Louise Wren, Wellcome Trust, London, UK

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.112.9

In 1675, a 33-year-old Isaac Newton wrote to his friend and rival, Robert Hooke, ‘if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’. Newton was referring to the body of scientific literature that preceded the many discoveries he made throughout the 17th century. And what was true for Newton is even more the case now – scientific progress is rarely the achievement of one individual; rather, it is borne of the hard work of countless people.

Whether it’s hundreds of researchers or just two or three people collaborating, teamwork is at the heart of modern science. Thanks to advances in travel and communications technology, it is possible for researchers and teams to work together from opposite sides of the world.

International collaboration of this type is on the rise. In 2014, a UNESCO Science Report noted that one in every four scientific articles were co-signed by a foreign collaborator, a number that had increased from one in five just a decade earlier. In the same year, an analysis of 1.25 million journal articles found that publications with authors from multiple countries are more likely to get picked up by influential journals and are cited more often.

Partnerships between researchers in different countries have helped to advance human knowledge and spur innovation. From the Human Cell Atlas to CERN, international collaborations have led to many feats of human ingenuity. But partnerships of this sort are not a given – rather, they depend on systems and processes that support working and moving across international borders.

Led by the Wellcome Trust and international partners, Together Science Can is a global campaign to celebrate and protect scientific collaboration at a time when it is particularly fragile.

Together Science Can is encouraging people to sign up to the campaign to create a unified voice, and is creating content and resources that supporters can use to advocate for scientific collaboration. Ultimately, Together Science Can wants to help the research community to make its voice heard and to secure the best possible outcomes for science.

Collaboration is at the very core of science. Throughout history, we have come together to do research, to push the boundaries of knowledge and to help create a better world; now, we must come together to speak up for collaborative science, because we are so much stronger when we work
together. As Newton pointed out all those years ago, science relies on the work of many countless individuals.

Together Science Can is a global campaign to celebrate and protect scientific collaboration. Join the campaign and spread the word.

#TogetherScienceCan