Periodic Reporting for period 3 - INSCONS (Addressing Global Challenges through International Scientific Consortia (INSCONS); Case studies in biomedicine, the geosciences, and nuclear fusion research)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-05-31
International scientific consortia are ever more central in efforts to address global challenges such as how to respond to major health emergencies, the development of new, clean sources of energy, and how to preserve our environment. While such consortia are increasingly important, our understanding of their distinctive organisational dynamics has lagged behind. International scientific consortia are complex organisations where work is geographically dispersed and involves diverse stakeholder groups from academia, government, and industry. Accordingly, there is a pressing need for novel organisational theory that will advance our understanding of these consortia. EU-funded INSCONS is an ambitious attempt to address this need by studying organisational structures and histories of three large consortia in nuclear fusion research, biomedicine and geoscience.
As of yet, the most important achievements of our project are the following.
The INSCONS team organised the "Fusion Technology Through the Eyes of Social Scientists and Humanities Scholars" symposium in June 2021 under the leadership of PhD candidate Richelle Boone. The symposium brought together social scientists, historians, and nuclear fusion researchers to talk about some of the challenges of organising international scientific consortiums (ISCs) in the nuclear fusion field that have been identified in the context of the INSCONS project. The symposium was well attended (>100 researchers registered) and drew in large numbers of nuclear fusion organisations from around the world.
At a smaller scale, PhD candidate Kaela Slavik organised a smaller INSCONS workshop (approximately 15 attendees) with the title “Challenges to Collaboration in International Research: Lessons from Terrestrial Laser Scanning” at the major annual conference of the GEOMOD community, the Silvilaser Conference that was held in Vienna in September 2021. At the conference, Kaela presented preliminary findings of her research to the community and collected feedback.
The INSCONS project produced the first academic paper on the involvement of firms in ISCs, with the title “Determinants of firms to join an international R&D consortium and its effects on firm R&D output.” (authored by Sumo, R. and S. Jong). The first version of the paper was presented at the Innovation Arabia conference in January this year. Moreover, a new draft was submitted to the journal Technovation for publication and for presentation at the 2022 annual Academy of Management conference.
We produced three bibliometric databases on collaborative ties within ISCs. The development of these databases involved extensive bibliometrics data mining and processing work. The BRAIN dataset currently contains 2500 publications with information about authors, affiliated organizations, funding bodies, keywords, and citations from 2001-to 2021. The ITER dataset covers 40 years of data and contains over 80000 publications. The database contains information about authors, affiliations, funding bodies, citations, and keywords. To supplement the keyword-based approach, we have also created a dataset of researchers participating in nuclear fusion conferences, starting with the 2021 IAEA Fusion Energy Conference. These databases will be an important resource for future researchers with an interest in studying organizational structures and dynamics governing ISCs. These databases will also constitute the basis for papers by INSCONS team members. The first of these papers with the title “Shifting the core: how does a large-scale funding affect collaboration networks in neuroscience?” (authored by Czerniawska, D. and S. Jong) will be presented at the 2022 Sunbelt International Social Networks Conference in July.
Anna-Lena Rüland’s paper, presented at the 2021 4S/EASST conference with the title “Bringing the Social Back in: Big Science Collaborations as Social Spaces of Strategic Action” (also submitted to the journal Science and Public Policy) offers a novel perspective on how processes of contestation are shifting as the production of scientific knowledge is increasingly concentrated in ISCs.
The INSCONS team organised the "Fusion Technology Through the Eyes of Social Scientists and Humanities Scholars" symposium in June 2021 under the leadership of PhD candidate Richelle Boone. The symposium brought together social scientists, historians, and nuclear fusion researchers to talk about some of the challenges of organising international scientific consortiums (ISCs) in the nuclear fusion field that have been identified in the context of the INSCONS project. The symposium was well attended (>100 researchers registered) and drew in large numbers of nuclear fusion organisations from around the world.
At a smaller scale, PhD candidate Kaela Slavik organised a smaller INSCONS workshop (approximately 15 attendees) with the title “Challenges to Collaboration in International Research: Lessons from Terrestrial Laser Scanning” at the major annual conference of the GEOMOD community, the Silvilaser Conference that was held in Vienna in September 2021. At the conference, Kaela presented preliminary findings of her research to the community and collected feedback.
The INSCONS project produced the first academic paper on the involvement of firms in ISCs, with the title “Determinants of firms to join an international R&D consortium and its effects on firm R&D output.” (authored by Sumo, R. and S. Jong). The first version of the paper was presented at the Innovation Arabia conference in January this year. Moreover, a new draft was submitted to the journal Technovation for publication and for presentation at the 2022 annual Academy of Management conference.
We produced three bibliometric databases on collaborative ties within ISCs. The development of these databases involved extensive bibliometrics data mining and processing work. The BRAIN dataset currently contains 2500 publications with information about authors, affiliated organizations, funding bodies, keywords, and citations from 2001-to 2021. The ITER dataset covers 40 years of data and contains over 80000 publications. The database contains information about authors, affiliations, funding bodies, citations, and keywords. To supplement the keyword-based approach, we have also created a dataset of researchers participating in nuclear fusion conferences, starting with the 2021 IAEA Fusion Energy Conference. These databases will be an important resource for future researchers with an interest in studying organizational structures and dynamics governing ISCs. These databases will also constitute the basis for papers by INSCONS team members. The first of these papers with the title “Shifting the core: how does a large-scale funding affect collaboration networks in neuroscience?” (authored by Czerniawska, D. and S. Jong) will be presented at the 2022 Sunbelt International Social Networks Conference in July.
Anna-Lena Rüland’s paper, presented at the 2021 4S/EASST conference with the title “Bringing the Social Back in: Big Science Collaborations as Social Spaces of Strategic Action” (also submitted to the journal Science and Public Policy) offers a novel perspective on how processes of contestation are shifting as the production of scientific knowledge is increasingly concentrated in ISCs.
During this first period of the project we have primarily focused on the collection and analysis of data. Therefore, we cannot report yet on any publications and how these publications have progressed beyond the state of the art and achieved an impact.