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News from the region: Digital Science partnerships in the Middle East & Africa

Tech in Gov 2025

12th August 2025 | Australia

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Digital Science is proud to be exhibiting again at one of Australia’s Biggest Government-focused conferences; Tech in Gov 2025. We look forward to welcoming people to our stand to learn more about our range of services and products that can help your department and company.

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ARMS 2025

10th September 2025 | Australia

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DigiGov 2025

24th September 2025 | United Kingdom

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13th October 2025 | Australia

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Additional Resources and Further Reading specific to MEA region

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At this year’s World Conference on Research Integrity, a team of researchers from Digital Science led by Pritha Sarkar presented a poster with findings from their deep dive on conflict of interest (COI) statements. Entitled Conflict of Interest: A data driven approach to categorisation of COI statements, the initial goal was to look at COI statements with a view to creating a binary model that determines whether a Conflict of Interest statement is present or not in an article. 

However, all was not as it seemed. While some articles had no COI and some had one present, those present covered a number of different areas, which led the team to think COIs might represent a spectrum rather than binary options.

Gold standard

Conflict of interest is a crucial aspect of academic integrity. Properly declaring a COI statement is essential for other researchers to assess any potential bias in scholarly articles. However, those same researchers often encounter COI statements that are either inadequate or misleading in some way even if they are present. 

The Digital Science team – all working on research integrity with Dimensions – soon realized the data could be leveraged further to better explore the richness inherent in the nuanced COI statements. After further research and analysis, it became clear that COI statements could be categorized into six distinct types:

1. None Declared
2. Membership or Employment
3. Funds Received
4. Shareholder, Stakeholder or Ownership
5. Personal Relationship
6. Donation

This analysis involved manually annotating hundreds of COI statements with Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. The aim was to create a gold standard that could be used to categorize all other COI statements, however despite the team’s diligence a significant challenge persisted in the shape of ‘data skewness’ – which can be defined as an imbalance in the distribution of data within a dataset that can impact data processing and analytics.

Fatal flaw

One irresistible conclusion to the data skewness was a simple one – that authors weren’t truthfully reporting their conflicts of interest. But could this really be true?

The gold standard approach came from manually and expertly annotating COI statements to develop an auto-annotation process. However, despite the algorithm’s ability to auto-annotate 33,812 papers in just 15 minutes, the skewness that had been initially identified persisted, leading to the false reporting theory for authors (see Figure 1 of COI Poster). 

To firm up this hypothesis, when the Retraction Watch database was analyzed, the troubling trend, including the discrepancy between reported COI category and retraction reason, became even more apparent (see Figure 2 of the COI Poster). 

Moreover, when the team continued with the investigation, they found there were 24,289 overlapping papers in Dimensions GBQ and Retraction Watch, and among those papers, 393 were retracted due to conflict of interest. Out of those 393 papers, 134 had a COI statement, however 119 declared there was no conflict to declare.

Conclusion

Underreporting and misreporting conflict of interest statements or types can undermine the integrity of scholarly work. Other research integrity issues around paper mills, plagiarism and predatory journals have already damaged the trust the public has with published research, so further problems with COIs can only worsen the situation. With the evidence of these findings, it is clear that all stakeholders in the research publication process must adopt standard practices on reporting critical trust markers such as COI to uphold the transparency and honesty in scholarly endeavors. 

To finish on a positive note, this research poster was awarded second-place at the 2024 World Conference on Research Integrity, showing that the team’s research has already attracted considerable attention among those who seek to safeguard research integrity and trust in science.

You can find the poster on Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25901707.v2

Partial data and the code for this project are also available on Figshare.

For more on the topic of research integrity, see details of Digital Science’s Catalyst Grant award for 2024, which focuses on digital solutions around this topic.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Shining a light on conflict of interest statements appeared first on Digital Science.

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TL;DR Shorts: Mariette DiChristina on Artificial Intelligence

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Bridging Information Gaps: Dimensions Biotech Solution’s Role in Consolidating Scientific Knowledge

Information silos in the research ecosystem create significant obstacles.

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The post Digital Science for corporate R&D appeared first on Digital Science.

Last week, one of the world’s largest charitable organizations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, changed its policy on open access. In a major shift, it decreed that from 2025 it would no longer fund authors’ article processing charges (APCs) to be published in open access journals. Instead, it will mandate authors to make their articles available as ‘preprints’, which are available to read by everyone but require no fee to post online in a repository. 

Quite clearly, this move is designed to build on the advantages of making medical research openly accessible, as well as capturing the frustration that many share of not being able to discover key information about potentially life or death medical issues – whether that is due to paywalls on articles, or the sometimes hefty APCs that are charged. It was these advantages and frustrations that resulted in the open access (OA) movement forming in the 1990s, and as we detailed here last year fuelled the growth in OA over the last quarter of a century. 

But as we celebrate National Public Health Week and World Health Day on 7th April, what has been the impact of OA in opening up research to the public at large?

Research Transformed

Articles supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) make up a sizeable corpus of texts in the medical literature – according to Dimensions, in 2023 there were 4,494 publications that acknowledged funding from the Foundation,  appearing in journals published by major publishers such as Elsevier (855 articles funded by BMGF), Springer Nature (780) and Wiley (347). While there are already substantial numbers of articles published in major journals funded by BMGF – and the new mandate does not appear to stop them being published in such journals subsequent to posting as preprints – we may see some changes as a result of the ‘preprint first’ policy.

Changing our focus to looking back at how health research such as that funded by BGMF has been made available to all as open access articles, we can see from the chart below that there has been a marked increase in the amount of medical research that is now openly accessible over the last 20 years or so. And significantly, we can also see this using the free web app of Dimensions.

In 2003 there were 1.66 million article publications, according to Dimensions, with just a quarter of them available as open access articles. We can see in the chart that some of the main health categories made up a sizable number of these OA articles in 2003, which was just three years after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was first formed. 

Fast forward 10 years, and medical research had started to transform in terms of its accessibility to the public. In 2013 there were 3.1 million articles published, of which 1.3 million, or 42%, were now OA. Looking at health research specifically, the percentages were much bigger as adoption in these fields outpaced others: In Biomedical and Clinical Sciences 48% of articles were OA, in Clinical Sciences it was 45% and in Biological Sciences it was already over half at 57%.

Further acceleration in the adoption of open access in the last decade has seen the accessibility of health research grow even further. Not only has the total number of articles published increased by well over 50%, but the proportion of articles in medical research that are open access are well over 60%, and nearly 70% in the case of Biological Sciences. 

New perspectives

Since its inception, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made grant payments totalling over $71 billion to support gender equality, global development and global health programs. Its aim has been to create a world where each individual has the opportunity to lead a healthy, productive life, and you can see from its commitment to OA that it views access to the most current research as being part of that mission. As we reflect on and celebrate National Public Health Week and World Health Day, it is clear how important access to data is in supporting underserved communities to take advantage of the benefits that access to health research brings. To learn more about how research impacts society, see our latest TL;DR campaign on Research Transformation.

About the Author

Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press | Digital Science

Simon has 20 years’ experience in scholarly communications. He has lectured and published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact, and has recently authored a book on predatory publishing. Simon is an ALPSP tutor and has also served as a COPE Trustee.

The post Healthy increase in access to Medical Research appeared first on Digital Science.

At Digital Science, we recognize that the journey toward AI adoption is as unique as the organizations and individuals we support. From bench researchers to medical affairs professionals to research offices, our approach is grounded in collaboration and deep understanding.

Since 2013, we’ve been investing in advanced AI methodologies, expanding our technical and analytical capabilities, and assembling a global team of AI experts. To us,  AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; it encapsulates a range of both new and existing capabilities and approaches that when thoughtfully applied, can significantly enhance capabilities and streamline workflows. Our commitment continues to be focused on working closely with our partners, deeply understanding their unique challenges and aspirations, to deliver innovative and responsible AI capabilities that enhance human intelligence, drive progress, and unlock the full potential of the research community.

Our Capabilities

For the last decade, we have focused around machine learning innovations with Dimensions.ai, investment in Writefull and development of different LLMs. Building on this AI lineage, 2024 will see a continuous flow of new releases, starting with Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise and Dimensions Research GPT.

Dimensions in ChatGPT

Available via OpenAI’s GPT Store, the new products aim to provide users looking to use ChatGPT for research-related questions with generative answers they can trust – grounded in scientific evidence from Digital Science’s Dimensions database.

Key features of Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise – available to Dimensions customers with a ChatGPT Enterprise licence – include: 

• Answers to research queries with publication data, clinical trials, patents and grant information
• Set up in the client’s private environment and only available to client’s end users
• Notifications each time content generated is based on Dimensions data, with references and citation details
• Possible for clients to have custom features (following prior discussion with Dimensions).

For Dimensions Research GPT, answers to research queries are linked to tens of millions Open Access publications, and access to the solution is free to anyone with a Plus or Enterprise subscription to OpenAI’s GPT Store.

Next-generation search experience

Dimensions has introduced a new summarization feature to support the user in their discovery process for publications, grants, patents and clinical trials. It has integrated AI-driven summarization capabilities into the Dimensions web application to enable all users to accelerate the identification of the most relevant content for their research questions. Short, concise summaries are now available for every record in a given search result list with a single click, providing users with AI-generated insights quickly. The Dimensions team has used feedback from members of the research community – including academic institutions, industry, publishers, government, and funders – to develop this summarization feature in the Dimensions web app.

Smarter searching in Dimensions

Other AI solutions will follow shortly from Digital Science, all of which seek to surface AI capabilities to support users with specific, relevant functionalities where AI in particular can offer improved results. Just as importantly, they have been developed with a grounding in reliability and responsibility so that users can trust them as they do with all our other products. 

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The 2023 survey saw over 6,000 responses and the report that has now been published takes an in-depth look at the responses and purposefully takes a much more analytical approach than has been seen in previous years, unveiling unprecedented insights.

Five key takeaways from The State of Open Data 2023

Support is not making its way to those who need it

Over three-quarters of respondents had never received any support with making their data openly available. 

One size does not fit all

Variations in responses from different subject expertise and geographies highlight a need for a more nuanced approach to research data management support globally. 

Challenging stereotypes

Are later career academics really opposed to progress? The results of the 2023 survey indicate that career stage is not a significant factor in open data awareness or support levels. 

Credit is an ongoing issue

For eight years running, our survey has revealed a recurring concern among researchers: the perception that they don’t receive sufficient recognition for openly sharing their data. 

AI awareness hasn’t translated to action

For the first time, this year we asked survey respondents to indicate if they were using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for data collection, processing and metadata creation. 

Diving deeper into the data than ever before 

This year, we dive deeper into the data than ever before and look at the differing opinions of our respondents when we compare their regions, career stages, job titles and subject areas of expertise. 

Figshare founder and CEO Mark Hahnel said of this approach, “It feels like the right time to do this. Whilst a global funder push towards FAIR data has researchers globally moving in the same direction, it is important to recognize the subtleties in researchers’ behaviors based on variables in who they are and where they are.”

This year features extensive analysis of the survey results data and provides an in-depth and unique view of attitudes towards open data. 

This analysis provided some key insights; notably that researchers at all stages of their careers share similar enthusiasm for open data, are motivated by shared incentives and struggle to overcome the same obstacles. 

These results are encouraging and challenge the stereotype that more experienced academics are opposed to progress in the space and that those driving progress are primarily early career researchers. 

We were also able to look into the nuanced differences in responses from different regions and subject areas of expertise, illuminating areas for targeted outreach and support. These demographic variations also led us to issue a recommendation to the academic research community to look to understand the ‘state of open data’ in their specific setting.  

Benchmarking attitudes towards the application of AI 

In light of the intense focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and its application this year, for the first time, we decided to ask our survey respondents if they were using any AI tools for data collection, processing or metadata collection. 

The most common answer to all three questions was,“I’m aware of these tools but haven’t considered it.”

Although the results don’t yet tell a story, we’ve taken an important step in benchmarking how researchers are currently using AI in the data-sharing process. Within our report, we hear from Niki Scaplehorn and Henning Schoenenberger from Springer Nature in their piece ‘AI and open science: the start of a beautiful relationship?’ as they share some thoughts on what the future could hold for research data and open science more generally in the age of AI. 

We are looking forward to evaluating the longitudinal response trends for this survey question in years to come as the fast-moving space of AI and its applications to various aspects of the research lifecycle accelerate farther ahead. 

Recommendations for the road ahead 

In our report, we have shared some recommendations that take the findings of our more analytical investigation and use them to inform action points for various stakeholders in the community. This is an exciting step for The State of Open Data, as we more explicitly encourage real-world action from the academic community when it comes to data-sharing and open data. 

Understanding the state of open data in our specific settings: Owing to the variations in responses from different geographies and areas of expertise, we’re encouraging the academic community to investigate the ‘state of open data’ in their specific research setting, to inform tailored and targeted support. 

Credit where credit’s due: For eight years running, our respondents have repeatedly reported that they don’t feel researchers get sufficient credit for sharing their data. Our recommendation asks stakeholders to consider innovative approaches that encourage data re-use and ultimately greater recognition. 

Help and guidance for the greater good: The same technical challenges and concerns that pose a barrier to data sharing transcend different software and disciplines. Our recommendation suggests that support should move beyond specific platform help and instead tackle the bigger questions of open data and open science practices. 

Making outreach inclusive: Through our investigation of the 2023 survey results, we saw that the stage of an academic’s career was not a significant factor in determining attitudes towards open data and we saw consensus between early career researchers and more established academics. Those looking to engage research communities should be inclusive and deliberate with their outreach, engaging those who have not yet published their first paper as well as those who first published over 30 years ago. 

What’s next for The State of Open Data?  

The State of Open Data 2023 report is a deliberate change from our usual format; usually, our report has contributed pieces authored by open data stakeholders around the globe. This year, we’ve changed our approach and we are beginning with the publication of this first report, which looks at the survey data through a closer lens than before. We’ve compared different subsets of the data in a way we haven’t before, in an effort to provide more insights and actionable data for the community.

In early 2024, we’ll be releasing a follow-up report, with a selection of contributed pieces from global stakeholders, reflecting on the survey results in their context. Using the results showcased in this first report as a basis, it’s our hope that this follow-up report will apply different contexts to these initial findings and bring new insights and ideas. 

In the meantime, we’re hosting two webinars to celebrate the launch of our first report and share the key takeaways. In our first session, The State of Open Data 2023: The Headlines, we’ll be sharing a TL;DR summary of the full report; our second session, The State of Open Data 2023: In Conversation, will convene a panel of global experts to discuss the survey results. 

You can sign up for both sessions here: 

The State of Open Data 2023: The Headlines

The State of Open Data 2023: In Conversation

About the Author

Laura Day, Marketing Director | Figshare

Laura is the Marketing Director at Figshare, part of Digital Science. Before joining Digital Science, Laura worked in scholarly publishing, focusing on open access journal marketing and transformative agreements. In her current role, Laura focuses on marketing campaigns and outreach for Figshare. She is passionate about open science and is excited by the potential it has to advance knowledge sharing by enabling academic research communities to reach new and diverse audiences.

The post The State of Open Data 2023: A more analytical approach provides unparalleled insights appeared first on Digital Science.

Digital Science’s flagship product Dimensions has announced a new solution for research institutions and industry, helping to identify risks associated with government research security requirements. Why is the Dimensions Research Security app the right choice for your research operations?

Universities and industry involved in research and development are no strangers to the need to protect intellectual property and mitigate against risk. Nevertheless, organizations around the world – from the FBI in the United States to Universities UK – are increasingly calling for these risks to be taken more seriously.

Inevitably, additional government regulations and recommendations have followed, requiring research institutions – and individual researchers who receive government funding – to demonstrate compliance within their local jurisdictions. Failing to do so can result in penalties and loss of reputation, as well as the impact on research, and economies that rely on that research.

The complexity of these issues combined with the vast networks of research globally means that institutions often can’t “go it alone” – they need something to shine a stronger, brighter spotlight on research security compliance, and to provide the right information to assist in making the best decisions.

Dimensions – among the world’s largest linked research databases – is perfectly placed to be a beacon of light on these issues.

The new Dimensions Research Security app

The Dimensions Research Security app includes a visual dashboard that enables research organizations to obtain information quickly and easily.

Reviewing research collaborations for compliance? Dimensions Research Security enables you to thoroughly and efficiently conduct due diligence on potential research collaborations, helping you to save on time and resources.

With Dimensions Research Security, you can:

• Efficiently verify disclosures
• See all research collaborations – via grant funding information or co-authorship on publications, in patents or in clinical trials
• Surface multiple affiliations for individual researchers
• Screen for restricted entities or individuals
• Pinpoint countries of interest
• Uncover direct and indirect funding sources
• Reveal undisclosed collaborations or international funding sources that could put grant applications at risk.

Research organizations are then able to assess and prioritize potential risks, with the power of world-leading information at their fingertips.

Find out more about the new Dimensions Research Security app at the Dimensions blog site, or ask for a demonstration today.

About Dimensions

Part of Digital Science, Dimensions is among the world’s largest linked research database and data infrastructure provider, re-imagining research discovery with access to grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents all in one place. www.dimensions.ai. Follow @DSDimensions on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

About the Author

David Ellis, Press, PR and Social Manager | Digital Science

David has 30 years’ experience in media and communications. With a background in broadcast journalism, his career focus has been in research communication – including science, health science and medicine – spanning 25 years of service in the university sector. His experience also includes both internal and external communications in the health and manufacturing sectors.

The post Dimensions shines a spotlight on research security appeared first on Digital Science.

In keeping with many Digital Science new starters, Chief of Staff Alison Mitchell has had an exhilarating first few months at the company. Here she reflects on the theme of change in terms of leadership and growth in a complex organization.

For many years I’ve watched Digital Science from afar, and I’ve always been aware of its long-held commitment to helping researchers and research institutions make a difference. For more than a decade, Digital Science has been committed to maximizing the impact research and researchers can have throughout society. We do this by providing researchers with the full range of data they need, by giving them access to analytics that enable better decision-making about research, and by supplying better tools to help communicate the outcomes – including the impact – of their research more broadly. 

We’re in an era of major crises across the world that can be solved only through open debate and knowledge sharing, and it’s rewarding and energizing to be part of an organization that is committed to listening to, understanding and helping to solve the problems faced in the research ecosystem.

Once you join Digital Science, it’s clear from day one that everyone has a shared desire to help researchers create a positive impact on the world. To do this consistently well – to continue to serve researchers and solve their pain points – we need to understand the people who use our products and evolve how we work with them. As we continue on our journey to achieve that mission, Digital Science is focused on listening to our customers’ needs, building on the close working relationships we’ve developed, and offering multi-product experiences as products become more integrated across all our different user groups. This integrated approach will not only lead to more benefits for customers, but it will also open up potential new solutions to pressing academic and research problems. For example, we’ve developed Dimensions Modules&Apps in 2023, which provides analytical and workflow apps for different users and use cases, all drawing on the world’s largest linked research information dataset.

Change is also happening quickly in terms of our people, and within my own Chief of Staff area we have already created two new teams. The first is a Business Intelligence Unit, led by Dr Jennifer Wooldridge, which will support the business with timely, accurate, easy-to-use reporting and analysis on performance, competitors and the wider market. The second is a new team that will lead the company in exploring new ideas and insights across the research ecosystem. We’ve called the team ‘TL;DR’ – a play on the fact that we’re trying to be brief and accessible – and launched a new website to host the blogs, interviews and other content that the team produces. The team includes former Overleaf CEO John Hammersley, founder of Ripeta Leslie McIntosh, and other Digital Science leaders Suze Kundu, Briony Fane and Simon Porter who, together, are aiming to develop a “new avenue for interesting things”.

I titled this post “leadership for change” because change has been the theme of my first months with Digital Science. I see a company that’s moving from its sometimes disparate start-up roots to being a joined-up team that’s evolving and scaling to meet the needs of the important communities it serves – all the while maintaining the spirit of innovation that I knew Digital Science for before I joined. It’s an exciting journey, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Alison Mitchell
Chief of Staff
10 May 2023

The post My First 100 Days: Leadership for Change appeared first on Digital Science.

“Climate change is one of the biggest threats to health.”
—Dr Beth Thompson, interim Director of Strategy, Wellcome Trust (7 February 2023).

This blog addresses the impact of climate change on infectious diseases, in particular infectious diseases with the potential to transmit from animals to humans, also known as zoonotic diseases. To set the scene for this, we first consider the wider context of how global warming has far-reaching consequences for humans and the planet. The global changes that we are currently experiencing have never happened before, with climate change representing one of the principal environmental and health challenges. We use Dimensions to explore published research, research funding, policy documents and citation data. To help us perform a deeper analysis of the data, we access the Dimensions data through its Google BigQuery (GBQ) provision. This allows us to integrate data from Dimensions with one of the  publicly available World Bank datasets on GBQ.  

We also look at the research in conjunction with two United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – SDG3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG13 Climate Action – and assess how they add to the narrative. Many of the health impacts associated with climate change are a particular threat to the poorest people in low- and middle-income countries where the burden of climate sensitive diseases is the greatest. This also suggests that the impact in these regions, based on the UN SDGs, may reach beyond climate (SDG13) and health (SDG3) to affect those who live in extreme poverty (SDG1) and/or those who experience food insecurity (SDG2).

“The climate crisis is a health crisis”

Introduction

1. Climate change and zoonotic diseases

Climate change has far-reaching implications for human health in the 21st century, with significant increases in temperature extremes, heavy precipitation, and severe droughts.¹ It directly impacts health through long-term changes in rainfall and temperature, climatic extremes (heatwaves, hurricanes, and flash floods), air quality, sea-level rise in low-land coastal regions, and many different influences on food production systems and water resources.²

In terms of human health, climate change has an important impact on the transmission of vector-borne diseases (human illnesses caused by parasites), in particular zoonotic infectious diseases (infections transmitted from animal to humans by the bite of infected arthropod species, such as mosquitoes and bats), and has a particular relevance due to the most recent COVID-19 and Zika virus outbreaks. Arthropods are of major significance due to their abundance, adaptability, and coevolution to different kinds of pathogens.³ 

Zoonotic infectious diseases are a global threat because they can become pandemics, as we have seen in the case of COVID-19, and are currently considered one of the most important threats for public health globally. The COVID pathogen spread worldwide, recording 255,324,963 cases with 5,127,696 deaths as of November 2021.⁴

One reason for this turnaround could be related to the widespread adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDG6, which sets out to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.⁹ The achievement of this Goal, even if partially, would greatly benefit people and the planet, given the importance of clean water for socio-economic development and quality of life, including health and environmental protection. SDG6 considers improvement of water quality by reducing by half the amount of wastewater that is not treated by 2030.

The changes in climatic conditions have forced many pathogens and vectors to develop adaptation mechanisms. For example, in the case of African Ebola, climate change is a factor in the rise in cases over the past two decades, with bats and other animal hosts of the virus being driven into new areas when temperatures change, potentially bringing them into closer contact with humans.  

Examples highlighting how the acceleration of zoonotic pathogens is attributable to changes in climate and ecology due to human impact are common. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), almost six out of every 10 infectious diseases can be spread from animals to humans; three out of every four emerging infectious diseases in humans originate from animals.⁵ Zoonotic diseases, such as those spread by mosquitoes and other related vectors, have increased in recent years. This is because the rise in global temperatures has created favourable conditions for breeding specific pathogens, especially in poorly developed countries predominantly in the Global South.⁶ Further, climate change is causing people’s general health to deteriorate, making it easier for zoonotic infections to spread, as seen with the Zika and dengue viruses.⁷

The changes in climatic conditions have forced pathogens and vectors to develop adaptation mechanisms. Such development has resulted in these diseases becoming resistant to conventional treatments due to their augmented resilience and survival techniques, thus further favouring the spread of infection.

2. Exploring links between climate change and zoonotic diseases as evidenced by mentions in policy documents

Developments in policy are generally rooted in academic research. Applying research to policy relevant questions is increasingly important to address potential problems and can often identify what has been successful or not successful elsewhere. Citations to the research that underpins policy documents is known to be an important (proxy) indicator of the quality of the research carried out. Awareness and the course of action taken by governments, NGOs and other health-focused institutions is evident by their activity in this area. For example, in the UK the government has recently allocated £200 million to fight zoonotic diseases.⁹ Actions that are taken relevant to this are communicated by, for example, relevant policy documents which mention the research influencing public policy decision making in this area. Policy documents provide us with a different perspective for analysis, allowing a closer proximity to ‘real world’, society-facing issues. 

3. The SDG3 and SDG13 crossover: research outputs associated with zoonotic diseases and climate change

The UN launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to address an ongoing crisis: human pressure leading to unprecedented environmental degradation, climatic change, social inequality, and other negative planet-wide consequences.¹⁰ There is growing evidence that environmental change and infectious disease emergence are causally linked and there is an increased recognition that SDGs are linked to one another. Thus, understanding their dynamics is central to achieving the vision of the UN 2030 Agenda. But environmental change also has direct human health outcomes via infectious disease emergence, and this link is not customarily integrated into planning for sustainable development.¹¹

Two of the 17 UN SDGs of most relevance to zoonotic diseases and climate change are SDG3 and SDG13.

Looking specifically at SDG3, reducing global infectious disease risk is one of the targets for the Goal (Target 3.3), alongside strengthening prevention strategies to identify early warning signals (Target 3.d).¹² Given the direct connection between environmental change and infectious disease risk, actions taken to achieve other SDGs also have an impact on the achievement of SDG3. Moreover, strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters is one of the targets for SDG13 (Target 13.1).¹³ The two SDGs perhaps highlight two sides of the same coin – SDG3 focusing on preventing and reducing disease risks and SDG13 focusing on strengthening resilience of climate-related hazards (infectious disease being an obvious hazard).

Exploring the crossover between SDG3 and SDG13 using Dimensions, reveals interlinkages with other SDGs – SDG1 No Poverty and SDG2 Zero Hunger. We know that living in poverty has negative impacts on health, and in respect of climate change, economic loss attributed to climate-related disasters is now a reality. Experiencing hunger can be a consequence of vulnerable agricultural practices that negatively impact food productivity and production. In 2020, between 720 and 811 million persons worldwide were suffering from hunger, as many as 161 million more than in 2019.¹⁴ Moreover, climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters progressively deteriorate land and soil quality, severely affecting the cost of food items.

4. Funding of research associated with SDG3 and SDG13 – increases in SDG research funding

Scientific advances reveal empirical observations of the association between climate change and shifts in infectious diseases. Using Dimensions we can examine the scientific evidence for this by looking at the impact of climate change on zoonotic diseases. We can also track the science, through the lens of research outputs associated with both SDG3 and SDG13.  

Being able to assess publishing and funding behaviours by comparing the Global North and Global South countries provides us with an insight into where research is both funded and ultimately published. Moreover, one question we might ask is, given that the Global South is currently hardest hit by the consequences of climate change from an infectious disease perspective, will we see changes in publishing and funding practices in the future?

Furthermore, climate change has exacerbated many influencing factors. It has generated habitat loss, pushed wild animals from hotter to cooler climates where they can mix with new animals and more people, and it has lengthened the breeding season and expanded the habitats of disease-spreading mosquitoes, ticks, etc.,¹⁵ and so we could potentially see more zoonotic infectious disease spreading to countries in the Global North. Given these factors, and the capability of Dimensions, we can make comparisons over time and geolocation to track where changes are occurring.

Dimensions search strategy and data investigation

i. Search strategies

Research data were retrieved using Digital Science’s Dimensions database and Google BigQuery (GBQ). For initial searches we created a specific search term to identify publications associated with zoonotic/infectious diseases and climate change. Two sets of terms were used to define the searching keywords. The first was made up of keywords associated with zoonotic and infectious diseases, and the second was simply one word, ‘Climate’, as follows:

Zoonoses OR "zoonotic diseases" OR "parasitic diseases" OR "zoonotic pathogens" OR "vector borne diseases" OR "climate-sensitive infectious diseases" OR "infectious disease risk" OR "infectious diseases" AND Climate.

Dimensions’ inbuilt SDG classification system allowed for the linking of research outputs associated with SDGs both individually and in combination. On this basis we were able to include SDG3 Good Health and Well-being and SDG13 Climate Action to the search, allowing us to include outputs associated with both Goals. The main focus of the search carried out was on peer-reviewed articles and government policy documents between 2010 and 2022. A set of 1,436 research publications were retrieved and entered into further analyses separately. The research outputs retrieved shared a focus on the impact of climate change on pathogen, host and transmission of human zoonotic/infectious diseases.

A dataset based on the research outputs retrieved from Dimensions was created within GBQ. This allowed integration with publicly available datasets from the World Bank to ascertain low and high income countries and regions. The Dimensions GBQ provision also facilitates in-depth targeted analyses. This allowed us to look solely at the publications resulting from our search in order to identify trends in concepts, citations, policy documents and collaborations by geographic region.

ii. Findings

a) Publication timeline trends for research outputs tagged in Dimensions jointly with SDG3 and SDG13 and associated with zoonotic/infectious diseases and climate change were plotted.

Figure 3 highlights the trajectory over a 13-year time period for publications associated with both SDG3 and SDG13 in Dimensions. Of note, following implementation of the UN SDGs in January 2016, the upward trend in numbers of publications begins to rise sharply until the end of 2021, with a dip in 2022.

b) Co-authorship analysis: Collaboration by geographic region

Figure 4a reveals that for every 40 publications authored in a high-income country, one publication was in collaboration with a low-income country-based researcher. Figure 4b reveals that two in three publications authored by low-income country based researchers have been in collaboration with high-income country based researchers. We conclude from this that it is proportionately more likely for low-income country researchers to collaborate with researchers in the Global North than for researchers in the Global North to collaborate with researchers in the Global South. However, it is important to note here that numbers of research outputs are disproportionate between the global regions (see Table 1 below). 

2010-2022	Number and percentage of authors publishing climate change and infectious (zoonotic) diseases research	Number of authors publishing research outputs associated with SDG13	Number of authors publishing research outputs associated with SDG3	Total number of authors publishing in each geographic income region
Global South
Low-income countries	52 (0.11%)	2,818 (6.22%)	26,649 (58.85%)	45,285 (100%)
Lower-middle-income countries	468 (0.03%)	85,931 (6.07%)	409,355 (28.93%)	1,415,019 (100%)
Global North
High-income countries	618 (0.01%)	365,917 (4.73%)	2,337,971 (30.22%)	7,736,160 (100%)
Upper-middle-income countries	2,419 (0.06%)	194,187 (4.56%)	850,954 (19.97%)	4,260,966 (100%)

Table 1 outlines the combined total number of authors of published research in the Global South and Global North, including the proportion of researchers against the total number of researchers in each of these regions. The figures in the table reveal that proportionally the number of researchers publishing research on zoonotic diseases and climate change is higher than that of higher-income countries. We argue here that this research focus is not necessarily a niche area for Global South countries (even though their number of research outputs and activity is low in real terms). Consideration of the number of authors publishing zoonotic diseases and climate change research papers against numbers of authors publishing in areas associated more generally with SDG3 and SDG13 provides a glimpse of the breadth of sustainable development research of which our topic area is just one component. 

Despite the crossover with SDG3 and SDG13 not being high, it shows that the engagement of researchers in low-income countries with zoonotic diseases research is notable and contributes to research progress in this area. However, the research is better represented if we look proportionally. For example, 52 researchers in low-income countries represent 8% of the number of zoonotic disease researchers in high-income countries (618), but the total number of researchers publishing overall in low-income countries (45,285) represents just 0.5% of all researchers in high-income countries (7.7 million) making the proportional contribution by low-income country researchers 40 times greater than high-income country researchers in this research area.

c) Research publications by geographic region

Figure 5 above reveals a total of 1,419 research publications pre- and post-SDG period from 2010-2022 by country income group have been captured by Dimensions. The numbers represented in the chart reveal that publications have at least one author in the country income groupings outlined. In order to incorporate collaborations, a publication is included twice if it includes an author within each income group. This only applies for the analysis of country income groups. It allows us to see any increases/decreases in collaborative behaviour. In this respect, we note the contribution (either through collaborating or writing their own publications) from low/low-medium-income (Global South) countries has risen both in number and as a proportion of the outputs from 2010.

d) Citation analysis by geographic regions

The data in Figure 6a and 6b above reveal that:

1. South-East Asia as a producer of this research is dominant in the Global South (see Fig. 6b).

2. In the Global South, South-East Asia both publishes research and favourably cites research from the same region (see Fig. 6a).

3. Research output in South-East Asia is not as highly cited by the Global North (see Fig. 6b). What is notable however, is the overall dominance of the Global North for both research output and citation counts. We conjecture one reason for why this might be the case is that the Global South may not have access to the same level of funding or collaboration opportunities. Moreover, differences in research focus could account for the distinction. Moreover, interest in these areas by high-income country research(ers) may be less pronounced than those research areas elsewhere in the Global South (eg, Africa) where there is more collaboration, or more ‘gain’ for Global North countries (Ebola, Zika etc). For example, if India’s research focus was local to aspects of zoonotic diseases that only affect this country, then it might be less likely that higher income countries would cite the research. This warrants a deeper dive into the data to uncover such findings but is outside the scope of the blog.

In conclusion, it is perhaps the case that areas which are most affected by climate change and zoonotic diseases have become publication ‘hotspots’ which are not yet attractive to researchers in Global North countries.

e) Funding – by income/geography; Funder type

The general trend seen in Fig. 7 above reveals government funding to be the major driving force in zoonotic diseases and climate change research in all of the country groupings.  What Dimensions reveals in this respect is that governments in the Global North provide 100% of the government funding that is held in the Dimensions database for research on these topics in the Global South. This would explain perhaps why low-income countries in the Global South, where research infrastructure isn’t as well funded, receives less government funding as it is awarded by the Global North. Looking at funding from non-profit sources, which includes organisations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Science and Technology Development Fund, we note that such organisations provide nearly a quarter of all research funding held in Dimensions, in the Global South. As with government funding, 98% of all non-profit research funding in both regions comes from non-profit organisations in the Global North. It is interesting to note, given the focus of the research, that only a very small proportion of funding is received across all funder types from the healthcare sector. All other funders included in Fig. 7 92.5% of funding comes from the Global North (healthcare funding is included in this figure).¹⁶

f) Policy documents and their citing publications

In Dimensions, policy sources and document types range from government guidelines, reports or white papers; independent policy institute publications; advisory committees on specific topics; research institutes; and international development organisations. The top 12 policy publishers that are outlined in Fig. 8 above represent those publishers of policies citing research outputs associated with climate change and zoonotic diseases. It is perhaps not unexpected that the number of publications cited by the World Health Organization would be high given its global vision to eliminate the disease burden globally and to reverse climate change. Zoonotic diseases are very much on the radar of the global agencies concerned with global health which, given climate change, means that spread of these diseases in the Global North is more likely.

Takeaway findings

Using Dimensions’ capability to take a deep dive into research exploring zoonotic diseases and climate change in the context of SDGs has enabled us to uncover a number of interesting findings that are illuminating in the context of a world view.

Our investigations have revealed several interesting findings, including:

• Research publications in this area have increased more than two-fold since the implementation of the SDGs.  
• Collaboration patterns in the Global North and Global South reveal that researchers in Global South countries are more likely to collaborate with researchers in the Global North than vice versa.
• The total number of authors publishing research on zoonotic diseases and climate change in the lowest-income countries represents 8% of the total number of zoonotic disease researchers in high-income countries (see Table 1). Expanding this out across all research publications, the total number of researchers publishing in low-income countries represents just 0.5% of all researchers in high-income countries, making the proportional representation of low-income country researchers 40 times greater than high-income country researchers. Although actual numbers would reveal a different story, we believe that depicting the data in this way provides a balanced representation of the research output.
• Research carried out on zoonotic diseases and climate change in the lower income countries is less well cited by higher income countries.
• The data in Dimensions highlights that government organisations in the Global North award much of the funding for research in the Global South, and likewise for funding from non-profit agencies. What we might consider here as an explanation is that numerous organisations in the Global North such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the SCI Foundation, along with governments, are committed to the elimination of zoonotic diseases and in helping reduce carbon emissions to reverse climate change at a global level.

Conclusion

What is apparent is that governments around the world are investing large sums of money as part of the global mission to halt the spread of animal diseases and to protect the public against zoonotic disease outbreaks before they become pandemics that pose a risk globally.

Digital Science’s Dimensions database provided us with enormous opportunities for the interrogation of data to gather insights on zoonotic diseases and climate change (much more than could be included in this blog). The comprehensiveness of the database in terms of its coverage of publications, policy documents, grant funding and SDG-associated output (among others) in the Global North and Global South allows for creating the most value. As a linked research database, the possibilities for generating downstream link- and flow- analyses across geographies means it is an invaluable tool for the widest possible discovery across the research ecosystem.

About Dimensions

Part of Digital Science, Dimensions is the largest linked research database and data infrastructure provider, re-imagining research discovery with access to grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy documents all in one place. www.dimensions.ai

About the Authors

Dr Briony Fane, Director, Researcher Engagement, Data | Digital Science

Dr Briony Fane gained a PhD from City, University of London, and has worked both as a funded researcher and a research manager in the university sector. Briony plays a major role in investigating and contextualising data for clients and stakeholders. She identifies and documents her findings, trends and insights through the curation of customised in-depth reports. Briony has extensive knowledge of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and regularly publishes blogs on the subject, exploring and contextualising data from Dimensions.

Ann Campbell, Product Technical Specialist | Dimensions

Ann Campbell (MPhil) joined Digital Science after almost 16 years working in the university sector where she successfully implemented several information systems used across the student and research lifecycle. Ann has a broad knowledge of data integration and analysis, primarily in the areas of academic research and impact, research assessment, diversity and inclusion and the UN SDGs. With extensive expertise in academic related data, she has played a lead role in data preparation for a number of REF assessments, diversity and inclusion charters and mandatory submissions.

Dr Juergen Wastl, Director of Academic Relations and Consultancy | Digital Science

Dr Juergen Wastl leads on supporting research institutions, funders, governments and other institutions with research capabilities to make better use of data to inform their strategies and decisions. Juergen headed the team that developed the Sustainable Development Goals classification for Dimensions and spearheads investigations and innovative analysis based on the UN SDGs. He is also Associate Director at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) and he has considerable experience in all matters associated with research evaluation, assessment and interoperability.

¹ https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s40121-022-00647-3.pdf

² Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken,et al. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects.Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York,NY: Cambridge University Press.

³ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4459090/pdf/fpubh-03-00157.pdf

⁴ Ajuwon BI, Roper K, Richardson A, Lidbury BA. One Health Approach: A Data-Driven Priority for Mitigating Outbreaks of Emerging and Re-Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Trop Med Infect Dis. 2021 Dec 29;7(1):4. doi: 10.3390/tropicalmed7010004. PMID: 35051120; PMCID: PMC8780196

⁵ Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(2), 893; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020893

⁶ We use the terms Global North/Global South and High- high middle income and low- low middle income countries interchangeably.

⁷ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31196187/

⁸ https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11356-020-08896-w

⁹ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/200-million-investment-to-fight-zoonotic-diseases#:~:text=The%20%C2%A3200%20million%20funding,Capability%20in%20Animal%20Health%20programme

¹⁰ https://news.un.org/en/search/Sustainable%20development%20goals

¹¹ https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2001655117

¹² https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3

¹³ https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal13

¹⁴ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/

¹⁵ https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/inevitable-outbreaks-spillovers-pandemics

¹⁶ It is important to note here that Dimensions funding data is skewed towards the Global North.

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Daniel Hook, one of the co-founders of Symplectic and now CEO of Digital Science, reflects on the past 20 years of growth and change at Symplectic – and what makes it such a special partner within the research community.

Twenty years is a long time in tech but a short time in the world of research. There are other, perhaps more appropriate measures by which to measure the age of Symplectic: in UK terms, Symplectic is ‘three REFs’ old, from a New Zealand perspective it is just two PBRFs, and in an Australian context it is four (and a bit) ERAs old. From a software development perspective, Symplectic is six major versions old. From a client perspective, it is more than 120 installations old. From a personal perspective, it is two CEOs old – indeed, around Christmas this year, I will become the second-longest serving CEO of Symplectic, having moved into the Digital Science leadership team in 2015 and handed the reins of Symplectic over into the capable hands of Jonathan Breeze.

As with almost any 20-year-old, this one, which was started by four friends who happened to share an office while doing their PhDs, has grown so as to be almost completely unrecognisable. And yet, there are things that were important to us when we founded the company 20 years ago that remain at the heart of what we do now. I like to think that there are two guiding principles in what Symplectic does: firstly, whatever we do, we do it collaboratively; secondly, we want to save people time. There are other things that flow from this: bringing an academic perspective; helping people to make better decisions; ensuring that data are re-used; making sure that we preserve key aspects of choice in how users of Elements are able to work with the data that it contains; interoperability between systems and so on. At the core each of these things is an expression of those two guiding principles.

Setting collaboration at the centre of Symplectic’s world has created a very special ethos in the company, as both those inside the company and those who work with Symplectic’s team will attest. Symplectic’s story is not just about those of us who founded the company or those of us who have been part of the team – it is a story that is shared with Symplectic’s wider community. There are simply too many people to name who have played pivotal roles in making Symplectic the company that it is today. I know this because, in preparation for this blog, I tried to write such a list and found myself with more than 50 names of people simply from my time as CEO in the first ten years of Symplectic. And, that list specifically did not include the many colleagues and friends who were actually part the Symplectic team itself over that period. I can only imagine that Jonathan Breeze, my successor, has a list at least as long as the company has expanded significantly under his tenure. All these contributors have made Symplectic what it is today. 

Symplectic enjoys a special level of collaboration with its clients, partners, friends, and colleagues. So many over the years have taken a long view – not solely focusing on their own project or installation but giving their time and knowledge generously. This has not only created a company and a piece of software, but also a shared store of deep domain knowledge. Every relationship has gone toward ‘paying it forward’ so that the broader Symplectic community benefits from the innovations and ideas of each participant. When once, in the early phase of Symplectic’s development around 2008, a perceptive UK-based client observed, “You’re really just centralising development funding from many universities so that you can give us a great product and keep it moving forward in a way that we can afford”, they were not wrong.

Our second focus of saving people time sits as a key part of this collaborative relationship. In that regard, Symplectic has moved from serving a single institution in 2003 to being fortunate enough to collaborate with institutions around the world to help them save time for their researchers.

Symplectic’s work is trusted around the world, saving time every day for more than 500,000 academics and administrators in 18 countries. The clients of Symplectic hold more than 8.8m distinct publications sourced from different data sources, saving academic and administrative time every time an article is added to their Symplectic Elements system, full text is deposited, or data is reused in other systems to inform decisions, help annual reviews or advertise the expertise of colleagues to potential partners around the world. With the help of Dimensions, I estimate that:

• Just over 7% of global annual output is recorded by organisations in a Symplectic Elements system in an automated way that minimises the time to rekey research metadata records.
• 23% of global green open access articles are associated with at least one Symplectic Elements instance, saving time for academics to deposit their work into institutional repositories.
• 17.5% of global citations land on articles stored in Symplectic Elements instances, while 15.5% of Nature papers are captured in Elements instances.
• Approximately 64% of articles associated with Symplectic’s clients have an Altmetric mention (compared to a global average of 27%).
• 72.5% of New Zealand’s research article output is captured in a Symplectic Elements system, as well as 74% of funder-acknowledging publications, and almost 81% of New Zealand’s University-produced research.

It has been an honour to work with the Symplectic team over the last 20 years. To see their progress, their dedication, and their spirit. As you see, they have carved out a unique path and make a real impact in the world with the people that they support. Here’s to the next 20! 

And, of course, to borrow a phrase… Vive la Symplectic! 

This post was originally published on the Symplectic website here.

About the Author

Daniel Hook, CEO | Digital Science

Daniel Hook is CEO of Digital Science, co-founder of Symplectic, a research information management provider, and of the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). A theoretical physicist by training, he continues to do research in his spare time, with visiting positions at Imperial College London and Washington University in St Louis.

The post Symplectic at 20: Thoughts from Digital Science’s CEO appeared first on Digital Science.