Working groups set to discuss clean-tech research and critical industrial components

The EU and India have set up a Trade and Technology Council to “deepen strategic engagement” on topics of joint interest.

On 6 February, the European Commission announced that the council would have three working groups focused on “strategic technologies, digital governance and digital connectivity”, “green and clean energy technologies” and “trade, investment and resilient value chains”.

Meeting for the first time in the coming weeks, the groups will discuss issues such as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing; green technologies “with emphasis on research and innovation”; and access to critical industrial components.

“The EU and India have strengthened their relationship as strategic partners,” the Commission said. It added that the bloc’s partnership with India was “one of the most important relationships for the upcoming decade” and that strengthening it was a priority.

It said cooperation should focus on “key issues of shared strategic importance” and that, in particular, working together on research and innovation was “important to unlock potential”.

The EU-India TTC is the second such forum for the bloc, after a similar council was launched with the United States in 2021. 

EU-India ministerial meetings organised under the council are expected to take place at least once a year, with the first to be held this spring.

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Scheme will “foster strategic cooperation with think tanks and universities on China-related issues”

The European Commission has launched a China fellowship programme to increase its knowledge of the country, which is becoming an increasingly powerful player on the world stage.

The programme “aims to foster strategic cooperation with think tanks and universities on China-related issues…to tap into deep expertise on China from Europe and beyond and expand the knowledge basis on China within the Commission”.

The paid fellowships, which will run for 6 to 12 months, will be open to academics specialising in social science, environmental or digital topics involving China, the Commission announced on 25 January.

Up to 15 fellowships will be offered within each period. A spokesperson said that the call for applications will launch “shortly” and that “Fellows shall be selected solely based on their renown, competence and expertise without regard for nationality or country of origin.”

Knowledge gaps

The fellowships will be established under an in-house advisory service for the Commission president, called Inspire, Debate, Engage and Accelerate Action.

Some projects funded under the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme are also focused on filling perceived information gaps and advising European decision-makers on policies involving China.

The announcement follows warnings from some European institutions of a need to improve knowledge of the country.

The Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think tank in Germany involved in at least one consortium funded by Horizon Europe, said in 2022 that “there is too little knowledge in European countries about contemporary China”, and that “think tanks and research institutions should cooperate more closely”.

Update 26/1 – This article was updated with the comment from the spokesperson.

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Scientists chosen for 2023 collaborations in India also revealed

The Royal Society has made changes to the eligibility criteria for its scheme that funds visiting professorships to India.

For the first time, applications to the Yusuf Hamied Visiting Professorship scheme are open to its senior grant holders. This includes Royal Society Research Professors, Royal Society Wolfson Fellows and University Research Fellows that are five to eight years into their fellowship.

The senior grant holders can apply to the scheme from February 2023.

Also, the Royal Society announced on 17 January the recipients of the most recent round of funding under the scheme, which launched in 2017 through a gift from the charity set up by Indian scientist and chair of pharmaceutical company Cipla Yusuf Hamied and his wife Farida.

“The Fellowship of the Royal Society includes many of the world’s leading scientists. I am delighted that through the Royal Society Yusuf Hamied Visiting Professorships, these celebrated scientists will be able to build long-term collaborations with their counterparts in India, for we must all use our knowledge and expertise for the benefit of society,” said Yusuf Hamied, who is one of the trustees of the Yusuf and Farida Hamied Foundation.

The three scientists are: George Davey Smith from the University of Bristol, who will visit the Public Health Foundation of India, the University of Delhi, Tata Memorial Centre, and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology; Peter Hudson from Penn State University, who will be working at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India; and Semir Zeki from University College London, who will visit Ashoka University and the Indian National Brain Research Centre.

The recipients will make short visits to India which, the Royal Society said, will give them the “opportunity to start or further develop links with Indian research teams, benefiting from each other’s experience and expertise”.

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National Academies make recommendations for how Confucius Institute hosts could receive Department of Defense funds

Universities hosting Chinese Confucius Institutes could become eligible for public defence funding under proposals set out by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

A report published by the National Academies on 10 January gives a series of recommendations for managing the institutes with regards to protecting academic freedom on campus.

It includes proposals for a set of criteria for the US Department of Defense to consider in developing a waiver that would potentially allow higher education institutions with Confucius Institutes to receive funding from the department again.

Laws passed in 2019 and 2021 barred universities that host such institutes from receiving Department of Defense funding, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Concerns around Confucius

Confucius Institutes are satellite campuses often located within existing universities in the US and abroad. They are funded by the Chinese government as part of a global programme to promote Chinese language and culture.

In recent years, there has been concern among academics and politicians around the world over threats to academic freedom stemming from the institutions, and of espionage within them.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, more than 100 US higher education institutions hosted Confucius Institutes on campus. But security concerns, coupled with changes to national defence funding in 2019, led to many US Confucius Institutes being closed down.

According to the report from the National Academies, there are currently thought to be seven Confucius Institutes attached to US institutions.

“While Confucius Institutes provided a source of funding and other resources that enabled US colleges and universities to build capacity, offer supplemental programming and engage with the local community, [they] presented an added, legitimate source of risk to host institutions with respect to academic freedom, freedom of expression and national security,” the report states.

However, the report’s authors say they are “not aware of any evidence at the unclassified level that Confucius Institutes were associated with espionage or intellectual property theft”.

“While incidents affecting academic freedom, freedom of expression and shared governance did take place, the most egregious of these occurred at Confucius Institutes outside of the US,” they conclude.

Report recommendations

Recommendations made in the report include a provision for the Department of Defense to grant waivers to participating institutions to allow them to access its funding. If the department decides not to grant a waiver to a specific institution, the National Academies said it “should specify the reason(s) for denial to the extent possible at the unclassified level”.

“Outside input is critical to ensure that the waiver application process is free from undue administrative and regulatory burden,” the report continues. “In addition to US government input, the Department of Defense should solicit external input from key organisations, including industry, higher education associations and universities.”

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Joint centre to “engage top scientists from both countries” to enhance research on disease and drugs

The University of Liverpool has hailed a joint research centre in China as a major opportunity to build links between pharmaceutical scientists.

A Joint Centre for Pharmacology and Therapeutics in Suzhou will be run under the auspices of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, a joint-partnership between the UK institution and Xi’an Jiaotong University that was set up in 2006.

According to a University of Liverpool statement earlier this month, the centre “will engage top scientists from both countries to enhance research on disease mechanisms and develop novel drugs for the treatment of modern-day diseases”. 

It said the centre’s R&D activities will involve senior researchers as well as PhDs from both universities and is expected to benefit both regions, as well as patients suffering from a variety of diseases.

Human rights concerns

The announcement comes amid increased scrutiny of UK R&D links with China over national security worries and concerns about human rights.

A University of Liverpool spokesperson told Research Professional News: “The University has a robust set of policies and procedures in relation to due diligence, ethics, governance, and [intellectual property] in line with government policy. 

“This research collaboration, part of a long-standing academic partnership between the University of Liverpool and Xi’an Jiaotong University, will draw on world-leading expertise and facilities in both China and the UK for the benefit of patients in both countries.”

Christopher Goldring, co-director of the centre, said: “With our partners at XJTLU, through teaching and research, we will nurture a talent pipeline of research leaders and exciting international collaborations and ventures.”

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Nearly 7,000 researchers demonstrate “disproportionate level” of influence in their field

Mainland China is closing the gap on the United States as home to the most highly cited researchers in the world, according to data from analytics company Clarivate*.

On 15 November, the 2022 list of the world’s most highly cited researchers was revealed. It named 6,938 academics who have demonstrated a “disproportionate level” of significant influence in their field(s) of research over the past decade.

While the US still comes top, with 2,764 highly cited researchers, Mainland China has doubled its share of the influential researcher population in the past five years, from 8 per cent in 2018 to 16 per cent this year. It now has 1,169 researchers.

The US share amounts to 38 per cent of the total, down from 43 per cent in 2018.

The UK is third on the list, with 579 researchers, which Clarivate described as “remarkably high” for a country of its size, though it was a decrease of its share in 2018. The population of the UK is a fifth of the US and a 20th of Mainland China.

The UK is followed, in order, by Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Singapore.

Harvard University is home to 233 researchers on the list, which has once again made it the institution with the highest concentration of highly cited researchers in the world.

Other institutions in the top five highly cited researchers, in order, are: the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University, the US National Institutes of Health and Tsinghua University, in China.

Countering researchers attempting to ‘game’ the system

For the 2022 list, Clarivate extended its qualitative analysis to address increasing concerns over potential misconduct including plagiarism, image manipulation and fake peer review.

With the help of the Retraction Watch blog which has a large database of retractions, Clarivate analysts searched for evidence of misconduct in all publications of those on the preliminary list. Researchers who were found to have committed scientific misconduct in formal proceeding were excluded from the list.

“Activities such as unusual citation activity and fake peer review may represent efforts to game the system and create self-generated status,” said David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. “This is why we’ve expanded our qualitative analysis this year to ensure the highly cited researchers list reflects genuine, community-wide research influence.”

*Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Clarivate.

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Tokyo collaboration will be third overseas International Research Centre for research agency

A fourth joint research lab involving the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation, and the University of Tokyo has led to the creation of International Research Centres (IRCs) dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration in maths, geology and seismology, digital humanities, energy transition and gender equality.

The IRCs are umbrella organisations to oversee major collaborations between the CNRS and its international partners. They often comprise International Research Laboratories (IRLs), which involve ongoing collaborations with a partner in a specific discipline or area.

Materials physics lab

The new IRL, which led to the creation of the University of Tokyo IRC, is called Dynacom (for ‘dynamical control of materials’) and will also involve the University of Rennes 1. The lab will explore magnetism, conductivity, ferroelectricity and photonics, “with a special focus on the ultrafast control of materials”, the CNRS said in a statement.

Dynacom will join three existing laboratories under the IRC umbrella: engineering and systems sciences laboratory Limms (the Laboratory for Integrated Micro Mechatronics Systems), founded in 1995, computer science laboratory JFLI (the Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics) founded in 2012, and nuclear and particle physics laboratory Ilance (the International Laboratory for Astrophysics, Neutrino and Cosmology Experiments) founded in 2021. In addition, the CNRS and the University of Tokyo will collaborate on five international research projects and four international research networks.

Third overseas IRC

The University of Tokyo IRC is the CNRS’s third located outside France. It follows similar collaborations with the University of Arizona in 2020 and Imperial College London in 2021.

“This new scientific centre aims to stimulate research and training of excellence on already existing collaborative themes, as well as on new subjects such as gender equality or seismology,” the CNRS said in a statement.

Its creation was finalised with a signing ceremony on 4 October, attended by CNRS president and chief executive Antoine Petit and professor Teruo Fujii, president of the University of Tokyo. In its statement, the CNRS said the research centre’s objective was to “promote international collaboration and exchanges in order to foster very high quality and interdisciplinary research and training between the two institutions”. 

The two institutions expect the IRC to deepen their collaboration, the statement added, by supporting joint actions including the IRLs, as well as new and existing research projects and thematic networks. The IRC will also launch joint funding calls for research projects and doctoral scholarships to take place at the CNRS and the University of Tokyo.

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WIPO 2022 Global Innovation Index ranks 21 areas in China among top 100

China has matched the US in an international ranking of geographic regions with the highest density of inventors and scientific authors.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation’s (WIPO) 2022 Global Innovation Index ranked 21 areas in both countries among the top 100 places for filing patents and publishing scientific articles globally.

The 2022 index release marked the first time both the US and China had the same number of areas in the top 100 since it launched in 2016, the organisation said.

Published on 14 September, the index used “a geocoding method” to map addresses and names pulled from various scientific publications onto science and technology “clusters”.

Fastest growing

According to a report released by the WIPO, the top 100 clusters were concentrated primarily in North America, Europe and Asia.

Clusters in China were the fastest growing, with output in the city of Qingdao (pictured) increasing by 25.2 per cent and Wuhan’s output increasing by 21.9 per cent. The country saw a median increase of 13.9 per cent.

Globally, clusters in high-income economies “generally grew at a slower pace” than clusters in middle-income economies, the WIPO said. There were some exceptions including the city of Basel in Switzerland, which saw output grow 10.5 per cent, and Kanazawa in Japan, which saw output grow 8.1 per cent.

The WIPO’s director general, Daren Tang, said identifying clusters would help promote jobs, investments and growth.

“Local innovation clusters are critical to the vibrancy of national innovation ecosystems,” Tang said.

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Report alleges US National Security Agency infiltrated Northwestern Polytechnical University networks

China has accused the United States National Security Agency of targeting one of its universities as part of a huge programme of cyberattacks.

China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center—a research institute affiliated with the country’s Ministry of Public Security that responds to cyberattacks—claimed that the NSA infiltrated networks at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an using “40 different NSA-specific cyberattack weapons”.

The university is involved in defence research, notably on space, aviation and naval technology.

A report from the centre released on 5 September claimed the NSA gained access to the operation of networks and “core technical data”, and that the same team was responsible for “tens of thousands of malicious network attacks on network targets in China” in recent years.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the incident showed that “safeguarding national cybersecurity is extremely important”.

She claimed that it was clear where the blame lay, saying “the NSA’s cyberattacks and data theft against China are supported by a clear and complete chain of evidence”.

US politicians have repeatedly accused China of cyberattacks on institutions including universities on their territory, which China has denied. This time the accusation has gone the other way.

“As a major victim of hacking attacks, China is firmly opposed to all forms of cyberattacks,” said Mao.

The NSA declined to comment on the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center report, which was co-authored by the Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360.

“We really don’t have anything for you on this,” the NSA told Research Professional News.

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Two countries sign agreement for Spanish institutions to help with construction

Spain has signed an agreement to contribute to the construction of a neutrino telescope in Japan, which is intended to probe the fundamental properties of the early universe.

Under the agreement, a consortium of nine Spanish research institutions are set to develop and install various components of the facility, including its ventilation system.

The project behind the construction of the facility, called the International Hyper-Kamiokande, aims to explore properties of neutrinos that could explain an apparent imbalance between matter and antimatter at the beginning of the universe.

The facility would be the successor to the Super-Kamiokande neutrino facility (pictured), which is also based in Japan.

Spain is the second country to sign an agreement backing the project, after Poland signed one in February. Nineteen countries are interested in participating, the Spanish government said on 1 September.

The consortium of Spanish research institutions that plan to support the project include the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Girona, the University of Oviedo and the University of Santiago of Compostela.  

The Spanish government said the county’s contribution to the project would be partly financed by its share of the EU’s Covid-19 recovery fund.

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Stellenbosch hub aims to “introduce Japan and Japanese culture to South Africa”

South Africa’s Stellenbosch University has launched a hub to promote academic research and cultural exchange between South Africa and Japan.

The Stellenbosch University Japan Centre is situated in the institution’s Centre for Global Engagement. It will encourage students to take up Japanese studies, facilitate research and teaching collaborations, host bilateral events, and link up with similar centres elsewhere.

Scarlett Cornelissen, a professor in the university’s political science department, will provide strategic direction and oversight for the hub as its director, alongside co-director Sarah van der Westhuizen.

Cornelissen said in a statement that the centre came about after she and her colleagues realised there was a lot of activity happening at the university linking it to Japan—from joint research projects to student exchanges.

“We realised it made sense to bring all these elements together under one umbrella, and that was how the SUJC came to be. But it is about more than that: it is also about introducing Japan and Japanese culture to a South African audience,” she said.

Norio Maruyama, Japan’s ambassador in South Africa (pictured, centre), told the launch he is looking forward to the centre facilitating collaboration on a wide range of areas, especially in science and technology.

“I am certain the centre will provide an excellent platform to exploit these opportunities,” he said.

The launch of the centre comes hot on the heels of a virtual South Africa-Japan University Forum, where South African and Japanese scholars identified and acknowledged prospects for deeper and broader collaborations.

The 29 July forum—the fifth of its kind—was attended by 120 delegates virtually. The forum, which gathers bi-annually, was last hosted in person, in South Africa, in May 2019. Ahmed Bawa, chief executive officer of Universities South Africa, said the partnership had made significant strides since then.

Japan has long regarded South Africa as an important research partner, the South African Department of Science and Innovation said in 2019. As of that year, a total number of 42 cooperation agreements had been signed between Japanese and South African universities, it said.

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Ending Chinese R&D links would be much tougher than cutting Russian connections, report warns

Universities in the West should prepare for significant disruption if geopolitical events were to ever wither their R&D ties to China, a new report has warned, taking its cue from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Western response.

“While marginalising Russian science, as many governments in the West have done, will have little effect on global science, taking a similar approach to China, should the geopolitics dictate such a step, would have dramatic outcomes for global knowledge production,” the report warns.

The reason, the authors including former UK research and universities minister Jo Johnson explain, is that “while Russia’s science system is weak, deteriorating and increasingly marginalised, China is now the world’s biggest spender on R&D and, in stark contrast to just 20 years ago, is the first or second most frequent research partner with a wide range of countries”.

A “roughening” of geopolitics, which Johnson and colleagues say is exemplified by, but predates, the invasion of Ukraine, would “likely slow the cross-border collaboration of recent decades”. Therefore, the authors warn, universities should take steps such as diversifying their international partnerships for research and student intakes, “to avoid dependencies that can become vulnerabilities”.

China’s ‘exceptional growth’

According to the report, published on 6 July, China was among the top three most frequent research collaborators for eight of 38 countries in Europe and Asia in 2011. But in 2021, it was among the top three for 21 of the countries.

“The exceptional growth of China’s research base means that it is becoming a more frequent partner for many countries, especially in Asia and Australasia, and now increasingly in Europe,” said co-author Jonathan Adams, chief scientist at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate Analytics.

(Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Ex Libris, which is owned by Clarivate.)

Some parts of the analysis came as a surprise to university groups, who welcomed some of its recommendations.

“Diversity in academic partners for both international students and research has decreased more than I would expect,” said Mattias Björnmalm, deputy secretary-general of the Cesaer group of European universities, who added that he thought the report provided good guidance for making decisions.

Dependence on international students

Other commentators disagreed with parts of the analysis. Kieron Flanagan, a science and technology policy researcher at the University of Manchester in the UK, said it neglected that the UK higher education sector is overdependent on income from international students.

“The point about diversifying teaching income away from China misses the point that the problem is not that UK higher education is far too dependent on Chinese students, but rather that the UK research base is far too dependent on cross-subsidy from international teaching income,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, agreed with another report recommendation that “What we do at home matters”, in terms of strengthening domestic research.

“The growth of China in R&D spending must trigger a European response because policymakers cannot lament the growing influence of Chinese science without providing adequate funding for Europe’s science systems to grow in equal measure,” he said.

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Taylor & Francis and Springer Nature among big names with journals suppressed for citation anomalies

Some of the world’s leading academic publishers have had their journals excluded from receiving impact factors because of unusual citation activity, Research Professional News can reveal. 

Clarivate, the company that calculates impact factors, said it had suppressed three journals “without presumption or accusation of wrongdoing” in this year’s Journal Citation Reports. (Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Ex Libris, which is owned by Clarivate.)

Journals are excluded from the Journal Citation Reports if they “demonstrate anomalous citation behaviour”, Clarivate says. This includes the journal citing itself in ways that unfairly boost its impact factor.

Taylor & Francis’s Connection Science, Springer Nature’s Indian Journal of Microbiology and the Chinese Journal of Organic Chemistry, published by the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, were suppressed from this year’s reports.

Big impacts

The impact factor is a measure of how many times the papers a journal publishes are cited by other work. The number is used by publishers, editors, librarians and funders to assess a journal’s value, while researchers who publish work in high-impact journals are often rewarded with better career progression, despite attempts to de-link the number from individual papers.

While self-citation can be a legitimate way to reference previously published work, it can also be used as a tactic to inflate a journal’s impact factor. Another problematic type of behaviour that can get a journal in trouble is ‘citation stacking’, when an unusual amount of citations are exchanged between two or more journals.

Taylor & Francis told Research Professional News: “We’re obviously disappointed but accept the decision to suppress the journal impact factor for Connection Science. We will look at Clarivate’s feedback and work with the editorial board to ensure the journal returns to the JCR as quickly as possible.”

A spokesperson for Springer Nature said the publisher was working with the suppressed journal, its editorial community and Clarivate to “ensure that all queries are addressed”.

They added: “As always, we are committed to ensuring the integrity of the academic record and, in partnership with our editorial community, to supporting academics with the publication of high-quality academic research by providing the tools and services to be able to do that.”

Unusual activity

The JCR is based on 2021 data compiled from Clarivate’s Web of Science Core Collection. In these data, Clarivate said it identified a new type of “anomalous” citation behaviour, which has been dubbed ‘self-stacking’.

This is where the journal has one or more documents with citations that are highly concentrated to papers published by the journal in the period being measured by the impact factor.

As this is the first year that Clarivate has defined the criteria for self-stacking, the company said it had made the decision to issue a warning to six journals rather than suppress their impact factors.

Four journals published by Wiley received warnings for self-stacking: Allergy, Clinical and Experimental Allergy, Experimental Dermatology and HLA.

Elsevier Ireland’s Resuscitation and the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine also received warnings.

Nandita Quaderi, editor-in-chief and editorial vice-president of the Web of Science at Clarivate, said: “Unfortunately, new forms of manipulation have emerged over the years as some stakeholders seek to gain an unfair advantage, and fraudulent enterprises have appeared that exploit the increased pressure to publish and be cited.”

Wiley told Research Professional News that it was “aware of the situation and [was] following up with the journals to investigate further”.

Clarivate said it had updated the methodology and parameters for journal self-citation in 2020 to better account for discipline norms. It “continuously reviews content with the goal of developing additional screening for distortions” of the journal impact factor.

Research Professional News has contacted Elsevier, the American Thoracic Society and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry for comment.

A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe

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A physics experiment in Japan is allowing Russian co-authorship by removing all institutional affiliations

Publications are the lifeblood of research, but the war in Ukraine has derailed longstanding protocols for how scientists are named on them.

Some institutions, such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France (pictured), no longer allow the submission of joint publications with authors affiliated with Russian institutions, because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At a physics experiment in Japan called Belle II, which studies subatomic particles called B mesons, institutional affiliations and details of funding sources are now being omitted by all authors on publications, as an alternative way forward.

On 8 June, the institutional board of the Belle II collaboration announced that because some members could not be listed as authors on papers together with Russian institutes or funding agencies, it would abandon affiliations entirely on future papers.

The project, which involves around 1,000 physicists from 26 countries, also plans not to acknowledge any national funding agencies in these publications. Previous publications have credited Russian state funding.

Board chair Boštjan Golob told Research Professional News that the change was not driven by restrictions from funding agencies but by the “ethical reservations” of some researchers. The policy was developed to support Ukrainian colleagues, condemn Russia’s military action and support scientific collaboration with individual Russian colleagues, he said.

“We tried to reach some kind of policy satisfying on one hand a clear statement of support to our Ukrainian colleagues and condemnation of the Russian aggression, and on the other hand [acknowledging the] historical role of scientific collaboration as a bridge among nations.”

A viable solution?

Some leaders of other labs that have Russian links or researchers think the Belle II approach has merit.

At the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility in Germany, publications with authors with Russian affiliation are currently subject to a special review process. “The Belle approach seems like a reasonable one to me,” Sakura Pascarelli, a scientific director at the European XFEL, told Research Professional News.

But this trend has split the community, with critics saying they are disturbed by the move and questioning its practicality.

“If we are talking about all institutions then I do not understand why other scientists must suffer because of the guilt of the Russians,” Serhii Nazarovets, a scientometrics researcher at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University in Ukraine, told Research Professional News.

Allen Caldwell, a spokesperson for the particle physics laboratory Cern’s Awake experiment, said it was not clear whether the Belle II approach was a viable solution. “A lot of people think that this will not work in the long term because the institutions will insist that their names appear on the publications,” he said.

Submission slowdown

For Russian scientists, issues around publishing papers with colleagues overseas are a big problem. According to a European Commission study on the war’s effects on R&D, 25 per cent of Russian researchers’ publications between 2000 and 2020 were the result of international collaborations.

Controversy over co-authorship is already affecting their publications. Joachim Mnich, Cern’s director for research and computing, told Research Professional News that the submission of future papers with Russian co-authorship for publication was being studied carefully.

This process is slowing down submission, with researchers estimating that dozens of papers on Cern’s Atlas experiment have been held up.

“It’s a major issue at the moment,” according to Rustem Ospanov, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China who works on the Atlas experiment.

Publications are the lifeblood of research, but the war in Ukraine is changing their composition and slowing their circulation.

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Call for clearer guidance among signs that growth in UK-China research partnerships is tailing off

UK academics have said that collaborations with researchers in China have been negatively affected by the government’s “ambiguous” policy towards the Asian superpower.

A report commissioned by the foreign office and carried out by the not-for-profit research institute Rand Europe surveyed over 80 UK-based academics, many of whom reported feeling “confused and frustrated with the UK policy of strategic ambiguity on China”.

The report comes as geopolitical tensions with China have increased in recent years, and concerns that research findings could be used for military purposes have led some political and industry figures to call for the UK to disengage with China.

Negative impact

Organisations including the vice-chancellor’s group Universities UK and the national funding agency UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have published general guidance on managing security risks in international collaborations.

But academics in the Rand Europe study, which found “a resounding appetite for continued collaboration with Chinese colleagues”, said that clear guidelines were needed for interacting with Chinese partners.

The academics surveyed were positive about engagement with Chinese colleagues, but some said that the geopolitical climate and the UK’s policy towards China “had a negative impact on their partnerships and future collaborative prospects”.

Despite concerns raised over military use of research findings and the theft of intellectual property, the Rand Europe report found that such concerns did not play out in the experiences of academics surveyed.

As a result of the ambiguity, Fiona Quimbre, lead author of the study, said there was a risk that academics could be tempted to develop “informal types of collaboration outside of the scope of existing and future legislation”.

Collaborations tail off

The Rand Europe report also found signs that a period of sustained growth in UK-China research collaborations could be tailing off. The number of newly launched UK-China research centres increased rapidly between 2014 and 2019 but dropped off sharply in 2020 and 2021.

The UK has recently stopped using international aid funds to support collaborative research projects with China.

The government is currently redesigning its funding framework for international research collaborations.
In May, a senior official at UKRI said that future collaborations with China are likely to be supported through “targeted funds”.

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Plans include supporting academic freedom and promoting higher education’s importance to sustainable development

University associations from around the world have come together to create a new global group to address issues related to international collaboration and academic exchange.

The Global University Associations Forum, formed on 17 May in Spain, consists of member associations in Africa, the Americas, the Arab region, Asia and Europe, members including the European University Association announced on 3 June.

Planned actions include promoting the role of higher education in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, emphasising respect for academic freedom and committing to sharing resources including data.

In a statement, the forum said: “Creating and sustaining frameworks that promote exchange across higher education and research systems is a pivotal step towards safeguarding the future of our communities and our planet.

“Without robust structures for collaboration in research and education at global scale, society will be ill-equipped to tackle climate change, protect the environment, pursue the global health of its citizens, and move collectively towards building sustainable societies and circular economies.”

The forum’s next meeting will take place in 2023, under the chairmanship of the Asean University Network of Southeast Asia.

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Politicians among those urging ministers to change visa rules

Senior MPs are among those backing calls for people from Hong Kong to be granted ‘home’ fee status in the UK, meaning they would pay domestic tuition fees rather than the more expensive rates charged to international students.

The British National (Overseas) visa permits people from Hong Kong to live, work and study in the UK, and government data show that more than 113,000 people from Hong Kong had been granted BNO visas since the scheme opened in January last year.

A letter published on 31 May in the Times calls for Hong Kongers to be given home fee status in England, just as refugees from Ukraine have.

The letter, organised by the Welcoming Committee for Hong Kongers, says those coming to Britain under the visa scheme “include parents keen to see their children educated in a democratic society and young people keen to succeed”.

“However, the higher education rules create an unnecessary impediment to opportunity, since BNO visa holders are not eligible for home fee status until they have lived in the UK for five years, and so face much higher university fees while being ineligible for student loans,” it states.

“The government has rightly agreed that young people arriving under Ukraine visa schemes should have home student status. We believe that exceptional status should be extended to those arriving under the BNO visa too.”

Signatories of the letter include former Conservative justice secretary Robert Buckland and former Tory cabinet member Damian Green. Labour politicians Paul Blomfield and Liam Byrne have also backed the call.

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Country joins South Korea in expressing intent to join Horizon Europe at EU-Japan summit

Japan has become the second east Asian country to enter informal talks with the EU on joining the bloc’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

At an EU-Japan summit on 12 May in Tokyo, it was announced that Japan had submitted a letter of intent to be associated to Horizon Europe, kick-starting early-stage talks on joining the €95.5 billion programme.

Horizon Europe, which runs from 2021 to 2027, is the first EU research framework programme for which the bloc has opened up the chance of membership to countries outside the European neighbourhood, in exchange for a budget contribution. Association to the programme can provide access to funding for researchers in those countries on an almost equal footing with those in EU member states.

Earlier this year, South Korea entered exploratory talks with the EU about joining Horizon Europe, following the lead of New Zealand and Canada, both of which have now entered formal negotiations. Australia has also had “technical exchanges” with the EU on membership.

Expanding cooperation

In a joint statement, the EU and Japan said that “recognising their vital role in creating new knowledge, we commit to expanding cooperation between our industrial, science, research and innovation and space sectors”.

“We will continue to promote mobility and research collaboration through the Erasmus+ programme and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and through collaborative cooperation on research and innovation,” the statement continued.

Charles Michel, president of the Council of the EU (pictured left, along with Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen), said at a press conference that “we are extremely pleased on the innovation and research front”, adding that “EU and Japanese students and scholars will benefit” from Japanese association to Horizon Europe.

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Sector leader says UK will “have to walk away” from certain areas of research collaboration

The UK is likely to support future research collaborations with China through “targeted funds”, according to a senior official at the national funding agency UK Research and Innovation.

While the UK government has made much of its ambition to be a ‘science superpower’, its approach to funding international R&D collaborations is currently unclear. In February, the government said it is moving to a “new model of international science collaboration”, after scrapping three key funding schemes, all of which supported collaborative projects with China.

Speaking at an event last week on UK-China research collaborations, held by the Foundation for Science and Technology, UKRI’s international champion Christopher Smith said “we will be looking at targeted funds” and at “building fundamental research, discovery-driven research between the UK and China”.

The UK and China currently have a cooperation agreement on science, technology and innovation, signed in 2017, and an annual ‘flagship challenge’, where the countries agree to work more closely together on a specific area—work that Smith indicated would continue.

Aid funds end

Smith said the funding agency had supported 682 projects involving UK and Chinese partners worth £571.6 million, and that there is “significant appetite for us to continue to develop these collaborations”.

Some of these collaborations were funded through the UK’s international aid budget via two of the funding programmes scrapped earlier this year—the Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund.

In April, a government spokesperson told Research Professional News that it would no longer provide international aid funding for projects with Chinese partners. “We do not provide aid funding for projects that support Chinese development,” the spokesperson said.

The government has said its new model for international research collaborations will combine international aid with other funds.

Speaking at last week’s event, Yang Xiaoguang, minister and first staff member at China’s embassy in the UK, said that “technologies from the UK have made [an] important contribution to China’s development and progress” and that cooperation on science and technology has “benefited both sides”.

‘More mature’ relationship

China’s growth into a research powerhouse in recent years means UK researchers now co-author more papers with Chinese partners than any other country except the United States. UK universities also taught more than 140,000 Chinese students in the 2020-21 academic year.

But geopolitical tensions between the West and China have seen increasing concerns over research security, including the potential for intellectual property theft and research findings being used for purposes that could threaten national security.

Vivienne Stern, director of the international arm of the vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, said that in a “more mature relationship between the UK and China, there are hard questions for us to answer” and that research institutions are thinking more strategically about their interests when entering into collaborations.

“There will be some areas where we have to walk away,” Stern said, adding that “there is a need to spread the culture of awareness around the potential risks in engaging in certain sorts of research”.

Yang said that China “attaches great importance to [intellectual property rights] protection”, and that there is no need to reduce cooperation in any areas.

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UK Health Security Agency signs agreement with Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency

Government health agencies in the UK and South Korea have agreed to work together more closely on disease control and prevention.

On 4 May, Jenny Harries (pictured), chief executive of the new UK Health Security Agency, signed a memorandum of understanding with Eun-kyeong Jeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, agreeing to exchange best practice and to pursue joint scientific programmes and research projects.

“We are developing robust surveillance systems and building capacity to respond to current and future health emergencies, so to be able to combine with another world leader in this area presents a fantastic opportunity,” said Harries.

“Protecting citizens from emerging global health threats is one of our core priorities. This agreement with the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reinforces our commitment and I hope will further strengthen international cooperation on important health security issues.”

Jeong said: “Implementation of bilateral collaborative projects is important to ensure that the two agencies can engage in efficient collaboration on preparedness for and response to global infectious disease threats.

“To this end, I would like to propose a working-level discussion as well as an annual high-level policy dialogue. I hope that the UK Health Security Agency and the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency will establish a much closer, future-oriented partnership, and thus achieve the common goal of future pandemic preparedness.”

Collaboration priorities

The document includes a pledge to work closely in areas of mutual interest. These include:

• Public health emergency preparedness and response
• Surveillance and control of epidemic-prone diseases, including viral haemorrhagic fevers
• Laboratory capacity-building and enhancement to detect and respond to emerging disease threats of global health importance
• Antimicrobial resistance and healthcare-associated infection control
• Vaccine-preventable diseases and immunisation policy
• Pathogen information and resources
• Public health training and expert exchange

As part of the agreement, the two agencies have agreed to hold meetings once or twice a year and to host regular consultations to explore potential areas of collaboration and establish scientific training opportunities.

Launched in 2021 as a replacement for Public Health England, the UK Health Security Agency is tasked with protecting communities from the impact of infectious diseases, chemical, biological and nuclear incidents and other health threats.

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Report suggests Europe needs more collaboration on research and innovation in light of global trends

A growing EU dependence on technologies developed by companies based elsewhere and unpredictable political support for R&D spending were among concerns highlighted by a foresight exercise intended to make the EU’s research and innovation policy more resilient to future shocks akin to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The EU share of global R&D is shrinking, and there is an unavoidable, growing EU dependence on technologies developed and produced elsewhere in the world [as well as] an ever-increasing influence of private firms on technological development,” warns a report of the foresight exercise published this month, called: After the new normal: Scenarios for Europe in the post Covid-19 world.

The exercise explored five possible scenarios for EU R&I over the coming decades, including big tech shaping Europe, a long economic recession triggered by the pandemic and a “green utopia” in which economic growth is no longer the prevailing paradigm.

It was carried out for the European Commission by researchers coordinated by Kerstin Cuhls of Fraunhofer ISI, who warned in their report: “EU direct funding for R&I projects has become part of the institutional backbone of the EU. The scenarios remind us that this is not given and that the EU budget is subject to political negotiations despite its importance for the maintenance of R&I capacity in different member states.”

More collaboration needed

How much control the EU will be able to exercise over technological development “will depend on the speed of the recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and on the character of the relationships that will be built during the recovery effort”, according to the report.

It says that under any future scenario there is a need to strengthen collaborative relationships in R&I, both within Europe and globally, particularly in relation to emerging technologies, “where international alliances are decisive for establishing common standards and regulation”.

The report also says that although future scenarios point towards the need for stronger willingness from EU member states to collaborate on R&I policy, basing such policy on economic growth is “increasingly out of sync with the needs of societal and world challenges”.

Another concern explored was regional disparities in R&I performance, which the report said “can develop into a deep divide across the economy and politics of the EU”.

Its authors call for EU R&I policy to be “anticipatory”, identifying emerging threats and exploring responses before they are needed. They say researchers should engage with all branches of government to help steer this process.

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CBI wants more as Boris Johnson touts research partnerships on trip to India

Business leaders have said the UK is just “scratching the surface” of potential health and technology links with India, after Boris Johnson announced a £1 billion set of deals with the world’s second most populous nation.

The UK prime minster hailed “new partnerships in health research and renewable energy” under the headline announcement of “£1bn new commercial deals” during a visit to India last week, including an electric bus R&D centre in the UK for a UK subsidiary of the Indian company Ashok Leyland. 

Last year also saw Johnson hail “£1 billion of new UK-India trade” and the UK’s Department for International Trade estimates total trade in goods and services between the UK and India at £21.5 billion in the 12 months to the end of the third quarter of 2021. 

Karan Bilimoria, president of the Confederation of British Industry, welcomed the recent announcement but said the investments were “just scratching the surface of what can be achieved between the two countries across health and cutting-edge technology”.

“More broadly, working together on an ambitious UK-India free trade agreement that slashes tariffs, improves the ability to move talent across borders as well as data, will be the crucial foundation for a deal that delivers for businesses,” he said.

During his trip, the prime minister is also expected to confirm new science and technology collaborations, including a Digital Health partnership and a joint investment fund for Indian deep-tech and AI startups, with funding from both governments.

Also in the works are new AI scholarships for Indian students jointly funded by the UK government’s Chevening programme and India’s multinational company Adani Group, together with a £6m investment from the Mumbai AI healthcare firm Qure-ai to open a centre in the UK.

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Roadmap sets out nations’ joint aim to build academic collaborations and science and technology partnerships

The UK and Indonesian governments have committed to strengthen their R&D ties in a new roadmap detailing their intentions for the coming years.

Published on 19 April, the UK-Indonesia Partnership Roadmap 2022-24 sets out the nations’ joint aim to boost their relationship across a range of sectors, including climate change, science and global health.

Among their commitments is a pledge to build on existing academic collaborations to increase R&D links in life sciences and technology, as well as to build new and deepen existing science and technology partnerships.

The nations also agreed a renewed Joint Action Plan for Health Cooperation to “deliver greater ambition on shared priorities”, such as strengthening health systems, improving health outcomes and preventing, detecting and responding to communicable diseases.

To this end, they agreed to work collaboratively to enable vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to be “rapidly developed and deployed” through collaboration on clinical trials and joint research in medicines.

They also agreed to promote increased networks and connections between the UK and Indonesia’s sectors for digital health and medical technology and to redouble efforts to tackle anti-microbial resistance.

In addition, the nations welcomed efforts to promote more global financing for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations’ work to end pandemics, including investing in the development of variant-proof vaccines against Covid-19 and other major health threats, as well as manufacturing partnerships.

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Researchers uncertain over Chinese partnerships, despite government assurances existing commitments will be honoured

The government has said it will no longer provide international aid funding for projects with Chinese partners, leaving researchers leading such projects concerned about the status of their grants.

China is classified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as an upper middle-income country, and as such is eligible for Official Development Assistance. But as China has grown as a global power, Western countries are increasingly rowing back on providing aid for Chinese development.

Researchers in the UK have been supported by the UK government to form research partnerships with Chinese collaborators through ODA funds such as the Newton Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund, both of which have recently been discontinued. Indeed, China was one of 16 middle-income countries the UK worked with through the Newton Fund.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, through which the Newton Fund and the GCRF were funded, told Research Professional News, “We do not provide aid funding for projects that support Chinese development.”

The business department told Research Professional News that all existing funding commitments will be honoured.

But researchers remain to be convinced that their grants are secure, having been subject to deep cuts in 2021 after the government decided to slash aid spending.

Changing direction

One project with two years left to run is the GCRF Trade, Development and the Environment Hub, originally granted over £18 million. The project addresses the trade in wildlife and agricultural commodities from low- and middle-income to higher-income countries, and one of its co-investigators is from the Beijing Normal University in China.

Neil Burgess, the hub’s leader from the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, told Research Professional News that the project “has been building strong partnerships with Chinese institutions linked to agricultural commodity and wildlife trades, and any changes in funding direction by the UK government could make these partnerships harder to sustain”.

UK Research and Innovation has been responsible for the lion’s share of the GCRF and Newton Fund, both of which have now been closed. A UKRI spokesperson said that 19 projects with Chinese partners ended in March 2022, with eight more finishing in the next financial year.

“There are a very small number of projects where funding goes beyond this, and some of the [GCRF] hubs do have elements of focus on China or Chinese collaborations,” the spokesperson said.

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But academics and industry leaders warn against cutting all ties with Russian researchers

Higher education experts have backed the government’s decision to cut research ties with Russia, although some have cautioned against freezing all relationships with individual academics.

Scientific ties between the UK and Russia have been frozen as part of a ramping up of pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine more than a month ago.

In a statement on 27 March, science minister George Freeman said the government had decided to “suspend publicly funded research and innovation collaborations” with Russia. At the same time, the government announced a £3 million scholarship scheme for Ukrainian researchers.

The measures include pausing payments for projects “with a Russian dimension” that are delivered with public research funds, and a ban on funding new collaborative projects with Russia.

They are said to be designed to target Putin’s regime rather than individual students and researchers, whom the government said “in many cases may oppose the actions of the Kremlin”.

Many in higher education have supported the government’s decision.

Vivienne Stern, director of vice-chancellors’ body Universities UK International, welcomed the package for Ukrainian researchers and said that many universities have already ended formal ties with Russian institutions.

“We have engaged with the UK government on how to develop the most effective and targeted actions against the Putin regime, and recognise and support the decision to cease funding new collaborative projects with Russia,” she said.

But Stern cautioned that “many Russian students, academics and researchers, at great personal peril, have publicly criticised this invasion and reaffirm our belief that scientific collaboration and research are a vital global endeavour”.

“We would not, therefore, support a blanket suspension of academic links,” she added.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said that although they were “not simple issues”, he felt “the government’s approach seems right, in part because we have a duty to support people under unjustified attack, and in part because history suggests that things tend to get even worse if you look the other way”.

“Unless something positive happens quickly, I suspect it will take decades for Russian universities to recover from the after-effects of their government’s indefensible actions,” he added.

Cutting ties

For Simon Marginson, director of the Centre for Global Higher Education, the cutting of ties through publicly funded research was “inevitable” after the Russian rectors’ body signed a statement in support of the war earlier this month.

However, he stressed that many Russian researchers would be “fundamentally opposed to this war”. He said that UK universities should continue to cooperate with their Russian counterparts, “both to maintain normal academic activities and information flow, and to sustain solidarity”, while doing “all that we can for our colleagues in Ukraine”.

“Russia has a large, important higher education system. We must all be deeply concerned about its future, just as we are deeply concerned about the savage violation of normal conditions for education in Ukraine,” he warned.

When the government announced the freeze on Russia collaborations, further and higher education minister Michelle Donelan asked universities to “review any financial or academic research ties with Russia given the horrors the Kremlin is inflicting on the Ukrainian people”.

She also called for honorary degrees awarded to those on the Russian sanctions list to be “quickly revoked”.

Many universities have already been exploring their connections with Russian organisations. A spokesperson for the Russell Group of research-intensive universities said: “We support measures taken by the government to stop funding for research programmes linked to the Russian state and institutional collaborators, without unfairly penalising individual students and academics, many of whom are equally as appalled by the Kremlin’s actions.

“Our universities have reviewed any collaborations or other links they may have had with Russia and are taking appropriate action.”

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European Parliament committee raises concerns over “concealed financing” and “theft” of knowledge

China is exerting a worrying amount of influence over EU universities, the European Parliament has warned in a report on foreign interference.

The report, from a dedicated special committee, says the Parliament is “worried about the number of European universities…engaged in partnerships with Chinese entities, including Confucius Institutes”.

About 200 of these institutes have been opened in Europe, the report says, although a number have also closed due to concerns about them. The report warns that they “enable the theft of scientific knowledge and the exercise of strict control over all topics related to China in the field of research and teaching, thus constituting a violation of the constitutional protection of academic freedom and autonomy”.

Chinese diplomats in the EU have dismissed the report as “groundless”.

‘Massive’ financing

The report—adopted by MEPs on 8 March by 552 votes to 81—says the Parliament is also “concerned about cases of concealed financing of research conducted in Europe, including China’s attempts to poach talent” through its Thousand Talents Plan and scholarships linked to the Confucius Institutes.

Universities and other educational organisations or initiatives have been “the target of massive foreign funding” from countries including China, according to the report. It expresses concern “about the increasing financial dependence of European universities on China and other foreign states, given the risk of sensitive data, technologies and research outcomes flowing to foreign states and the implications this dependence could have for academic freedom”.

Parliament is concerned about “the deliberate blending of military and civil scientific projects through China’s civil-military fusion strategy”, and the report says China has attempted to get European institutions to sign agreements “that perpetuate Chinese propaganda”.

‘Groundless accusations’

Responding to the adoption of the report, a spokesperson for the Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the EU said the report “made groundless accusations against China. We firmly oppose it.”

They added: “We always stand firmly against the interference in other countries’ internal affairs in any form by any country…We urge the Parliament to view China’s development in a rational manner [and] actively support and promote normal exchanges and cooperation between China and the EU in various fields, so as to create favourable conditions for the sound and stable development of China-EU relations.”

Action called for

To address the fears expressed by the Parliament, MEPs want European institutions to carry out detailed vulnerability assessments before partnering with foreign actors, and academics should be trained to report covert funding or influence through a dedicated hotline.

Their report calls on EU politicians and officials to ensure that funding for research “of geopolitical concern” at European universities comes from European sources, and it calls on the European Commission to propose laws to increase the transparency of foreign financing of universities.

As well as referring explicitly to China, the report expresses concern about the activities of countries including Qatar, Russia and Turkey.

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Announcement made as nation and the EU moot cooperation on green technologies

South Korea is to open “official” talks with the EU on associating to the bloc’s Horizon Europe R&D programme, the European Commission has announced.

Association to EU R&D programmes offers almost equal access and rights to countries not in the EU, in exchange for a budget contribution. For Horizon Europe, the Commission has courted like-minded countries around the world, but so far no countries outside of Europe and its near neighbourhood have associated to the 2021-27 programme.

The announcement that South Korea would open association talks came on 14 February, coinciding with a visit to the country by Jean-Eric Paquet, the Commission’s top R&D official. His visit was for the seventh meeting of the EU-Republic of Korea Joint Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation.

South Korea’s vice-minister of science, Yong Hongtaek, “announced that Korea will begin official talks with the EU on Korea joining the Horizon Europe programme as an associated country”, and gave Paquet a letter of intent “expressing Korea’s intention to start discussing Korea’s membership in the Horizon Europe programme as an associated country”, the Commission said.

A Commission spokesperson told Research Professional News that the two sides would would be “engage in exploratory talks as soon as both parties agree on a date”, adding that such talks “are not a formal negotiation yet, but open the way to intensive engagement to prepare it”.

Last week, the Commission announced the start of exploratory association talks with New Zealand, and said that exploratory talks with Canada were ongoing. So far, Albania, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Turkey have associated to Horizon Europe, while Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the UK and Ukraine have signed agreements to do so.

The Commission said that the EU told South Korea about the EU’s global approach to research and innovation, and its values for international cooperation. It said the two sides indicated a mutual interest in cooperating on the development of green technologies, such as hydrogen tech, “through a variety of multilateral activities, including exchanges between researchers and other stakeholders”.

Update 17/2 – This article was updated with the comment from the Commission spokesperson.

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Agreement opens up space markets in the two countries and will encourage university collaborations

The UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council has signed a deal with a Singapore-based space organisation allowing startups to access programmes and investors in both countries.

The agreement, signed on 9 February, is between STFC and Singapore Space and Technology Limited, a non-governmental organisation that connects players in the wider region’s space sector and bills itself as “Asia Pacific’s leading pioneer space organisation”.

Under the agreement, UK-based space tech startups will be able to access international investors and Singapore Space and Technology Limited’s accelerator programme, while STFC will provide Singaporean startups with access to test facilities and national laboratories and the UK’s wider space market.

The two organisations will also help develop research collaborations between UK-based and Singapore-based universities for knowledge transfer and capability building.

STFC executive director for business and innovation, Paul Vernon, said: “Successful startups are an essential part of our future prosperity, and STFC has a clear commitment to provide the best environment possible for them to innovate and grow.”

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Milestone report highlights country’s diminishing share of global R&D spending

A milestone biennial study has warned that the R&D system in the United States must be reinforced in light of increasing global competition, in particular from China.

The report comes at a time when successive US administrations have accused the Chinese government of using illicit means to acquire US technologies and have cracked down on US-based researchers’ ties to foreign governments and funders, especially ties to China.

The US was behind 27 per cent of all the money spent globally on R&D in 2019—more than any other country, according to the State of US Science and Engineering 2022 report from the National Science Board, published on 18 January. But China was close behind on 22 per cent.

“Strengthening the US science and engineering enterprise is critical to maintaining the US’s position as a lead performer and collaborator of science and technology activities globally,” the report warns.

Rise of China

A key trend picked out by the board’s report is the ongoing shift in where R&D is performed, from the US and Europe to Asia. “Many middle-income countries, such as China and India, are increasing science and engineering publication, patenting activities, and knowledge- and technology-intensive output, which has distributed science and technology capabilities throughout the globe,” it says.

The US spent some $656 billion on R&D in 2019, 27 per cent of the global total of about $2.4 trillion. Although this is a significant increase on its spending of around $410bn in 2010, the US share of the global spend then was 29 per cent.

In contrast, China spent $526bn in 2019, a 22 per cent share of all spending, up from around $210bn in 2010, when its share was 15 per cent.

National Science Board chair Ellen Ochoa said: “What do the most recent data show? That the US is a leader in many key indicators…[but] in some cases the growth in other countries has outpaced that in the US. This has led to a change in America’s position globally.”

US spending on R&D nudged just above 3 per cent of GDP for the first time in 2019. China’s spending grew from 0.9 to 2.2 per cent of its GDP from 2000 to 2019, while US spending only rose from just over 2.5 per cent of GDP. China’s growth has slowed to a rate more similar to that of the US in recent years, the report notes.

‘Shocking’ Stem scores

The report team points to several ways in which the US should act to shore up its R&D leadership. As well as investing more in R&D, it requires improvements in scientific, technical, engineering and mathematics education and increased participation in Stem study and careers among all demographic groups and US geographical regions.

At present, women make up only about one-third of the Stem workforce, and Black, Hispanic and American Indian and Alaskan Native people are also underrepresented relative to their share of the total population.

Julia Phillips, a former materials researcher and a member of the National Science Board, stressed the importance of tackling the US’s underperformance in Stem education from an early age, pointing out that the US placed last among comparable countries on some performance measures for the achievements of its Stem students.

“Even as other countries have improved their Stem education…US student performance has been lacklustre,” she said. “I continue to find it shocking and I truly believe we cannot be complacent about this.”

A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe

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Poonawalla family gift to establish facility housing University of Oxford’s major vaccine development programmes

The University of Oxford has received a £50 million donation from the owners of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer to establish a new vaccinology research facility.

The Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building will be named after the Poonawalla family, owners of the Serum Institute of India, which has been instrumental in manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines—particularly for low- and middle-income countries.

The Serum Institute collaborated with the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute to roll out the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine globally.

Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, said the success of this collaboration “has highlighted the great potential of partnerships between leading universities and large-scale manufacturers to develop and supply vaccines for very cost-effective deployment at exceptional scale”.

The new building will house over 300 research scientists and host the university’s major vaccine development programmes, including the headquarters and main laboratories for the Jenner Institute. It will be built on the same site as the recently announced Oxford University Pandemic Sciences Centre, at the University’s Old Road Campus (pictured), with close links between the two facilities.

Natasha Poonawalla, chair of Serum Life Sciences through which the donation will be made, said “the development of vaccines has been the lifelong focus of the Poonawalla family” and that the gift would help Oxford “take their research to the next level”.

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