Cuba-U.S. scientific collaboration: Beyond the embargo.

Guillermo Armando Ronda-Pupo,Amir Radfar

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255106

Guillermo Armando Ronda-Pupo, Amir Radfar

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255106

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Abstract

Cuba and the U.S. have the oldest Academies of Sciences outside Europe. Both countries have a long history of scientific collaboration that dates to the 1800s. Both scientific communities also share geographical proximity and common scientific research interests mainly in Biotechnology, Meteorology, and Public Health research. Despite these facts, scientists from both nations face serious barriers to cooperation raised by the U.S. embargo established in 1961 that prohibits exchanges with Cuba. The study aims to analyze the effects of U.S. policy on scientific collaboration with Cuban scientific institutions. The results of the bibliometric analysis of Cuba-U.S. joint publications in the Web of Science, and Scopus databases between 1980 to 2020 indicate sustained growth of scientific collaboration between scientists of both nations over the past forty years. The results also show that after the 1980 Smithsonian Institution and the Cuba’s Academy of Sciences agreement significantly increased scientific collaboration between U.S. scientists with their Cuban peers. President Barack Obama’s approach to normalizing the U.S. Cuba relations in 2015 enhanced Cuban scientific production with U.S. scientists by exceeding the number of collaborative papers published during any preceding U.S. Presidential administration. By 2020, Cuba had expanded its scientific links to 80% of the countries in the world. Cuban and U.S. scientists converted from adversaries into partners, showing that science is an effective diplomatic channel. A particularly important question for the future is how robust is the collaboration system in the face of greater political restrictions?

Highlights

Cuba and the U.S have a long history of scientific collaboration that dates to the 1800s
Clinical Medicine, Physics & Astronomy, and Biology, account for 64,6% of the overall productivity of Cuban–U.S scientific collaboration. This result suggests that U.S collaboration has been significant in the domains of Natural and Health Sciences
The results show that the Cuban–U.S joint scientific production, measured as the number of articles, reviews, and proceedings paper published in the Web of Science, and Scopus increased steadily over the past forty years Tables 1 and 2, and Fig 1

Summary

Introduction

Cuba and the U.S have a long history of scientific collaboration that dates to the 1800s. Cuban naturalist Felipe Poey deposited many of his specimens, results of his studies on fish species in the waters around Cuba, in such U.S institutions as Smithsonian and Harvard University [1]. In the late 19th Century the Cuban scientist Carlos Finlay’s scientific collaboration with Jesse Lazear of Johns Hopkins University corroborating Finlay’s theories presented 20 years earlier on mosquitoes as the vector for yellow fever transmission [2]. Those actions paved the way for closer collaboration between scientists in the United States and Cuba. The Cuban science system shows important achievements, in human health care and biotechnology [3]. https://www.nejm.org/action/showMediaPlayer?doi=10.1056%

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