RAPID International Type I: Understanding the Nature of US-China Research Collaborations on COVID-19

Part 1. During the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, scientists from the U.S. and China collaborated more frequently on pandemic-related research papers than they had on papers in general over the previous five years, underscoring the value of international collaboration in addressing global crises. What remains largely unknown is how such collaboration occurred. The primary objective of this study is to examine how U.S.-China research collaboration on COVID-19 occurred and, in particular, how scientific nationalism and global competitiveness shaped these collaborations. The project will move beyond standard bibliometric analysis of research collaborations to conduct mixed method survey research to better understand how collaborative relationships were established or maintained and the challenges experienced or overcome by scientists collaborating on COVID-19 research. The findings will generate crucial insights on how to effectively balance the need to rapidly produce knowledge, overcome disruptions to research processes, and ensure research abides by established regulatory protocols. The long-ranging impact will be to enhance understanding of how science and technology cooperation can more effectively be supported in the future, especially in times of global crisis. Part 2. The research addresses the intensifying intersection between geopolitics and global science by engaging directly with US and Chinese scientists collaborating on COVID-19. The study employs a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating frameworks from research policy studies and securitization studies to identify the range of challenges scientists experienced during the pandemic and how scholarly relationships were created or maintained. Data will be based on a survey and interviews among US and Chinese scientists who have coauthored a US-China scientific paper on COVID-19. Among the key data analyses will be to examine the extent to which securitization may have supported or hindered the COVID-19 research collaboration, as well as its impact on future collaboration. Additional analyses will investigate potential differences based on whether the scientific research was federally funded. The findings will contribute to current understandings of the relationship between the nation-state and international science cooperation, particularly the impact that global crises and geopolitics may have on scientists' abilities to engage in the global knowledge network to produce knowledge on urgent cross-border issues.