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In 2015, the BRICS achieved two major goals: the creation of the BRICS Development Bank and the adoption of the Cape Town Declaration on Science, Technology, and Innovation. This first achievement is addressed by other contributions in this special edition. The purpose of the second, the Cape Town Declaration, is to encourage collaboration between BRICS countries in science, technology, and innovation by identifying five thematic areas, each being placed under the responsibility of one of the five BRICS countries. Determining the actual extent of their cooperation is not easy, because public information tends to focus on the production of journals and patents: the former are subject to preferences in terms of selection, language, and disciplines, while the latter reflect a high degree of path-dependency. This paper investigates another source of bias, which is the way participation in mega-science projects distorts the meaning of co-authorship and therefore also distorts indicators of collaboration. We show that scientific collaboration between BRICS countries occurs mainly in the high-energy and astrophysics fields rather than in the thematic areas set out in the Cape Town Declaration. This finding raises questions as to the future basis for collaboration among BRICS countries in science and technology.