International Symposium: A Culture of Collaboration

The Institute for Biomedical Ethics (IBMB) and its home institution, the University of Basel, have always been committed not only to carry out cutting edge research, but also to engage in broader discussions about research itself, how to ensure that it corresponds to the expectations of society and how to improve the environment of Switzerland as a place of research and innovation. The IBMB has been particularly committed to underlying the importance of creating a positive culture of open collaboration within academia and between academia and other collaborating institutions in the research environment - with a particular focus on the biomedical and healthcare sector. A culture of collaboration is not just efficient and convenient, but also part of an ethical commitment of research - and academic research in particular - to serve the common good, thus reinforcing the trust in science, which was extremely relevant in recent times during the pandemic. To enhance collaboration and data sharing, the IBMB has carried out (and finished this year) its NRP 74-based research project on barriers to and facilitators for data collaboration (grant number 167356).The importance of a culture of openness, data sharing and collaboration in the scientific field is has an extremely central ethical relevance for a number of reasons. Firstly, a great deal of research projects is funded through public money (e.g. by the Swiss National Science Foundation), thus making - although only indirectly through taxes - citizens and residents of Switzerland the true promoters of innovation and science. There is therefore an underlying "social contract" between citizens and researchers, whereby the former provide the money that allows the latter to conduct scientific research with a maximum degree of freedom and independence, but with the commitment to serve the public good. This can be achieved only if researchers are open and collaborative, rather than exploiting the scientific freedom that public funding gives them, in order to pursue personal gains, by being protective of the discoveries they make or the new methods they develop. Secondly, a culture of openness is key to maintain the trust in science, which is necessary for society to progress and thrive. If it is exposed that researchers refuse collaboration or deny others access to their ideas, data or even laboratories, in order to egoistically protect their own private interest, society will grow unconfident of the scientific community. This can be of great damage in moments like the Covid-19 pandemic, where scientists were making appeals to the population to listen to their advice as 'trusted' experts. In the research project that the IBMB recently conducted as part of the National Research Programme 74 (NRP74) on Smarter Healthcare, our team also discovered that the absence of a fully-developed culture of collaboration is one of the main obstacles that hinder the sharing of data in the Swiss healthcare and biomedical research sectors. Our study has shown that these sectors are often dominated by the existence of a protective approach of different institutions towards "their" datasets. Mistrust - or sometimes even simple diffidence, or lack of reciprocal contacts and informal exchanges - between institutions can be the cause why it is very difficult to merge data between different sources in Switzerland. This in a barrier to start important research in the medical sector (e.g. epidemiological or healthcare service research) and even to conduct public health surveillance or quality assurance studies. As the Swiss healthcare sector is committed to becoming more digitalized and datafied - see for example the recent report of the Federal Office of Public Health titled "Das Datenmanagement im Gesundheitsbereich soll verbessert werden" - the development of a culture of collaboration and openness with respect to health data exchanges is bound to become more relevant. Moreover, openness and collaboration with respect to data is also at the core of international scientific initiatives such as Open Data and Open Science, which have been supported also by the SNF. Funding agencies and academic institutions in Switzerland and worldwide need to reflect together on efficient incentives to increase collaborative attitudes.Last but not least, creating an environment of openness and collaboration in the research field has been a commitment of many researchers in Switzerland in the last few years. For example, Professor Peter Meier-Abt, former Vice-rector of the University of Basel and President of the Research Ethics Committee of the Canton Zurich has always been a promoter of these values. He insisted on their importance throughout his career and has given them particular relevance in several of his engagements, for example concerning the Swiss Clinical Trial Organisation (SCTO), SwissPedNet, and as one of the main promoter of the Swiss Personalised Health Network (SPHN). In the latter he put the idea of cooperation between hospital and clinical research centers - as well as the collaboration between researchers from different institutions - at the center of this initiative. For these reasons, the IBMB has decided to organize - in collaboration with the University of Zurich, the Research Ethics Committee of the Canton Zurich and swissethics - the international symposium titled the "A Culture of Collaboration". The symposium will be dedicated to the recent departure of Professor Meier-Abt, and it will offer an occasion to reflect from a "meta" perspective on what science, scientists, funders and academic institutions can (and should) do to improve collaboration and cooperation between them.