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Transnational Networks in Basic Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Diana Crane
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Extract

Basic science is an inherently international activity. Its principal goal is the production of new knowledge which is evaluated according to universal standards. In terms of membership and goals scientific communities have been international since their emergence during the seventeenth century. Basic science today consists of hundreds of research problem areas in which groups of scientists study similar problems and exchange information across national boundaries. International scientific cooperation occurs on several levels ranging from informal communication between individual researchers to multilateral agreements between governments and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs).

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International Organization , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Summer 1971, pp. 585 - 601
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1971

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References

1 Basic science, as opposed to applied science, is concerned with problems whose solutions are perceived to have no immediate practical application.

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