Finally, in its deliberations the committee discovered certain matters that were central to the subject but were not explicitly included in its charge. Although expressly requested to provide its advice to the agencies that supported this study, the committee became aware that many of the issues and barriers pertinent to global access to scientific data could only be addressed collectively by the world's international scientific community in concert with a broad range of national and international governmental and nongovernmental bodies. Therefore the committee considered it necessary to make several recommendations of broader scope in keeping with these concerns. The first is that international collaboration enhances scientists' capacity to better understand the natural world and thus strengthens the science base that is a source of important benefits to society. From this assumption, the rest follow.
Science is one of the most internationally cooperative of activities.
Today, the improving means and ease of communication and travel, as well as their decreasing costs, have made transnational interactions a normal, daily part of carrying out scientific research. Joint multinational authorship is common, and many funding institutions have encouraged such efforts. With the end of the Cold War, international collaboration can be expected to increase further. Data now include not only numerical data, but also symbolic data and images, and, for many scientists, textual data. Much of this convergence is the consequence of powerful electronic capabilities affecting the acquisition, storage, and exchange of scientific data.