BRIN Tells Foreign Researchers: Partner Locally, Transfer Technology

Foreign research teams working in Indonesia will have to include Indonesian researchers and commit to technology transfer under new terms announced by BRIN, the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional). The agency says it will streamline its permitting process at the same time.

The announcement, published by BRIN's news desk, pairs two moves that matter to any international research programme with fieldwork, sampling or instrumentation in the Indonesian archipelago: a substantive requirement on local participation and technology transfer, and an administrative promise of faster, simpler permits.

BRIN did not publish a full regulation text, deadlines, or numerical targets alongside the headline announcement. Research managers should treat the concrete details — what counts as "involvement," what qualifies as technology transfer, and which permit categories change — as pending until the implementing rules appear.

What does the new requirement change?

The core shift is conditional access. Under the announced terms, a foreign-led project cannot simply run an expedition or a laboratory campaign in Indonesia with imported staff and exported data. It must bring Indonesian researchers into the work itself and leave capability behind — the technology-transfer clause.

For R&D portfolio planning, that has direct budget implications:

• Co-authorship and co-investigator arrangements with Indonesian institutions become a design decision at proposal stage, not a compliance afterthought.
• Equipment, methods or know-how may need to be transferred to Indonesian partners, which affects procurement, IP clauses and consortium agreements.
• Projects that cannot accommodate a transfer obligation may need to restructure or relocate parts of their workflow.

BRIN frames the requirement as a way to ensure foreign research delivers national benefit, not just publications. Agencies in other biodiversity-rich and resource-rich states have moved in the same direction; Indonesia's version now hinges on how BRIN defines and enforces the transfer term.

Where does the streamlining come in?

The second half of the announcement — streamlined permitting — is the concession side of the bargain. BRIN says it wants to cut friction for legitimate foreign research even as it raises the substantive bar.

Permit delays have long been a practical constraint on scheduling in Indonesia: field seasons, vessel time and equipment imports all hang on administrative timelines that researchers do not control. If BRIN delivers a genuinely shorter process, the local-participation requirement becomes easier for programme managers to absorb, because the net cost of doing research in Indonesia may not rise.

The agency has not yet published measured turnaround times, old versus new, so the size of the improvement remains a claim rather than a result.

Who is affected, and when?

The announcement targets foreign researchers and institutions across the disciplines BRIN oversees. Until implementing guidance specifies otherwise, the safest reading is that it applies to new permit applications in Indonesian jurisdiction — marine, terrestrial, biodiversity, geological and public-health research among them — and that ongoing projects should check their renewal terms.

Universities, museums and contract-research organisations planning expeditions, bioprospecting, long-term ecological monitoring or collaborative laboratory work in Indonesia should track the follow-up regulations and budget for partnership negotiation time in the next funding cycle.

What to watch next

The test of this policy is arithmetic: how many Indonesian researchers appear on foreign-project rosters, what gets transferred, and how many days a permit actually takes. BRIN's announcement sets the direction; the implementing rules will set the price. Researchers and R&D managers should watch for those rules before locking in Indonesian fieldwork for the coming season.