Abstract
There has been a dramatic rise in the scale and scope of collaborative global health research. A number of structural and scientific factors explain this growth and there has been much discussion of these in the literature. Little, if any, attention has been paid, however, to the factors identified by scientists and other research actors as important to successful research collaboration. This is surprising given that their decisions are likely to play a key role in the sustainability and effectiveness of global health research initiatives. In this paper, we report on qualitative research with leading scientists involved in major international research collaborations about their views on good and bad collaborations and the factors that inform their decision-making about joining and participating actively in research networks. We identify and discuss eight factors that researchers see as essential in judging the merits of active participation in global health research collaborations: opportunities for active involvement in cutting-edge, interesting science; effective leadership; competence of potential partners in and commitment to good scientific practice; capacity building; respect for the needs, interests and agendas of partners; opportunities for discussion and disagreement; trust and confidence; and, justice and fairness in collaboration. Our findings suggest that the sustainability and effectiveness of global health research collaborations has an important ethical or moral dimension for the research actors involved.
Highlights
The idea that researchers should work in collaboration, rather than in isolation, has significantly reconfigured medical research
From the late 1990s and early 2000s, additional impetus has been given to these developments by claims that global health research collaborations have the potential to play a significant role in addressing global health disparities [3, 4]
As a first step towards addressing this gap, we report here on our analysis of a series of interviews conducted with research actors and funders involved in several high-profile international global health research networks
Summary
The idea that researchers should work in collaboration, rather than in isolation, has significantly reconfigured medical research. Reflecting a wider trend in scientific research since the Second World War, the scale and scope of global health research has grown dramatically in response to calls for more efficient and collaborative knowledge production [1, 2]. From the late 1990s and early 2000s, additional impetus has been given to these developments by claims that global health research collaborations have the potential to play a significant role in addressing global health disparities [3, 4]. The growth in global health research collaborations. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0163579 October 13, 2016
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