Abstract
December 2024, Paper: "Abstract - This paper provides context and information to policymakers, academics, and higher education administrators on the seven Chinese universities sometimes referred to as the Seven Sons of National Defense. While it examines collaboration between Seven Sons schools and American universities, the lessons learned have global implications. It starts by providing the geopolitical, bureaucratic, and policy contexts for the Seven Sons, before proceeding to a bibliometric analysis of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) publications of these universities based on citation data from the Web of Science, a commonly used database. The paper concludes that academic collaboration with Seven Sons schools entails heightened potential risk due to their connections to the Chinese defense sector. However, academic institutions and scholars should consider the nature of the Seven Sons schools as well as specific projects, individuals, and fields of study when determining whether to proceed with a particular collaboration"