Envisioning CORE Net
The COVID-19 Research Network (colloquially known as CORE Net) is envisioned as a community of practice to foster exchange and collaboration amongst research organisations investigating issues relevant to the coronavirus pandemic in India. It is born out of the belief that developing a collaborative network of practitioners will amplify the impact of individual research projects to develop a more robust, holistic understanding of the pandemic’s effect in India as well as to identify best practices in investigating and responding to the challenge.
The network aims to maximise impact for key stakeholders by getting relevant, synthesised evidence and insights in a timely and coordinated manner, as well as bring ethics and equity in research practices and norms by exchanging innovations, protocols and instruments and research experiences. Given the rapidity of its spread and the depth of its impact, it is imperative that those working to better understand COVID-19 are empowered and encouraged to connect, collaborate, and share learnings quickly and innovatively. This approach will ideally act as a force multiplier, expanding the learnings from the field by removing unnecessary siloes.
CORE Net is a community open to any research organisation working on the pandemic in India and willing to adhere to a shared set of collaboration principles, and is supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Throughout 2020, the network will exchange learnings and insights from individual projects in an effort to amplify impact as we develop a holistic understanding of the challenge and the best practices in responding to it.
CORE Net was also designed around a unifying mission statement, or “Northstar”, to further illustrate the network’s ethos and develop a shared vision for activities. In this manner, the network could more easily convey its purpose and mission whilst ensuring that its member organizations are mission-aligned from the onset of their engagement.
As such, the team developed this as the network’s Northstar:
Having such a succinct, provocative visioning statement all but ensures the need for further explanation and articulation for many audiences. The team sought to preempt many of these potential responses by expanding the Northstar statement such that we define each of the pertinent words (in this case, highlighted with underlines) in a way that clearly illustrates the meaning of each to our collective organization. In this way, CORE Net is able to own the language of our Northstar in a more meaningful manner, and our deliberateness in word selection is clearly conveyed to audiences.
With this shared vision, CORE Net launched with more than 20 organizations. The network will engage with each other and collaborate via regular convenings, a Slack workspace, and over a dedicated website. Updates and learnings will be shared with the general public via this publication, a public-facing section of the network website, and social media. We invite you to follow the network’s journey, and welcome any comments or feedback you may have.
Northstar statement call-outs:
I. maximise impact
Learning from and building on the experiences of others is crucial given the unprecedented nature of this complex challenge. Pooling knowledge is critical to tackle the overall challenge, while also ensuring that research efforts are held to the highest ethical standards.
II. gathering and sharing
CORE Net members represent a diversity of viewpoints and research areas. Facilitating dialogue amongst and between members is key to ensuring knowledge is shared and, thusly, impact expanded.
III. ethics
Data collected remains with the organisation anchoring respective research efforts and its use requires consent and within the framework of strict data privacy norms.
IV. equity
Collaboration between varying cultures will be leveraged towards innovation, with the network working to collaboratively harness this diversity.
V. collaborative
Bringing stakeholders together on a collaborative platform unites independent efforts to enhance our collective understanding of this challenge and discover ways of addressing it.
VI. network
CORE Net seeks to build partnerships (e.g., “constellations” rather than “lone stars”) based on mutual respect, shared values, and trust.
VII. practitioners
The network seeks to engender a spirit of collaboration and partnership, with a guiding principle of voluntary participation by research organisations out of a sense of collective purpose.
