If your enquiries to research groups in Vietnam go unanswered, the cause is usually not disinterest. It is that the message did not give anyone enough to act on — or that what it proposed was not worth their time.
Why enquiries fail
Nothing specific. "We are interested in collaborating on health research in Vietnam" gives the reader no way to respond. They do not know what you want from them or what they would be committing to.
Clearly sent to many groups. No reference to their actual work, no named person. These are recognisable and get deleted.
The offer is unattractive once read carefully. If the message describes a study already designed and funded, and the Vietnamese group's role is recruiting participants, experienced groups can see that and will decline or not reply.
Wrong channel or wrong timing. Email response times are often slow, and examination and admission periods absorb faculty time almost completely. A single unanswered message means little.
What to include in a first message
Keep it to one screen, and include five things:
One or two sentences on their work that make clear you read it — the specific paper, and the specific aspect you are interested in.
What you are proposing, concretely: the question, roughly what it involves, and the rough timeline.
What you bring: funding status, technical capacity, access to something they do not have.
What role you are proposing for them — and if you mean co-investigator with authorship, say so explicitly. This is the single most useful sentence you can include.
A clear, small next step: a call, or a short concept note you can send.
Propose a partnership, not a recruitment role
Groups in Vietnam receive approaches that amount to data collection requests. If your proposal is genuinely different, you have to say how, because they cannot assume it.
Concretely, this means stating early: that they will be involved in study design; that authorship follows standard criteria and you expect them to be authors; that their institution's costs and staff time are budgeted; and that they retain rights to use the data afterwards.
If you cannot offer these — because the study is already designed and the budget is fixed — say that plainly and describe the arrangement as what it is, with appropriate payment. An honest service contract is a reasonable thing to propose. Presenting one as a partnership is what damages trust.
Where to look
Read recent papers on your topic with Vietnamese affiliations and note who leads them. This finds active groups rather than institutions with good websites.
Ask Vietnamese researchers working abroad in your field. They understand both settings and are usually the most effective introduction you can get.
Attend a regional or domestic conference in Vietnam. Groups that do not travel internationally are precisely where unused collaboration capacity sits.
Ask your own institution's international office whether existing agreements cover any Vietnamese universities — this can remove considerable administrative work later.
After the first reply
Move to a call, and ask about their priorities before presenting your plan in detail. A question worth asking: what would they want to get out of this, beyond the immediate outputs?
Expect the answer to include things like training for their students, a paper they lead, or equipment access. These are reasonable, and accommodating them is what makes a collaboration last past one grant.
And ask directly what is unfeasible in your timeline. A partner may not volunteer that a milestone is impossible, particularly if you hold the funding.
Settle these before work starts
Authorship criteria and who leads which output; data rights during and after the project; the partner's budget, set by them, and how it will be paid; the ethics approval pathway on both sides and who does what; and the holiday and teaching calendars on both sides.
A one-page memorandum covers all five. Proposing it signals that you have done this before.
If you get no reply
Send one follow-up after two or three weeks, shorter than the first. Then move on without reading it as rejection — workload and timing explain most silences.
If several approaches in a row go nowhere, the problem is likely the offer rather than the channel. The most common fix is making the role you propose substantially better.
Why do enquiries to Vietnamese groups go unanswered?
Usually because the message is too general, is clearly sent to many groups, or proposes a role that amounts to data collection. Slow email norms and teaching load also play a part.
What is the most useful sentence in a first email?
An explicit statement of the role you propose — for example co-investigator with authorship — because the recipient cannot assume it.
Is a service contract acceptable to propose?
Yes, if you describe it as one with appropriate payment. Presenting a service arrangement as a partnership is what damages trust.
What should be settled before work begins?
Authorship criteria and output leadership, data rights, the partner's own budget and payment schedule, the ethics pathway on both sides, and both calendars.
