Research fairness tool reveals policy gaps

一所塞内加尔大学已成为发展中国家的第一家机构，旨在评估其在道德上进行研究并与国际合作者进行公平交易的能力。

The review, known as theResearch Fairness Initiative(RFI), has uncovered several gaps — in the university’s safeguarding of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for example, and in its protection of scientific materials being transferred out of the country.

But the RFI’s leader says it will ultimately support Senegal’s push to improve research quality.

Meanwhile, two European organisations — a funder and a university — have also taken on the evaluation.

The Université Alioune Diop de Bambeye (UADB) began assessing its research fairness in 2016 and is due to publish the results next month. Two further Senegalese organisations — CEA-SAMEF, which focusses on child health, and IRESSEF, a focal point for HIV research in West Africa — are finishing their assessments.

All three organisations discovered they have no protocols governing the transfer of biological specimens out of the country. They also found weaknesses in measures such as IPR and tech transfer that enable the university to share in the benefits of research, as well as in negotiating contracts and fair budgets.

The UADB found it had no legal capability to negotiate a fair research contract with an international partner.

“每一个机构可以要求合作者respect the different indicators of its RFI report which will serve as a guide during negotiations”

soukèyedia tine

soukèyedia tine, director for Financing Research and Technological Development for the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, coordinated the review for all three institutions. In a presentation written for the Geneva Health Forum last month, she said the review had revealed additional issues — for example, that Northern collaborators did not mention principles of research fairness in their contracts despite signing up to them back home.

Dia Tine says the project was onerous but useful. “It was very hard work. “But it’s a good project and … we hope to do this for all Senegalese institutions of research”.

She says that in future “each institution can ask for collaborators to respect the different indicators of its RFI report which will serve as a guide during negotiations”.

Carel IJsselmuiden, executive director of the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED) whichdesigned the Initiative, says the initiative is an attempt to turn words into action when it comes to the unfairness that plagues international collaborations. Sometimes poor countries find they are serving simply as laboratories; or complain that土著科学家被忽略，重新补偿很差, treated merely as data-collectors and被论文的作者省略了。

IJsselmuiden says the Senegalese reviews have revealed some “low hanging fruit … opportunities to make rapid improvements in some policies and practices”.

For example, Senegal’s Ministry is now planning to rapidly produce a generic agreement for the transfer of materials.

Robert Terry, research policy manager for TDR, a Geneva-based programme supporting research and training in tropical diseases, says that the UADB report produced a “daunting list of things to tackle which could be disheartening. “It was brave of them to do it,” he said.

TDR became the first organisation in the developed world to publishits own RFI assessmentearlier this year. The Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the Nova University of Lisbon is also due to publish its RFI review findings.

Terry told the Forum that the process had revealed “some things we’d never even thought about before,” such as ensuring a project buys local supplies, where possible, instead of importing it. It also found it could do more to help grantees improve their budgeting, reduce projects’ environmental impact, and better monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

特里解释说：“老实说，我们不经常认为‘让我们退后一步，审查我们所有的管理'。”“这实际上使您可以系统地做到这一点，并且非常有价值。”

However, the process was “an intensive period”, he said. Organisations also needed to consider the reputational risk of publishing such a report. And producing it meant cajoling reluctant staff who “see this as a form of evaluation and get really nervous,” added Terry.