Last month, researchers reported that US National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials asked some grantees to seek approval before publishing with foreign coauthors and omit papers involving unapproved foreign collaborations from annual progress reports. According to reporting by Science, this prompted concerns that foreign coauthorship itself was being treated as evidence of an undisclosed foreign component—a term NIH generally uses for significant scientific activities conducted outside the United States.
Responding to questions from Inside Higher Ed, NIH maintained that rather than a new policy, the actions reflected longstanding restrictions under its Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program, which supports biomedical research in states and territories that have historically received less NIH funding. NIH didn’t respond to The Scientist’s request for comment.
Partha Pratim Majumder, a population geneticist at the John C. Martin Centre for Liver Research and Innovations who has previously acted as co-principal investigator on NIH-funded projects, called such strictures “detrimental to the progress of science.”
The issue became more complicated on May 27 when NIH issued agency-wide guidance that extended beyond the IDeA program. While the agency said it had not expanded its definition of a foreign component, the notice stated that “most instances of co-authorship represent a foreign component.”
Although researchers from around the world differed in how seriously they viewed the changes, many shared a common concern: uncertainty. Several said the ambiguity around foreign coauthorship and compliance could make scientists more hesitant to pursue collaborations with US researchers, even in the absence of formal restrictions.
What Counts as Foreign?
NIH policy statements from 2015, 2019, and 2024 cite collaborations with investigators at a foreign site that are expected to result in coauthorship as examples of activities that may indicate a foreign component.
The question, however, is whether NIH is now interpreting foreign coauthorship more broadly than in the past.
“Historically, universities have focused on where the ‘performance of any significant scientific element’ of a project took place when assessing whether a foreign component existed,” said Kristin West, director of research ethics and compliance at the Council on Governmental Relations. Against that backdrop, she argued that the May 27 notice reflected “a broader application of the foreign component definition.” West said that the notice appears to treat most foreign coauthorships as foreign components without clearly accounting for cases in which the research itself was conducted in the US.
Ntobeko Ntusi, president and chief executive officer of the South African Medical Research Council, said his own experience reflects that distinction. “Foreign co-authors are typically involved in research conducted outside of the US, but some are also included in research conducted within the US,” he said.
Though Ntusi said he sees “limited uncertainty around authorship and compliance in international collaborations,” he noted that “one cannot predict what will happen as NIH managers are increasingly interpreting co-authorship with a foreign-affiliated scholar as a foreign component, even when all the research was performed in the United States.”
Despite those concerns, Ntusi remains optimistic about international scientific collaboration. Even as South African researchers have been excluded from new NIH applications, he said, “Many colleagues, myself included, continue to maintain robust and fulfilling collaborative relationships with NIH-funded investigators.”
Uncertainty May Lead to Fewer Collaborations
For Anant Bhan, a global health researcher at Sangath India, the larger concern is not necessarily the immediate effect of any single policy change but the uncertainty such developments can create. Policy or funding changes that bring international collaborations under greater scrutiny can make researchers “more wary and concerned about embarking on or even continuing to collaborate internationally,” he said.
A professor based in China, one of the United States’ largest scientific partners, said many Chinese researchers are becoming reluctant to initiate collaborations with US colleagues because the boundaries of what is permissible seem increasingly unclear.
“Rather than navigating these ambiguous rules and becoming a compliance liability to our US colleagues, it is simply safer to step back,” said the researcher, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Many Chinese scientists and students are increasingly seeking collaborators within China or in Europe and other regions, a shift the researcher fears could gradually erode communication and trust between the US and China.
Similar concerns are emerging in India. Bhan noted that over the past year, changes to NIH approaches involving foreign components have already led to disruptions, including the suspension or closure of some collaborative projects built on years of trust and joint work between US and Indian investigators.
Ole Petersen, a physiologist at Cardiff University, sees the developments as “part of the US administration's xenophobia, stupidity, and war against its own scientists,” with effects already being felt. “Many of us in Europe are now reluctant to go to meetings in the US, and many US colleagues are now seeking to come and work in Europe."
Adapting to Uncertainty
“These developments have helped reduce our dependence on a single country, such as the US, while prompting greater support for health research from the South African government,” said Ntusi. Not only are researchers in the Global South diversifying their funding sources, they are increasingly seeking more equitable partnerships rather than arrangements that primarily benefit institutions in wealthier countries.
Petersen warned that US science is going through “a very difficult period” that could ultimately cost the country its leading position in science. Majumder said his own experience suggests that the US gains as much from these partnerships as its collaborators do.
Petersen added, “What is now happening in the US does remind me of the way German science was destroyed by its Nazi government in the 1930s, well before the start of the Second World War.”
