Making international partnerships more equitable

Avoid tokenism. Be collaborative. Those are some of the suggestions Colombian biologist Dolors Armenteras offers for scientific partnerships involving researchers from both high- and low-income nations.

“Imbalances can result in extractive partnerships where benefits flow in only one direction and may even impoverish research in the disadvantaged country by removing experience and not contributing to local capacity and infrastructure,” Armenteras writes in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

A biology professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Armenteras offers guidelines for making these partnerships more equitable.

“A transformative change is needed in the way science is practiced today,” Armenteras writes. “We no longer have the luxury of disregarding local realities if we truly aim to solve global, regional and local challenges.”

Read more in Nature Ecology & Evolution.