International research collaboration: keep the regional question in the agreement

1. State the decision the regional evidence should inform

The clinic teams in RC31 want to understand barriers to follow-up during a seasonal service period. Their practical concern is whether the follow-up arrangements fit the people using those clinics. The team has not collected study data or chosen a validated measurement instrument.

Write that question before agreeing a dataset, publication target or partner list. Identify who needs the answer, which local conditions may matter and what would make the answer unusable. In RC31, an analysis that removes seasonal context would miss the reason the clinics proposed the collaboration.

2. Make the disagreement visible

The overseas group offers an existing international attendance measure and proposes a pooled comparison. That may be a useful resource, but its availability does not establish that it measures the clinics' question. The teams record the disagreement instead of accepting a metric because it is convenient.

On small screens, scroll the table horizontally, or focus it and use the arrow keys.

3. Allocate work, resources and decision rights

The Montreal Statement calls for partners to agree goals and responsibilities, communicate, and distribute the costs and rewards of collaboration fairly. Translate those principles into the actual work: who develops the protocol, checks local terminology, manages data, reviews analysis and funds each task.

For RC31, clinic investigators define the context and site questions; the methods group evaluates analytical options; a coordinator keeps the decision record. Name who may speak for the collaboration and how a disputed interpretation is resolved. Revisit the agreement when the work changes rather than allowing the original job titles to decide every later task.

Reference: WCRIF: Montreal Statement on cross-boundary research collaboration

4. Keep permissions separate from technical readiness

A secure transfer mechanism cannot itself authorise data sharing. In RC31, site approvals, the proposed transfer and the permitted access scope remain pending. The team can work on a synthetic field dictionary while the responsible institutional offices determine the requirements for this specific project.

The Montreal Statement is guidance, not a regulatory document or a substitute for applicable law and institutional policy. Do not turn its principles into a single Saudi or GCC-wide rule. Record which office will determine the actual requirements and what decision is still missing; no real data transfer is part of this exercise.

Reference: WCRIF: Montreal Statement on cross-boundary research collaboration

5. Discuss contributions before writing the author list

Record what each partner is expected to do and update the record with actual contributions. Funding, seniority, location and a well-known institutional affiliation do not describe the intellectual work an individual performed. Agree the applicable authorship and acknowledgement policy explicitly; this guide does not derive authorship eligibility from a role label.

The Montreal Statement includes agreement on publication, authorship and acknowledgement, and appropriate recognition of contributors. RC31 therefore leaves the final author list open until contributions and the chosen policy can be assessed. A bilingual site explanation is also assigned an owner, so it does not disappear after the English manuscript is drafted.

Reference: WCRIF: Montreal Statement on cross-boundary research collaboration

6. Check whether the promised local benefit happened

At the review point, inspect the deliverables that were agreed: a locally interpretable question, documented site input, usable analytical reasoning and an understandable explanation returned to participating teams. In RC31 these are planned deliverables, not achievements already measured.

An overseas coauthor, an indexed publication or a reference to Vision 2030 does not prove that the collaboration served the local question. If site feedback is missing, report that gap and assign the next action. A defensible account of the partnership explains its actual contribution and remaining uncertainty.

Questions for a practical final check

• Can every partner state the same research question?
• Does the proposed measure fit the regional context?
• Are responsibilities, resources and dispute decisions explicit?
• Are pending approvals and access decisions still visible?
• Will contributions and site-facing outputs be checked against actual work?