Global links are under strain

From climate change to Covid-19, collaboration faces a growing number of barriers, says Nancy Rothwell

The UK is good at research in general and international collaboration in particular. We rank second only to the United States in the production of research publications with international co-authors, and there is much evidence that internationally collaborative research is more highly cited than that from just one country. 

International collaborations bring many benefits, but also face significant challenges at present. Most obviously, our departure from the European Union has caused much concern across the UK research community about the prospect of exclusion from the EU’s Horizon Europe R&D funding and the Erasmus+ mobility programme.