16.1823, FYI: Approval Required: Research with Colleagues, India

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1823. Thu Jun 09 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1823, FYI: Approval Required: Research with Colleagues, India

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1)
Date: 08-Jun-2005
From: Richard Sproat < rws at uiuc.edu >
Subject: Approval Required for Research with Colleagues in India

	
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 13:10:03
From: Richard Sproat < rws at uiuc.edu >
Subject: Approval Required for Research with Colleagues in India


Anyone who is contemplating applying for funds for doing research
involving collaboration with colleagues in India, especially research
involving human subjects (broadly construed) should pay attention to the
following message.

It is the general policy of the Government of India that projects where
funds come into India from the outside, need approval from one or more
Indian Government organizations.

At:

http://compling.ai.uiuc.edu/rws/newindex/guidance.doc

I have posted some guidelines that specifically focus on biomedical
research, which includes anything involving human subjects --- including
non-invasive psycholinguistic research. Some of the contact information at
the end is out of date, but the process is as described there, and the
Health and Human Services contact, Dr. Vaneet Arora (stationed at the US
Embassy in New Delhi) is still the right person to contact about these issues.

The reason I am posting this information is that our funding agencies, such
as NIH or NSF seem to be largely ignorant of these requirements. The reason
this is an issue is that it can take six months or more to obtain
Government of India approval.  I found all this out the hard way after
being notified that an NIH grant I had applied for (for collaborative work
on psycholinguistic issues in processing Indian scripts -- not a study that
involves any invasive procedures) was approved by the NIH. It then
developed (over a matter of a couple of months) that before the award could
be made, GoI approval had to be obtained.

It is thereforely strongly recommended that you have your Indian
colleague(s) start the process at their end as soon as you apply for US
Government funds, and that you not wait until your project has been awarded
funding. According to the HHS attache's at the US Embassy in New Delhi
(with whom I met a couple of weeks ago), they have tried repeatedly to get
the NIH to make this information available to applicants, but that their
suggestions have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

So be forewarned.

--Richard Sproat



Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable





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