From Science: 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.
...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...
Full story at https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-researchers-face-new-restrictions-publishing-foreign-collaborators.
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