Cape Town statement on research partnerships between the global north and south will highlight unethical practices and offer advice to scientists.
South Africa’s former public protector Thuli Madonsela delivered a keynote speech at the seventh World Conference on Research Integrity.Researchers at the seventh World Conference on Research Integrity, in Cape Town, South Africa, have been hammering out the equity issues plaguing science partnerships that span the global north–south divide.
Several sessions at the event were dedicated to the design of a soon-to-be-published document called the Cape Town Statement on fostering research integrity. The conference — the first to be held in Africa — ran from 29 May to 1 June. The statement will offer guidance on how researchers from low- and middle-income countries can become equal partners in international projects. The organizers hope that having a set of principles for fair and equitable partnerships will help scientists from the global south to speak out against unfair practices. These include not being properly credited or pursuing research questions imposed by collaborators from the global north that do not benefit local communities.
Amos Laar, a public-health researcher at the University of Ghana in Accra, says that the development of the statement on African soil by African researchers will empower scientists to challenge inequity.Researchers in low- and middle-income countries often collaborate with peers from wealthier ones. This can bring advantages in the form of secure funding, which might not be available locally, and better career prospects as a result of working with prestigious institutions.
But these collaborations can be fraught with inequity. Sometimes the research is funded and led by overseas scientists who arrive with a fully formed research question that either doesn’t address the issues of local people, or disregards their customs and traditions. Local researchers often have little involvement outside data collection and fieldwork, and in some cases they are not given fair credit for their contribution.