988 



data; and some descriptive material citing especially meritorious 

 activities. It has not made a systematic attempt to provide the Con- 

 gress with a detailed summary of activities and problems culled from 

 materials available from the National Academy of Sciences. 



The National Academy of Sciences is a quasi-public scientific 

 advisory group chartered by Congress to provide advice to the Govern- 

 ment on matters involving science, technology, research, and de- 

 velopment. While a large portion of the Academy's activities are 

 funded by contracts with Federal agencies, its operations and activi- 

 ties, which reflect the need to maintain the integrity of science as 

 incorporated in the Charter, are not subject to annual authorization 

 and appropriations oversight. The Academy does prepare annual 

 reports for the Congress, but these are published typically several 

 years after completion of the fiscal year being summarized. 



The Academy prepares several types of in-house, unpublished ma- 

 terial on the Soviet and Eastern European bilaterals. These documents 

 support proposals the Academy submits to the Foundation for program 

 funding and provide NAS members with an annual summary of the 

 activities of the Office of the Foreign Secretary. These documents, 

 which were used in preparing this study, are: Annual Reports of the 

 Foreign Secretary; ^^® the Semiannual Report of Scientific Exchanges 

 Under the 1966 Memoranda of Understanding between the National 

 Academy of Sciences and the Academies of Eastern Europe; ^^^ data 

 sheets giving numbers of exchanges both ways for both short- and 

 long-term visits, 1959-1970;^^* and the Annual Proposal of the Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences to the National Science Foundation. ?^^ 



The Need for Acadsmy-to-Academy Exchanges 



Bilateral scientific exchange agreements between the United States 

 and the countries of the non-Communist world are negotiated diplo- 

 matically by the State Department and implemented by the NSF. 

 The U.S.-Soviet agreement and the bilateral scientific agreements 

 which were later negotiated with the Eastern European countries 

 are handled differently.^^" These agreements, also called inter-Academy 



3M Prepared for the SDring meetings of the Academy. They are mimeographed unpublished typed reports. 

 The section treating Soviet and Eastern European exchange is usually a candid discussion of the number 

 of exchanges both ways, efforts to solve problems of fiUing quolas, descriptions of surveys, visits and other 

 activities undertaken bv the staff in both the United States and abroad, highlights of visits made by mem- 

 bers of each Academy in support of removing diplomatic constraints on tlie programs, and description of 

 facilitative services the staflf provides in support of scientific activities with the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern 

 European count nes over and above the bilateral inter- Academy agreements. With the exception of reports 

 prepared for inclusion in annual proposals to the NSF, this material is the only publicly available source 

 of information on quota fulfillment and special administrative and diplomatic problems in implementing 

 exchanges. / 



•''' Prepared by the Soviet and Eastern European Section of the Office of the Foreign Secretary. Reports 

 give dafa on' American and Eastern European exchanses completed, in progress, or proposed for the curren 

 year, including name, address, subject, duration of visit and location of visit; they include nan-ative mate- 

 rials describing visits between members of respective academies to arrange and improve bilaterals particu- 

 larly with respect to funding, selection of research topics, and tours of foreign scientific facilities by the 

 staffs of both Academies. In addition, they describe some of the political and diplomatic obstacles to the 

 conduct of exchanges. One difficulty a rasearcher encounters in assessing the dal a on exchanges included in 

 these reports is that since visits completed, in progress, and planned are repoited, the researcher must sift 

 through these thie"? types of data to insure that duplication is eliminated. 



'*' These lists are the only reliable and readily available material on exact numbers, subjecis, and durations 

 of exchanges between the United States and the U.S.S.R. No annual data are given: instead, data are in 

 blocks of four-year duration, making it difficult for the researcher to describe year-by-year activity and 

 variations in activity. No information is given on the name of the grantee. 



'5' Includes areview of the program for both the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe similar 

 in detail and scope to that included in the Annual Report of the Foreign Secretary to the National Academy 

 of Sciences. 



3E0 An exception to this pattern holds in the case of the bilateral agreement with Romania. The NAS 

 directly iniplements activities with the Romanian Academy of Sciences; the NSF directly implements 

 scientific exchariee activities with other scientific institutions in Romania. After this paper was written the 

 NSF announced that it was also beginninsr to fund and administer programs for exchange and joint coopera- 

 tive research, on an institution to institution basis, with also Hungiry, Czechoslovakia^ and Bulgaria. The 

 institutions involved are primarily academic. (See: 1974 National Science Foundation Authorization: Hearings, 

 op. cit., p. 317. 



