The Role of Scholarly Publications in Obtaining Immigration Benefits

What can be done, and why now?

2023 is a time of opportunity for international STEM talent in the U.S. immigration system.

The opportunity comes from STEM immigration initiatives announced by the Biden Administration in 2022,¹ which provided clarifying guidance for a variety of immigration categories. 

We now have an unprecedented view of the standards immigration officers use to adjudicate cases, which can help international STEM talent prepare strong, focused applications. In particular, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicators require specificity and detail around documentation of recognition in the STEM expert’s field. Professional science societies are now in a unique position to provide training on the new guidance for international members and their mentors, and also to provide targeted supporting evidence regarding society-related activities (speaking at conferences, peer reviewing for journals, etc).

International STEM students and professionals are concerned about their ability to stay in the United States, in part due to inconsistency in processing times, visa backlogs and quotas, and length of security checks. While scientific societies cannot resolve these issues, they can play a vital part in helping their international members prepare for success in the immigration system through education and assistance in gathering evidence for immigration petitions. Moreover, some of these same actions help support and create a professional community for all early career STEM experts in each society, regardless of nationality.

This writeup explains the legal framework for STEM immigration, and provides three practical steps societies can take that make concrete improvements in documenting recognition and accomplishments for early career scientists. These recommendations are based on conversations with some societies on what is useful for immigration purposes, but also what is realistic given the workflow, mission, and structure of the societies.

The legal framework

The main parts of the U.S. immigration framework relevant to scientists were passed by Congress in 1990. They clearly need updates to fit the needs of the 21st century, but for now Congress is stalled on immigration reform. 

Yet the talent pool already in the United States of foreign-born scientists, technologists, and engineers facing the challenge of navigating the outdated U.S. immigration system is significant – about 45 percent of STEM Masters and 46 percent of STEM PhDs awarded by US institutions go to international students on temporary visas.² Moreover, 49 percent of U.S.-trained postdocs were born abroad, as are 29 percent of STEM faculty.³

Successful immigration processing requires planning, especially to qualify for more subjective categories. For example, several U.S. immigration categories common to scientists involve “marketing” the individual. These categories can require specific types of evidence, but also a “final merits determination” that evaluates the “totality of the evidence” to determine if the individual has “extraordinary ability” or “international recognition” or “exceptional ability.” Assembling the right type of supporting documentation (such as evidence of peer reviewing plus metrics on the journal) is crucial to convincing an immigration officer that the international member qualifies in a subjective category.

These categories do require significant accomplishments, but even acknowledging the high standard they remain underused. For example, the O-1A category (higher level temporary employment status, usually for postdocs, faculty or similar positions in industry) is underused per the 2022 Biden Administration guidance. In the last pre-pandemic year, 2019, there were only about 2600 O-1A petitions approved by USCIS for experts in STEM fields despite each year around 14,000 international students graduated with STEM PhDs from U.S. institutions, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), and there were around 35,000 international STEM post doctoral fellows in the United States, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

While we do not know the particular accomplishments of the international STEM PhD holders already in the United States, they are already an elite group within the overall universe of scientists in the country at all degree levels. Clearly more than 5 percent of these individuals should qualify for O-1A status in their particular area of endeavor.

Scientists who gather evidence through their career will be in a better position when they do submit an immigration application. Taking agency over developing career accomplishments and associated documentation dilutes the impact of inconsistency in case evaluation by USCIS, and possible Requests for Evidence (RFEs) asking for more material to approve a case (see Appendix 2 with examples attached). These RFEs can do more than increase the financial and psychological costs of the case: the fear of an RFE can deter a foreign national and the employer from applying in the first place. Professional science societies can help their members by providing evidence proactively – documents that specifically anticipate RFEs. Specific examples are discussed next.

Three steps professional science societies can take

This is a particularly good time for scientific societies to engage in supporting their international members in U.S. immigration because the Biden Administration has expanded the guidance for USCIS officers to help attract and retain STEM talent.⁴ This guidance is public facing, and societies can learn from it to help support their international members in these specific ways:

1. Educate more junior international members to prepare their experiences and credentials in a way that supports future immigration status applications. Societies can provide webinars and other outreach to help their more junior members understand the updated immigration guidance and how to use it to their advantage.

2. Show more senior members how to mentor the more junior scientists for success in the US immigration system, primarily by formally recognizing accomplishments in line with NSF mentoring initiatives. For example, Principal Investigators can specifically name junior researchers on grant applications. The new USCIS policy guidance for O-1A status⁵ for example, notes: 

The record establishes that the beneficiary is named as an investigator, scientist, or researcher on a peer-reviewed and competitively funded U.S. government grant or stipend for STEM research. This type of evidence can be a positive factor indicating a beneficiary is among the small percentage at the top of the beneficiary’s field.

Professors can also assist younger researchers to find opportunities to peer review for conferences, journals or grants in their own name (not writing the review for the professor to submit). The updated USCIS guidance for the Outstanding Researcher category of permanent residence⁶ states that:

A petitioner might document a beneficiary’s peer review work by submitting a copy of a request from a journal to the beneficiary to do the review, accompanied by evidence confirming that the beneficiary actually completed the review.

3. Add details to certain society communications so that they are more useful for immigration purposes. Currently, when a STEM graduate prepares an immigration petition, the evidence will include a document from a scientific society or related journal, such as invitation to peer review, speak at or help organize a conference, or confirmation of an award or publication acceptance. Then, the applicant with an attorney will gather contextual evidence about the society or the journal. If this contextual evidence were offered upfront in the correspondence from the society or journal, it would be more powerful to the USCIS officer and simpler for the international member. This will also benefit more junior members (since they are less likely to obtain a letter from the society or journal to support the immigration petition) and reduce the number of one-off requests to the society or journal.

For example, three common immigration categories include considering and giving weight to evidence of scholarly publications in the field.⁷ Therefore, satisfying the “Scholarly Articles” criterion for each of these classifications either puts a foreign national one-third of the way, or half-way, to meeting the three or two criteria minimum. And since each classification also has a criterion related to a foreign national’s “original contributions” – and especially the EB-1A and O-1A criteria that require such “original contributions” to be of “major significance in the field” – a foreign national may leverage an academic and/or professional journal’s selection process, impact factor, circulation, and overall prestige to demonstrate both the originality of their contribution and/or the significance of said contribution in the field. Likewise, each classification rewards foreign nationals who peer-review in their field.⁸ As such, a significant part of the qualifications for these three categories could be based on interactions with academic and/or professional journals and the nature of said publications. See Appendix 1 for specific examples of additions to communications from scientific societies that could support immigration filings.

Conclusion

Scientific societies can play an important role in training and supporting international members in their journey through the U.S. immigration process. These recommendations align with broader society goals of disseminating mentoring best practices. Automatic, standardized release of metrics and recognition also levels the playing field. Efforts then to support international members will bolster overall mentoring, access, and equity initiatives even for U.S. members.

Appendix 1: Examples of how science societies can add details to certain society communications to be more useful for immigration purposes

1. Email sample confirming acceptance of an article for publication or peer review of an article, could include metrics about the journal, such as this template:

{JOURNAL} is a monthly journal that publishes leading original research in the field of XXXX. We are a society owned journal, with the backing and global reach of a vast community of experts, and distributed through electronic and print subscriptions. {ADD SENTENCE OR TWO ON METRICS, SUCH AS IMPACT FACTOR, RANKING, ROLE OF JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENCE SOCIETY} Our circulation is xxxx. XXXX academic libraries around the world subscribe.

Members of the editorial board of {JOURNAL} are recruited and appointed based on their expertise in the field. Journal reviewers for each article are individually selected by the Editorial Board for their expertise in the topic presented in the paper and for their ability to evaluate the relevance and suitability of the work. Reviewers need a deep understanding of the specialized field, along with the technical knowledge to review experiments, data, and interpretation. Each article is reviewed by xx reviewers, and the final decision about whether to accept an article rests with the Editorial Board.

2. Metrics and statistics could be updated for templates annually, based on new ways of evaluating impact. This type of information is often what USCIS is looking for, and would be most impactful if coming directly from the journal (rather than the immigration attorney). Some examples of relevant metrics include:
   • Yale Medical School Library listing of metrics 
   • NIH grant rating metrics
   • Model of measuring impact beyond citations including being used in course curricular, clinical implementation, etc.
   • Altmetric measures of impact
   • Plum Analytics tracking of news media, social media, etc.
   • Rand Corporation: 100 Metrics to Assess and Communicate the Value of Biomedical Research: An Ideas Book
   • Northwestern University’s Health Science Library’s metrics guide

3. Additional ideas, which may be realistic depending on the structure and workflow of the society:
   • Offer email templates/certificates for service to your organization, such as helping to organize a session at a conference, and include a brief explanation about how people are chosen.
   • Include names of junior researchers, as appropriate, in press releases and media outreach.
   • Provide even more training for young researchers on how to share their work in popular media or social media.
   • Provide other types of support information on website or elsewhere that can be used in O-1 petitions, such as metrics on a conference (selection process for invited talks, number of attendees, etc.) that could be submitted to USCIS along with evidence of giving a talk or poster. Number of abstracts submitted out of total accepted could be misleading for smaller conferences, but may be a useful metrics for some larger conferences.
   • Have journals make explicit the policy of recognizing the person who writes a peer review, including perhaps a protocol for senior scientists to recommend a junior member of the lab to lead on the review.
   • Journals can provide guidelines on who qualifies as an author. Those guidelines could be used to support the “original contributions” argument in an immigration petition.

Appendix 2: Examples of USCIS requests for evidence

The examples below are questions that USCIS sent back to applicants, leading to concern, delays, and extra cost and effort. Scientific societies can help train and support their international members to try to proactively avoid such requests.

A recent RFE from USCIS regarding a business-related O-1A Extraordinary Ability Nonimmigrant Worker Petition offers a helpful example for how USCIS evaluates evidence. 

You may submit evidence of the beneficiary’s authorship of scholarly articles in the field, in professional journals or other major media (including electronic media). 

[…]

To satisfy this criterion, you may submit evidence of the form and type that qualifies as scholarly authorship. This list is not all-inclusive, as petitioners may submit other forms of evidence they feel meet this evidentiary criterion. The list includes: first- and co-authored, peer-reviewed manuscripts, written reviews, published case reports, poster and oral presentation material, book chapter contributions, invited lectures, citation data, letters of attestation from others in the field citing the beneficiary’s work, evidence of the beneficiary’s participation in workshops/seminars and conferences, and evidence of journal ranking and other metrics. 

[…]

 Please be advised that in order to meet this criterion, the articles must be scholarly and in general, should have footnotes, endnotes, or a bibliography, and may include graphs, charts, videos, or pictures as illustrations of the concepts expressed in the article.

[…]

Please note, USCIS comprehensively reviews all of the evidence in the record to make the final determination of eligibility. To satisfy this criterion, the record must contain sufficient evidence to establish not only the plain language of the criterion, but also show how the beneficiary’s authorship of scholarly articles, published in major peer-reviewed trade journals, demonstrate the beneficiary’s achievements are outstanding, that she has a record of sustained national or international recognition and is acknowledged as one of the small percentage who has risen to the very top of her field. You may still submit evidence to satisfy this criterion. 

Evidence may include, but is not limited to, evidence showing:

• The significance and importance of the articles within the beneficiary’s field of expertise;
• The significance and importance of the professional or major trade publications or other major media within the beneficiary’s field of expertise that published the beneficiary’s scholarly articles;
• The publication’s circulation (local, national, or international);
• How often the publication is printed;
• The number of copies printed for circulation; and
• The number of citations to the beneficiary’s written work.

Note: Circulation information should be specific to the media format in which it was published. For example, if the article was published online, the evidence must relate to the website. If it was published in print, the evidence must relate to the printed publication.

Another example from an EB-1A Extraordinary Ability Permanent Resident Petition RFE includes USCIS’ focus on the prominence and prestige of the publications in which the foreign national’s studies appeared, claiming: 

However, you have not provided evidence to establish the significance and importance of the professional or major trade publications or other major media within the beneficiary’s field of expertise that published the beneficiary’s scholarly articles, [the] publication’s local, national, or international circulation data, frequency of the publication, number of copies printed for circulation, or the number of citations to the beneficiary’s written work.

Last, an excerpt from an RFE issued in response to an EB-1B Outstanding Researcher Permanent Resident Petition is instructive in seeing how USCIS reviewed evidence seeking to establish the foreign national’s satisfaction of the “Scholarly Articles” criterion in this context: 

This criterion has not been met because the evidence does not show that the articles were published in scholarly journals with international circulation.

To assist in determining that the articles were published in scholarly journals with international circulation, you may submit:

• Documentary evidence to establish the journals are circulated internationally;
• If the articles were published in print, the evidence must relate to the printed publication;
• If the articles were published online, the evidence must relate to the website.
• Any other evidence establishing that the articles have been published in scholarly journals with international circulation.

Examples of scholarly journals with international circulation include but are not limited to:

• Nature;
• Science;
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society;
• Journal of the American Chemical Society;
• The Astrophysics Journal; and
• Any other journals with international circulation.