Globalization is the advanced interconnection and interdependence of localities across the globe. It is not a magic blanket spread out over the world making everything identical, as is often thought, and is also not new. Already from the 15th century onwards, ships have sailed the world seas out of intellectual curiosity and above all else, economic profit (Module How Modern Science Came into the World). What is new, however, is the acceleration of movements of goods, people, and ideas. Globalization has a temporal and spatial dimension, or as the geographer David Harvey (1990) put it: globalization is the “compression of space and time.”

People are increasingly aware that the world is globalizing. This increasing awareness challenges people, cities, regions, and countries to rethink their place in the world and to reinvent themselves.

Globalization comes in many shapes and forms. There is economic globalization, cultural globalization, political globalization, technological globalization, ecological globalization, informational globalization … and globalization of science.

The elusive nature of globalization has not held back scholars to identify its defining characteristics. I found the work of Eriksen (2014) particularly helpful, and I will apply this author’s work to describe and provide examples for the globalization of science.

Globalization disembeds problems and solutions. Imagine a local water problem. In the old days, local people’s tacit knowledge about the local hydrology sufficed to address the problem. Ancient water systems across the world show evidence of human ingenuity to solve their problems. In modern times, we have advanced hydrological models and practices at our disposal that hold value irrespective of time and place and that we can apply in a variety of circumstances. As a consequence, global water corporations and non-governmental organizations bring solutions to the far side of the world.

Globalization requires a standardization of measurement units. In a small country like the Netherlands, time was standardized soon after trains began to ride, for example. In 1884, the International Meridian Conference decided to standardize time by drawing meridians around the globe. In 1960 scientists came together to establish the International System of Units to standardize the measurements of their experiments. Previously scientists stored artifacts for the kilogram, the meter, and other units in climate-controlled rooms. Since 2019 they use physical constants like the speed of light and the charge of an electron instead (called “democratization” as no one owns these constants). International scientific journals provide another example of the globalization of science, as all authors have to comply with the standards of good science these journals produce and reproduce.

A copy of the “provisional” meter installed 1796–1797, located in the wall of a building, 36 rue de Vaugirard, Paris. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Globalization goes hand in hand with the acceleration of scientific output. The graph below shows that the number of citable documents has more than doubled since 1996. More explorations can be done on the Scimago Journal & Country Rank portal.

 

Number of citable documents for all regions and for all domains between 1996-2018. Credit: Scimago Journal & Country Rank*.

 

The other graph below shows how scientific output spreads across the world. As can be seen immediately, this output is uneven spread over the world. Globalization of science … but not really (more on this below).

The productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist (H-index) of countries. Credit: Scimago Journal & Country Rank*.

Globalization triggers and is enhanced by the movement of scientists. Scientists meet at conferences, work for transnational corporations, and start new jobs at universities and research & development labs in other countries due to career perspectives, wages, and personal circumstances. [Add data from National Science Board]

Globalization inherently mixes cultures due to international scientific teams. Ahmad (2014) calls science the “greatest unifier of humanity” (p. 284). His examples include the Manhattan Project, the Human Genome Project, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), space research, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Scientists working in international teams bring with them and exchange the cultural and scientific mores of the country where they received their training. Such an exchange is not only inspiring but also leads to a truly international scientific community over time, or the “global invisible college” in Ahmad’s words.

Finally, globalization of science and technology comes with global risks. The Social Responsibility module is dedicated to the risky aspects of globalization.

Critics have argued that that the costs and benefits of globalization are unevenly spread across the world. They have called globalization imperialism, Westernization, neocolonialism, and global market neoliberalism. We’ll address this normative aspect of globalization in the Social Movements module. As for science, the graph above indeed shows that many less-developed countries do not (yet?) participate in the globalization of science.

 

Review questions:

Explore the trends in citable documents and country’s H-index for your field of interest for two or three regions. Can you explain the differences? Who is “in” and “out” of the global invisible college, and can you think of reasons for this imbalance?

 

* Full credits: SCImago, (n.d.). SJR — SCImago Journal & Country Rank [Portal]. Retrieved October 15, 2019, from http://www.scimagojr.com