From interoperability challenges to syncing opportunities: a pathway to global research

Abstract

"The FEAST/UQ Symposium 20115 presented various figures and trends demonstrating an increase in the rate of the internationalisation of research across developed and emerging economies. By any standard, these results show a wealth of international collaborations between scientists having little or no problem conducting collaborative, and indeed interoperable, research. However these results also show the tempo of change has accelerated for both the increasing trends such as the rise of China and for the downward trends, especially during post-global financial crisis (GFC) recovery of most western nations. In this context, our global research machine is becoming more costly, mottled, risky, clumsy, and is under increasing political and community pressures to deliver tangible results. This paper examines the challenges hampering interoperability on a variety of levels – governments, funding and researcher mobility – and describes opportunities for improving these systems to allow for more effective global research. This is the second Discussion Paper that reports on the deliberations of the recent FEAST/UQ Symposium 2011: Enhancing interoperability in the emerging global research order." - page 2