India collaborations need to address ‘practical barriers’

By Elizabeth Gibney. Work between the UK research councils, Indian government and business can be improved by fixing practical barriers to collaboration, a report says. Since 2008, Research Councils UK and the government of India have together invested over £100 million in joint research programmes. 
Overall the report finds that researchers are positive about their experiences of research collaboration with each other and with their non-academic partners. But the research, which draws on interviews with researchers and programme directors as well as publicly available data, finds that about half of the projects undertaken through the partnership had experienced serious issues with access to data or access to people. Examples included visa problems, change of personnel in key positions or delays in hiring postdoctoral researchers. More...