MAY 12 — The phrase “science diplomacy” conjured a romantic image: a polar bear standing next to a Russian and an American scientist in front of a research vessel, a testament to Cold War cooperation. It was seen as a niche pursuit — a “nice-to-have” soft power tool. But a new, comprehensive analysis published in Scientometrics by Anna-Lena Rüland and her colleagues shatters this outdated notion. Their study, which maps two decades of scholarship, delivers a clear and urgent verdict: science diplomacy is no longer a niche. It has erupted into a full-fledged, global, and strikingly fragmented research field. The question is no longer if science diplomacy matters, but whether our understanding of it can keep pace with its explosive growth.

The numbers alone are staggering. The study reveals a field that has grown from a trickle of publications in the early 2000s to a veritable flood. This is a lagging indicator of a profound shift in global affairs. We are living in an era defined by challenges that respect no borders — pandemics, climate collapse, disruptive AI, biodiversity loss. In this landscape, science is no longer just an input to foreign policy; it is foreign policy. A country’s ability to collaborate on lunar exploration, set standards for 6G networks, or attract global biotech talent is now a primary currency of geopolitical influence. The scholarship is scrambling to catch up.

But the study’s most significant finding is the fragmentation. The authors map a field that is not a single, cohesive discipline but rather a series of “tribes” operating in parallel. You have scholars in international relations debating the geopolitical implications of quantum computing. You have science and technology studies (STS) researchers dissecting the power dynamics in global health collaborations. You have innovation economists measuring the impact of research infrastructure as a diplomatic tool. And you have practitioners — the diplomats and science attachés — writing insightful case studies from the front lines.

This handout picture released on August 20, 2025, by the University of Santiago USACH, shows an aerial view of Antarctica during a study led by a team of Chilean scientists of the University of Santiago with researchers from the Netherlands and Germany, to determine the presence of heavy metals in Antarctica due to the increase in tourism in the area. — Jose Jorquera/University of Santiago USACH handout pic via AFP

This intellectual siloing is the field’s greatest vulnerability. When these groups don’t speak to each other, the scholarship risks becoming a cacophony of disconnected insights. A diplomat negotiating a climate accord might overlook the deep-seated structural inequalities in global science that a critical STS scholar would highlight. A policymaker designing a “science for development” initiative might fail to account for the geopolitical rivalries that an international relations expert could predict. We are generating more knowledge than ever about science diplomacy, yet we are doing a poor job of synthesising it into a coherent framework that can guide effective action.

The study’s finding of a global, yet unevenly distributed, research landscape is another critical takeaway. While science diplomacy scholarship is emerging from institutions across the Global South, the intellectual epicenters, the most cited authors, and the dominant journals remain overwhelmingly Western. This is a paradox at the heart of the field. Science diplomacy is often championed as a tool for equitable, transnational cooperation, yet the very scholarship meant to understand it risks replicating the very hierarchies of power it seeks to navigate. If the “science” in science diplomacy is increasingly global, but the “diplomacy” in its study remains parochial, we are building a toolkit for a world that no longer exists.

So, what is to be done? The real-world implications are urgent. For governments, this fragmentation means that investing in science diplomacy without also investing in the intellectual infrastructure to understand it is like pouring money into a high-tech engine with no dashboard. We need “science diplomacy translators” — experts who can bridge the gap between the lab, the ministry, and the negotiating table, informed by a synthesis of these disparate scholarly traditions.

For the research community, the challenge is to move beyond case studies and towards more rigorous, comparative, and interdisciplinary work. The next wave of scholarship shouldn’t just ask “is science diplomacy happening?” but rather “under what conditions does it succeed?” and “who truly benefits?” This requires methodological courage: combining network analysis with ethnographic fieldwork, and quantitative bibliometrics with qualitative interviews with policymakers and researchers in Jakarta, Nairobi, and Brasília, not just in Washington and Brussels.

The rise of science diplomacy is a reflection of a world where the boundaries between knowledge, power, and governance have fundamentally blurred. Rüland, Andersen, Hassen, and Kinyanjui have done more than just chart a research field; they have provided a mirror to this new reality. Their findings reveal a dynamic, vital, but dangerously fragmented landscape. The next step is up to both scholars and policymakers: to decide whether to continue operating in their separate silos, or to build the bridges needed to ensure that the promise of science diplomacy — to harness knowledge for a more stable and equitable world — isn’t lost in translation.

* The author is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at ahmadibrahim@ucsiuniversity.edu.my.  

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.