Big science, fair access

From the first test antennas of Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR, add link) to the vast arrays of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA, add link), radio astronomy has become a story of mega infrastructures. They promise exquisite data on everything from the chemistry of star forming clouds to the large-scale structure of the Universe – but they also raise awkward questions. Who gets to use them? Who decides the rules? And how do partners with very different histories and resources learn to trust one another? 

For Dutch astrophysicist and ERC grantee Marijke Haverkorn, these questions play out in the everyday life of scientific collaborations. For South African science diplomat Daan du Toit, they are inseparable from broader struggles over equity, capacity and global partnership. 

The promise – and politics – of mega‑telescopes 

Working on LOFAR and now SKA has shown Haverkorn just how much large research infrastructures can contribute to science. They enable research across an exceptionally broad range of topics, spanning ‘the very smallest, such as astrochemical reactions of molecules in the formation of stars, to the very biggest, such as clusters of galaxies and the structure of the Universe as a whole, and almost everything in between.’ They also bring together ‘many hundreds of scientists’ and help train a new generation in state-of-the-art technology. 

In South Africa, the decision to host facilities such as the MeerKAT telescope [add link] and SKA was never only about astronomy. Du Toit points out that South Africa’s geography – remote, dry sites with exceptional sky conditions – gives the country ‘a powerful driver for international investments and partnerships such as SKA.

Hosting these infrastructures has given South Africa a seat in global science forums, raised the country’s profile as a partner, and ‘makes the world look differently at Africa as a reliable partner for global frontier research.

At home, he adds, such projects are ‘a critical role to develop and nurture scientific talent’ and a driver for technology innovation, public engagement and national pride. 

Trust as rules – and relationships 

Both stress that mega‑science only works when there is trust, but they see different sides of it. 

For Haverkorn, inside a collaboration, trust is ‘finding the right balance between collaboration and competition.’ That balance varies between fields but always rests on ‘clear agreements that collaborators find reasonable and understandable, and that everyone commits to these agreements’ – about data use, credit for work done, protection of student projects, scientific integrity and ethics. She has seen that authorship and recognition work best when expectations are set early and when ‘diverse ways to give credit to all actors in the collaboration, not only in publications,’ are built in from the start. 

Du Toit highlights the diplomatic side. In projects like SKA, trust means ‘the ability to speak frankly and address problematic issues decisively, secure in the knowledge that viewpoints will be listened to with attention, and a desire to understand, even if they are not ultimately agreed to.’ Personal relationships matter: years of conversations, including ‘over many dinners’, have created ‘a strong network of personal relationships spanning several continents.’ 

Behind both views lies a shared conviction: beyond national interests, everyone involved is committed to ‘delivering an instrument which will enable the best frontier science and concurrently reinforce international solidarity and friendship.’ 

From ‘Open Skies’ to shared ownership 

Access policies are one place where fairness becomes concrete. Haverkorn strongly supports the ‘Open Skies’ principle common to many radio telescopes, under which ‘every scientist in the world can request observing time on a telescope, and observing time proposals get awarded based on scientific merit only.’ For her, this is a powerful way to keep research infrastructures open and inclusive. 

At the scale of SKA, she notes, this is harder to maintain. Observing time is tied to national funding contributions, and ‘this may be unavoidable but is regrettable as it decreases inclusion of members of the global community.’ Large infrastructures are ‘very expensive,’ du Toit acknowledges, and access for researchers from non‑member countries is therefore constrained – though he points to discretionary time and other mechanisms that can help mitigate exclusion. 

He also insists that equitable collaboration cannot mean one‑way support. ‘Equitable collaboration means co‑ownership and co‑responsibility; it means all partners making their own investments.’ South Africa chose not only to host SKA, but to ensure ‘African engineers, scientists and policymakers should have a leadership role in the partnership.’ Today, he says, ‘astronomy is blossoming across Africa’, and the continent comes to the table ‘as an equal partner.’ 

Capacity‑building has been central to this. Du Toit describes it as ‘an investment in the future for more inclusive and equitable global collaboration,’ with different partners contributing to training programmes, scholarships and technical skills across African institutions. Local communities in hosting regions are also involved, with deliberate efforts ‘to build capacity for them to contribute to SKA technical and operational work, making them not only hosts but actively invested in the success of the SKA enterprise.’ 

Governing for inclusion 

Governing a project that spans continents, political systems and funding models is delicate. For Du Toit, the starting point is that ‘decision‑making should, where possible, be made through consensus, without paralysing decision‑making.’ When votes are needed, SKA’s structures rely on ‘one member, one vote’ and high majorities or unanimity for sensitive topics, so that smaller partners are not sidelined. 

Equally important, he argues, is how people listen to one another. Office bearers need to be ‘sensitive to the cultural differences and sensitivities’ in the room, aware that ‘the same terminologies can mean different things in different countries.’ The goal is ‘to seek to understand and not to jump to a conclusion.’ 

Large infrastructures should, in his view, be ‘living examples of Open Science’: open to and enabling the participation of all who can contribute. That sometimes means taking a longer‑term view. A single supplier may deliver a component more cheaply, but a ‘multinational global collaboration to develop the same equipment may in the short term be more expensive’ while building capacity and cooperation across many partners. 

Haverkorn’s emphasis on inclusive, guided communication echoes this from the scientist’s side. In large collaborations, she says, communication ‘has to be formalised and guided, but the aim should always be to understand different communities and viewpoints and take these into account in the decision-making process.’ 

Opportunities and constraints  

For individual scientists, including ERC grantees, mega‑projects are both enabling and constraining. 

On the opportunity side, du Toit describes SKA as ‘a wonderful mechanism to develop new and expand existing global networks,’ especially for early‑career researchers. Because SKA is a distributed, data‑intensive infrastructure, ‘geographical location of the research team is often not relevant,’ and scientists can be involved in everything from instrument design to data analysis and governance. 

But there are limits. Access policies tied to membership mean that ‘researchers not affiliated to countries that are members or have partnerships with SKA’ face barriers, even if there are discretionary routes and collaborations that can help open doors. 

Haverkorn’s experience suggests that, within these constraints, much depends on how collaborations are organised: on transparent policies for data access and authorship, on protecting students, and on designing roles that recognise a wide range of contributions, from software and hardware development to data analysis and public engagement. 

‘Actions speak louder than words’ 

Looking back on two decades of international science diplomacy, du Toit’s main advice to the next generation is disarmingly simple: ‘honour your commitments, deliver on that which you have promised.’ For South Africa, then a relative newcomer, ‘the success of our own MeerKAT telescope demonstrated what South Africa is capable of.’ In science as elsewhere, ‘actions speak louder than words. And be honest at all times.’ 

Dialogue, he insists, is just as crucial. Even the ‘fiercely contested’ bidding process between South Africa and Australia to host SKA ultimately gave way to a shared solution, with telescopes on both continents, because channels of communication remained open. Curiosity – the basic scientific impulse to ‘seek to understand, not to judge, or fear’ – is, for him, the best antidote to prejudice and division. 

From her vantage point within these collaborations, Haverkorn returns to the same principle. Large infrastructures should not be seen ‘merely as a path towards excellent science, but more holistically as a means to contribute to addressing humanity's broader problems.’ That means paying attention not only to signals from distant galaxies, but also to who gets to listen, who helps shape the rules, and how fairly the benefits are shared. 

Marijke Haverkorn is a Professor of Astrophysics at Radboud University and an ERC grantee whose work focuses on radio astronomy and the magnetic structure of the Milky Way. 

Daan du Toit is Deputy Director‑General for International Cooperation and Resources at South Africa’s Department of Science and Innovation, where he leads the country’s international science and innovation partnerships.