U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

Grants managers at two of the U.S. government’s largest funders of scientific research have recently placed unprecedented limitations on the ability of U.S. scientists to publish with co-authors from other countries, researchers say. Units of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are privately directing grantees to request permission in advance for any co-authorship with a scholar affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all the work was done in the United States. NASA, meanwhile, is reportedly telling some grantees that papers co-authored with researchers in China may have violated its rules.Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned. In several cases, NIH grantees say they have been asked to remove published papers with foreign co-authors from annual progress reports to the agency. Observers say the policy creates an incentive to preemptively remove foreign co-authors from forthcoming papers.At NIH, co-authorship by scientists with foreign affiliations—including ones working at U.S. institutions—has historically been accepted, and relatively common: According to the most recent analysis available, 30% of papers produced with NIH funding in 2017 had both U.S. and non-U.S. authors. Some oversight of these collaborations for national security considerations is reasonable, says Tobin Smith, senior vice president at the Association of American Universities, a group of leading research institutions. “You’ve got to assess the risk in each collaboration.” But, he says, “I worry, based upon what we’re hearing, that agencies are now shifting to a blanket mode, and it’s more about who you publish with than what science you are actually publishing.

And that will hurt science.”Since at least 2003, NIH has required U.S.-based investigators to obtain agency approval before publishing a paper with a “foreign component,” defined as “performance of any significant scientific element” of the research outside of the U.S. But now, NIH managers appear to have changed the definition of foreign component to include any co-authorship with a scientist affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all work for the project occurred in the U.S., says Kristin West, director of research ethics and compliance at COGR, a nonprofit that represents research universities on regulatory matters.NIH officials are telling grantees who submitted annual progress reports for this fiscal year—which NIH reviews when deciding whether to continue funding for multiyear grants—to remove papers that name co-authors affiliated with foreign institutions if NIH had not previously approved a foreign component for the grant. Those co-authors could include visiting colleagues, students, or postdoctoral researchers temporarily working in the U.S.; overseas researchers who donated research material but didn’t take part in the research; and scientists who moved abroad after conducting the work in the U.S.“NIH is flagging just the fact that this co-authorship was there as evidence of a foreign component without looking further,” West says. “Everybody’s very confused by this interpretation right now.”One of those affected is Iain Drummond, who studies kidney development and regeneration at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Maine and directs its NIH-funded Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence. He became aware of NIH’s new requirements when the agency asked a different research center at MDI to remove papers with foreign co-authors from its annual progress report. So, when Drummond’s center was preparing its report, it omitted 16 of the 22 papers it had planned to list because they had co-authors affiliated with non-U.S. institutions. All had conducted the work in the U.S., including MDI’s president, Hermann Haller, who also holds an appointment at Hannover Medical School in Germany.After removing the 16 papers, “I said, well, Jesus, we’re not reporting anything. It’s very frustrating,” Drummond says. “I don’t know how they’re going to evaluate our productivity.” He says NIH’s new approach also creates an incentive for grantees to remove foreign-affiliated authors from papers before they are submitted for publication—contrary to standard publication ethics.

Some policy directives go further. An email from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to research-center grantees, seen by Science, requires their institutions to promise that U.S. authors of papers NIH has flagged because of foreign co-authors will not collaborate with them in the future. The email does suggest institutions can ask NIH’s permission to continue those collaborations. According to a statement from a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, NIH’s parent agency, the NIGMS email is “a clarification of longstanding policy, not a new directive.” The funding mechanism in question, Institutional Development Awards, “has always been restricted to U.S.-based institutions and entities.” The statement does not address questions from Science about other NIH institutes’ actions regarding co-authors with foreign affiliations.Drummond said he understands NIH’s interest in ensuring that funds do not flow to foreign organizations without authorization, but he doesn’t like where the enforcement move seems headed. “We are engaging in science internationally to promote science,” he says. “The easy route for us would be just to cut off foreign involvement entirely and not include foreign authors. And that to us is a concession to some form of xenophobia.”NASA, meanwhile, appears to be building on a 2011 law, the Wolf Amendment, that bars using the agency’s money for bilateral collaborations with entities in China. NASA guidance has suggested grantees can still engage in collaborations as long as the co-author in China didn’t receive NASA funding.But in recent months, NASA has told some grantee institutions they may be in violation of the Wolf Amendment because their researchers co-authored papers with scientists affiliated with institutions in China, even if no NASA funding went overseas, West says. And, she says, NASA has informed some grantees that violators may be subject to a lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act, which prevents willful, fraudulent use of government grants and contracts. NASA’s moves come as some members of Congress in recent months have pushed it to more closely monitor and stop violations of the Wolf Amendment.A statement provided by a NASA spokesperson says, “The agency does not regulate independent, bilateral research conducted by U.S. scientists using non-NASA funding” and “has not adopted a new interpretation of the Wolf Amendment.

”The “patchwork” interpretations from both agencies create ambiguities that leave researchers unsure how to proceed, says Mark Barnes, a lawyer at Ropes & Gray who represents universities on regulatory matters. “If the U.S. government wants to ban all scientific contact with China, it could try to do it so. But it hasn’t. People who are trying to do the right thing often can’t figure out what that is.”