Project Takeaways

Challenges for International Scientific Partnerships (CISP) is an American Academy initiative to identify the benefits of international collaboration and recommend actions to be taken to address the most pressing challenges facing these partnerships. This project has concluded that:

1. The United States should support and expand international scientific collaborations, including with nations with which the United States has strained relations, such as China. Any restrictions on international collaborations involving federally supported research should be well-justified and carefully and narrowly defined.1

• Participation in international scientific collaborations is beneficial not only for U.S. science, but for the United States overall.

• International scientific collaborations complement and contribute to a strong domestic R&D enterprise and strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.

• To perform state-of-the-art science and address global challenges effectively, U.S. scientists must continue to engage with the global scientific community.

2. International large-scale scientific endeavors are an important component of our nation’s overall science and technology enterprise. The United States must be prepared to participate in international large-scale science partnerships and work to ensure their success, including contributing support for operations outside the United States.

• Some future large-scale science endeavors will be on a global scale and will necessarily involve international cooperation, with some international efforts and facilities sited outside of the United States but requiring U.S. support.
• Large-scale research instrumentation and facilities are essential for scientific advancement across a variety of disciplines and will become increasingly difficult for the United States to fund unilaterally.

3. Emerging science partners around the world are and will continue to be important scientific collaborators. The United States should support and partner with them in scientific research.2

• Scientific talent arises across the globe at an increasing rate as many countries invest in building a more robust S&T enterprise.
• Many of the most pressing scientific questions are not defined by national boundaries and require global collaboration for advancement.

Endnotes

• 1See American Academy of Arts and Sciences, America and the International Future of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Science, 2020).
• 2Ibid.