbalances that you can address through your research practices. Not making these adjustments fails to address historic imbalances in some elements of research (see Decolonising research in Equitable partnerships) and risks unethical, extractive practices. The ethical protocols you employ to ensure balanced collaborations may need to be adapted according to your discipline, the nature of your research or your geographical context.
Continue on to explore how to employ ethics protocols to support research integrity in collaborations throughout every stage of the research lifecycle.
Consider each segment of the research lifecycle and explore how to employ ethics protocols to support research integrity in collaborations throughout every stage.
Strong international collaborations require leaders and institutions to reflect on questions of equitable and ethical participation in order to address existing structural imbalances throughout the research lifecycle. As a senior researcher, also consider the unique challenges of international collaborations and how to overcome these whilst upholding ethics and integrity in your research.
International collaborations may involve the use of new technologies, in particular Big Data (social media or Amazon trends, for example), where legislation in some countries may lack/have less rigorous data protection laws. Such cases bring up important questions of research ethics and research integrity:
International collaborations require senior researchers to consider such questions, where applying the same rules of data protection across partner countries (irrespective of their laws or policies) may be considered the most ethical strategy. For more on good practices, see The Embassy of Good Science.