Our commitment to international collaborations

Dear colleagues:

International scholars contribute greatly to the intellectual and cultural fabric of UCI. Our education and research activities, as well as everyday interactions, are enriched by their full participation in the UCI community. Further, global collaborations are critical to the advancement of knowledge, spurring innovation, and fundamental to our core values and research mission. UCI embraces and promotes international collaborations because we are dedicated to academic freedom and an open, inclusive academic environment. We strongly believe that global collaborations accelerate research, education and mutual understanding.

While we ardently support our international community, we also remain committed to enhanced academic and legal integrity in our non-domestic collaborations. This includes policies on scholarly relationships in federally sponsored research; sharing of materials, ideas and information; federal agency and UC disclosure requirements; and data protection. UC’s Office of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services has a helpful FAQ covering these topics, as well as resources related to visiting scholars, shipping, data integrity and travel.

UCI recognizes that some foreign entities and governments have attempted and may continue their attempts to conduct malign activities to inappropriately acquire technical knowledge, information and access to intellectual property. Federal funding agencies have made institutions of higher education keenly aware of their continuing expectations that grantees disclose all foreign financial conflicts of interest, other financial support, foreign components, conflicts of commitment and other foreign affiliations.

As we look to the future of an increasingly global UCI, it is important to communicate guiding principles for important, productive, open and trusted collaborations that will advance our mission and values.

• Collaborators and partner institutions should share UCI’s mission and values to enhance lives through world-class research, outstanding academics, a commitment to inclusive excellence and improved faculty and student experiences.
• International engagements should be sustainable and honest. An important feature of these collaborations is academic/scholarly reciprocity, which is a recognized characteristic of activities that are consistent with UCI’s established principles and our nation’s interests. This requires international partners’ commitment to upholding the same standards for ensuring research integrity that are applicable to the UCI research enterprise and community, including the stewardship of data – its use and interpretation, security and privacy, preservation and management.
• UCI will continue to strongly advocate on behalf of our international research collaborations while also ensuring compliance with all federal regulations, laws and UC policies, particularly with respect to disclosure requirements. Our research community understands the importance of disclosure and transparency as the best way to mitigate risk and create the conditions for even higher levels of international collaborations that advance the public good.

Since its founding, UCI has been built as a multicultural community of people from diverse backgrounds. Let us strive to learn from each other in an atmosphere of positive engagement and mutual respect yet remain mindful that we have an ethical and legal obligation to be transparent about our international collaborations with ourselves and with our federal sponsors.

Sincerely,

Chancellor Howard Gillman