As the world looks forward to turning a corner in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes increasingly evident that international research cooperation and dialogue is necessary to end this global catastrophe. Last year, we initiated a research topic: "Infectious Disease Surveillance: Cooperative Research in Response to Recent Outbreaks, Including COVID-19," which aimed at featuring manuscripts focused on the essential link between surveillance and cooperative research for emerging and endemic diseases, and highlighting scientific partnerships in countries under-represented in the scientific literature. Here we recognize the body of work published from our manuscript call that resulted in over 50 published papers. This current analysis describes articles and authors from a variety of funded and unfunded international sources. The work exemplifies successful research and publications which are frequently cooperative, and may serve as a basis to model further global scientific engagements.