Towards world-class science and innovation system: on culture of excellence and integrity, mentoring and collaboration

China places a great emphasis on boosting its innovative capability, which it says is key to meeting the challenges in economic development and global competition. At the heart of the matter is how the country could produce its own agent of innovation-creative graduates and postgraduates.


SCIENCE POLICY
Towards world-class science and innovation system: on culture of excellence and integrity, mentoring and collaboration

Gaoqing Max Lu
The year 2014 may prove to be a major turning point in China's development of world-class science and innovation system. At the mid-term juncture of China's Medium-and Long-Term Program (MLP) for Science and Technology (S&T) development, the Ministry of Science and Technology conducted a comprehensive review and assessment of the program, accompanied by a twoday workshop and assessment meeting by a 12-member international evaluation team during 17-19 January. My observations as a panel member are as follows.
The MLP has accomplished a great deal during the past seven years. The strong government's investment in S&T has resulted in rapid increases in the number of publications and patents by Chinese scientists. This period also witnessed China's success in building a large talent pool, including scientists recruited from abroad, and an infrastructure for S&T development close to that in advanced countries. However, China still faces the challenge of going 'beyond catch-up' and achieving world-class scientific outcomes and impact. This requires paying more attention to highquality basic science, with the proper level of funding for frontier sciences and for support of young scientists.
Very timely, Premier Li Keqiang outlined China's vision for an innovation-led growth on 29 May 2014, at the opening of the Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council (GRC) in Beijing. He pledged that China will nurture innovative and entrepreneurial energies, and make innovation a driving force for the country's economic upgrading. The challenges are formidablemanufacturing overcapacity, deteriorating environment, energy provision outpaced by demand and inefficiency of existing infrastructure, all requiring advances in sciences and innovation. Also highlighted by Premier Li is the importance of international cooperation and global mobility of knowledge, technology and talent.
At this historical moment, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) issued in late May a statement in the spirit of a manifesto entitled Towards Excellence in Science, heralding a new beginning for uplifting Chinese science towards excellence and higher impact. It highlights the need to strengthen the merit-based evaluation, recognition and support systems, and to build capability and confidence for innovation. The statement also addresses the issues of frauds and misconducts in the scientific community and calls for measures for strengthening scientific integrity and responsible conducts. It calls for stronger policy and management systems that are firmly grounded on the fundamental principles and values of scientific research of highest integrity, seeking truth and academic freedom.
China needs to build a culture of excellence that aligns with the best international scientific tradition, encouraging original creativity and research integrity. Some issues with research integrity in China are believed at least partly due to some weakness in the administration of research and the use of inappropriate metrics for evaluating research outcomes. The Chinese scientific community does recognize that a weak research governance and management is impediment to building a world-class science and innovation system, which is so critical to economic transformation and sustainable growth in China's next phase of development.
The Chinese leadership is resolute in the reform aiming to tackle the difficulties imposed by cultural and institutional traditions. For example, such reforms require developing new and fair approaches to grant administration, having adequate numbers of qualified program officers, and reducing the influence of personal networks and lobbying in the assessment processes. The international experience in using high-level, independent or disinterested scientific advisory mechanisms would be invaluable in addressing some of these problems. However, in the cultural dimension, there is a need more than ever to develop a strong value system centred on quality and integrity.

STRENGTHENING RESEARCH INTEGRITY
In encouraging a scientific culture of excellence and integrity, the CAS manifesto addresses laboratory behaviour in the statement: 'To achieve scientific excellence, the scientific community needs to consciously advocate and uphold the scientific spirit, promote the values and focus of science in seeking truth and innovation, establish management structures and mechanisms that suit the characteristics and rules of scientific research, and discourage scientific behaviour aimed only at short-term success or individual benefits'.
Research integrity is a global issue, since misconducts in research are not uncommon in any country. And, under increasing pressure with shrinking funding and highly competitive research environment, the incident of scientific misconduct increases. The GRC consisting of 75% of the world's science funding agencies has been leading the development of a principle-based responsible conduct of research. It is a high-level guideline for the global scientific enterprise and is critical to society's trust in science. Within its framework, the basic principles of research integrity-namely honesty, responsibility, fairness and accountability of researchers and the scientific community-are enshrined among foundational documents (the Singapore Statement, the Inter-Academy Council IAP Policy Report and the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity).
While research funding agencies have an obligation to ensure that the research they support is conducted in accordance with the highest standards possible, researchers and institutions themselves remain ultimately responsible for undertaking research with integrity.
The CAS manifesto Towards Excellence in Science emphasizes on 'upholding the moral standards of sincere cooperation, honesty and integrity' and calls for scientists to honour the work of others. It states that 'Scientists should accurately record and report their research findings, honestly present their data and research results, and specifically protect the reputation of science by consciously opposing scientific misconduct'. I applaud such standards set by the CAS. I think that the fundamental cornerstones on which scientific excellence is built include the reliability of scientists being meticulous, careful and attentive to detail in conducting experiments and collecting data, and being objective, fair and unbiased in interpreting, reporting and communicating results.
In building a culture of research integrity, it is important to instil the importance of responsible conduct in research into the leadership of all funding agencies and scientific institutions. All institutions must develop and implement policies and systems to promote integrity, and make continual efforts in training and education of young students and researchers. It is also critical that we have robust and effective systems and processes for handling allegations and investigation of misconducts in a timely, fair and transparent manner.
Under the leadership of the GRC, there has been an increased level of international cooperation in recent years not only among research funding agencies, but also involving multilateral universities and research organizations, to support and facilitate research integrity worldwide.

DEVELOPING AND MENTORING YOUNG TALENTS
At the Beijing meeting in May 2014, the GRC also called for more support for the next generation of researchers. The future of world's science depends on young talent, and China has a huge pool of young talents with tremendous potential. At this meeting, Wei Yang, the President of the National Natural Science Foundation of China stressed that talented researchers are the most critical factor in scientific innovation. Training of young scientists concerns the future of science and requires the joint effort of the global scientific community.
One of the critical pathways to a truly innovative society is to provide good career opportunities and high-quality research environment for young researchers and their early independence. To promote this goal, China should consider a scheme that would provide salary and research grant support through global competition, to enable top early-career researchers to work independently at any research institution of their choice on the subjects of their choice. Proposals should be reviewed by a panel that would include distinguished foreign scientists. The NSF Career Awards, European Research Council's Starters Grants, Humboldt Fellowships or the Australian Future Fellowships are good models. It is crucial to fund the largest possible number of young investigators and free them from inappropriate oversight by senior investigators. The schemes should also try to avoid overdetermination of priority areas by a top-down approach and offer opportunities for bright young people to explore their curiosities, following of their own imagination wherever that may lead.
Excellence in research requires scientists to be ruthlessly self-critical. Upon discovering something new and interesting, scientists should be able to discern new insight from delusion and question the validity of their own assumptions, data and analysis. Such a self-critical culture can be best built with the help of mentors who are rigorous, tough but supportive. This is where mentorship comes in and plays a pivotal role in nurturing young scientists. There is clear evidence that mentorship benefits both the mentor and one who is mentored. Many successful scientists developed their research and mentorship skills through their advisers and even mimicked their career choices. Scientific advisers as mentors often play a significant role in developing the leadership, interpersonal and communication skills of their protégés.

STRENGTHENING INTER-NATIONAL COLLABORATION
In the January workshop, the international assessment team for the mid-term review of the MLP for S&T development also assessed China's research and innovation capacity in five priority areas. In the field of energy, there is clear evidence of high-impact research and some notable commercial successes e.g. in renewable energy development. In information and communication technology, there have been some outstanding commercial successes built on incremental innovation with large market support, but evidence of original innovation is less apparent due to weakness in the basic science in this area (as compared to that in leading countries), with the exception of high-performance computers. In materials science and nanotechnology, China has established herself as a leader PERSPECTIVES both in quantity and quality of scientific publications. Progress in medical and pharmaceutical sciences is seen as relatively weak in terms of the impact of the research and China's share of the world's high-tier publications. But China has shown strengths in genomics and bioinformatics, which can be expected to underpin China's future leadership in personalized medicine and agriculture biotechnology.
Thomas Barlow Report 'Asia 100-Benchmarking University Research in Asia and Oceania-2014' also confirmed the transformational shift in research and innovation, reflected in the growing number of world-class universities in East Asia and Oceania. In the Academic Ranking of World Universities, no Chinese university had reached the top 2003, but six have done so in 2013. Apart from shorter history in research capacity and excellence, most Chinese universities are weak in international collaboration.
According to the Barlow Report, there is on average only around 20% internationally co-authored papers among pub-lications from China, but more than 50% in Australia and the USA. There is a strong correlation between the citation per paper and the number of international co-authors (and the number of countries co-authors came from). In the field of materials science, for example, citation per paper for those involving international co-authors is typically 1.5 to 2 times of those papers without international co-authors.
The difficulty for Chinese scientists in international collaboration could be attributed to the lack of resources and opportunities, and in language barriers, in the past. However, three decades of reform and opening up have brought increasing funding and opportunities for short visits, conferences and collaborative research projects. Increasing number of Chinese students studying abroad (totalling 450 000 in 2013, according to China Education Association for International Exchange), particularly graduate students, will further strengthen international research collaboration. Among those graduate students doing PhDs overseas, the ever stringent entrance requirements on English language, rich extracurricular experiences and opportunities for crossdisciplinary work will foster a generation of researchers with much broader skills. Either returning to China or remaining abroad, these researchers will become powerful facilitators and practitioners for high-quality international collaboration.
I am thus optimistic that in the next decade, with improvement of the system for scientific excellence and elevated international collaboration, China will become an undisputable world leader in science and innovation, only fit to complement her remarkable achievements as an economic superpower. As the Human Genome Project was declared complete in the early 21th century, it was obvious that the human genome contains fewer genes than previously predicted [1]. Soon scientists realized that the biodiversity and complexity observed in humans cannot be simply explained by numbers of genes nor by the size of the human genome. Many other factors such as epigenetics and 'postprocessing' chemical processes (i.e. posttranscriptional regulation of RNA and post-translational modifications or PTM of proteins) beyond the central dogma exist and contribute significantly to complexity of humans. Among various PTMs, glycosylation-adding sugar molecules or glycans onto the protein backbonesis one of the most ubiquitous and complicated forms. More than half of the proteome consists of glycoproteins and most cell-surface proteins are glycosylated. The glycans are essential for mediating the dynamics and function of the proteins that they are attached to. Many proteins share similar or even same glycan structures. Furthermore, the reactions of attaching glycans to proteins, under the control of an array of metabolic enzymes, usually occur after protein synthesis. Therefore, glycans are traditionally labeled and imaged on the entire proteome [2]. The identity of the individual protein could not be differentiated. However, to elucidate biological effects of glycosylation on a protein of interest, it is highly desirable to visualize glycans in a protein-specific manner by using fluorescence microscopy. This challenge has not been solved in the field for a long time until recently [3]. The research group of Dr. Xing Chen at Peking University reported a method for protein-specific imaging of glycans [3], representing an important breakthrough in chemical glycobiology.
Dr. Chen's strategy utilizes a fluorescence imaging technique based on Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET). For FRET to happen, two fluorophores, a donor-acceptor pair, need to be in close proximity (<10 nm). In a FRET imaging experiment, a light is used to excite the donor and the energy is transferred to the acceptor, which emits a fluorescent signal for detection and imaging. Chen and co-workers installed a FRET acceptor to glycans