Elevator Pitch

• NIH and NASA grantees report new, inconsistently communicated limits on publishing with foreign-affiliated co-authors, creating confusion and incentives that could undermine collaboration and publication ethics.

Key Takeaways

• NIH program staff are reportedly treating any foreign-affiliated co-authorship as a “foreign component,” requiring advance permission even when work was done entirely in the U.S.
• Some NIH grantees say they were told to remove already-published papers with foreign-affiliated co-authors from annual progress reports, complicating funding renewals and productivity assessment.
• NASA has reportedly warned some grantees that co-authorship with China-affiliated researchers may violate the Wolf Amendment, despite NASA stating it “has not adopted a new interpretation.”

Most Memorable Quotes

• “Everybody’s very confused by this interpretation right now.”
• “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.”
• “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.”