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In collaborative research, a globally distributed, sometimes co-located team of researchers works together to address research questions pertinent to their study. The consensus emanating from researchers, policymakers, and research funding organizations is that research collaboration is a good thing, and should be encouraged (Katz & Martin, 1997). Collaboration or research partnership can take many forms, ranging from a group of scientists in the same lab investigating the origin of a virus, to a consortium consisting of universities and companies working on a funded project to an interdisciplinary project involving researchers and principal investigators from universities in the Global North and South. Interdisciplinary North-South collaboration between researchers can bring distinct expertise to a project as well as produce new scientific knowledge. Furthermore, as acknowledged by Lee and Haupt (2021), research collaboration benefits not only low-income but also high-income countries as well.
The main characteristic of North-South research collaboration is that researchers are often geographically dispersed. They use a mixture of collaboration tools and personal face-to-face contacts to coordinate their research activities. Under normal circumstances, they can travel and meet in small groups to discuss their research in a workshop, seminar, or conference. Exchange visits and other social activities are also sometimes undertaken by research collaborators to promote interpersonal interactions and bonding. Researchers can also use emails, video conferencing, or social media platforms to communicate with their colleagues when the need arises. However, since the WHO declared the outbreak of COVID-19 on January 30, 2020 to be a public health emergency of international concern, many normal research collaboration activities have almost become impossible. What followed the WHO declaration was the dawn of the “New Normal” era that continues to bring unprecedented socioeconomic, public health, and scientific challenges for society in general and North-South research collaborations as people knew it.
Motivation
As members of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence1 at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, the authors are involved in several open collaboration research projects with partners from the North (Europe) and South (Africa). The research projects are parts of the Clusters of Excellence research projects funded by the German Excellence Strategy. Cluster members have a long history of interdisciplinary North-South research collaboration. The aim of the Cluster, among other things, is to develop a digital research environment for reconfiguring African Studies (Seesemann, 2020). The pandemic continues to have profound organizational and communication consequences for project management professionals, virtually changing the way they used to work. Like many other collaborative projects, the COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the authors' North-South research collaboration projects. The motivation for this research is to understand how to manage research collaboration projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also share their experiences and lessons learned with practitioners, researchers, project managers, and information systems specialists. Project management uses specific tools and techniques to deliver a valuable product to the people or communities concerned. In their research collaboration projects, the product is, for example, a research collaboration platform, scientific publications, skill-sets, or even domain knowledge of a specific subject or region.
To develop a thorough understanding of project management during the pandemic means that the authors’ analysis must help them understand the challenges involved in managing the resources and outputs of the projects. Noting that the chance of face-to-face meetings and knowledge exchanges among researchers might not be possible during the pandemic, research collaboration project managers also need to understand the communication technologies and strategies that project professionals are using to overcome geographical distance and compensate for the absence of in-person meetings.