HEFCE's steeper funding formula a small step towards more concentration

by Brian Owens

Oxford and Cambridge are set to benefit from the steeper funding ‘slope’ introduced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England for quality related research funding (QR) in 2010-11, according to our preliminary analysis, but the overall changes will be small.

On 1 February the funding council announced a new formula for distributing QR in a letter to universities in England and Northern Ireland. In response to the government’s desire for a greater concentration of research funding, the funding council has increased the weightings for 2*, 3* and 4* work, as judged by the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, from 1:3:7 to 1:3:9.

The shift will benefit institutions that have a higher proportion of work in the 4* category in the 2008 RAE. First estimates from the Research Fortnight Benchmarking application show Oxford and Cambridge gaining about £4m a year between them, a rise of about 3 per cent, with the losers scattered among the English members of the various university groupings. The rest of the Russell Group shows a marginal gain with the 1994 Group showing a marginal loss, while both the University Alliance and the million+ groups lose about £2m. The University of Newcastle, which got just 14 per cent of its staff into the 4* category, is likely to be among the hardest hit, and could lose around half a million a year.

Despite the small amounts of money involved, some universities are still concerned about the direction this is going. They point to the fact that HEFCE calls this an "initial step towards increased concentration" and worry that there are other plans afoot to concentrate it further in years to come.

HEFCE also decided to tweak the QR allocations for geography and psychology, which were left outside of the ring fence for science disciplines last year.  HEFCE says it recognises that “around half the research activity in these disciplines…could reasonably be regarded as more akin to work in STEM disciplines than to that in the other social sciences”, geography and psychology will receive 50 per cent of the additional funding that they would have received had there been no STEM ring fence. Got that?

Drayson grilled over impact

by Brian Owens

Science minister Paul Drayson faced a hostile audience at a debate on the future of UK research at the Wellcome Trust in London last night. Surrounded by a panel of young researchers and science communicators, who at times seemed somewhat out of their depth, Drayson was interrogated by academics in the audience over impact assessment in research funding.

The exchanges got heated at several points, as academics took the opportunity to vent their frustrations over impact at the minister. It didn’t help that Drayson and his opponents both seemed to conflate two different issues – HEFCE’s proposed impact assessment in the REF, and the impact section on the research councils’ grant applications.

Drayson was correct when he tried to reassure researchers that they would not be required to predict the eventual impact of their work to get quality-related research funding from HEFCE. The impact statements in the REF are indeed retrospective rather than predictive. But it got confusing when he kept mentioning “grant applications” – which only makes sense if you see the REF as one giant grant application. I suppose it is, in a sense, but in this case it only served to heighten the confusion.

When asked about the research council applications, which do ask for a prediction of future impact, Drayson either misunderstood or dodged the question and continued to talk about the REF. After the debate, one of Drayson’s aides said that since the councils didn’t use the impact statements to decide on funding, there was nothing for academics to worry about. But of course they are worried, and for the science minister not to address those worries is a mistake.

It is encouraging, though, to see a minister so engaged with his brief. Few other politicians would have been willing to face such a one-sided debate. Even the moderator, particle physicist Brian Cox, was not entirely unbiased. The fact that the debate arose from Drayson’s exchanges on Twitter with astronomer Colin Stuart, who was also on the panel, shows how willing the minister is to talk directly to the public. Let’s hope he keeps it up.

Who should be Europe's chief scientific adviser?

by Brian Owens

Over the past few weeks, Research Europe has been soliciting nominations for who should be the first to get the job of Chief Scientific Adviser for the EU.

Commission president José Manuel Barroso promised the European Parliament last month that he would appoint one when he was reconfirmed as president, and the European Research Area Board said it should be a top priority for the Commission in its first annual report last week.

We received four nominations from the European research community. They are:

• Helga Nowotny, a sociologist and vice-president of the European Research Council
• David King, a chemist and former UK chief scientific adviser
• John Wood, chairman of the European Research Area Board and head of engineering at Imperial College London
• Peter Gruss, a developmental biologist and president of Germany’s Max Planck Society

Have your say in the comments below, or e-mail us at comment@researchresearch.com. We will have the results in two weeks' time.

Technology focus for NERC’s responsive mode funding

by Brian Owens

The Natural Environment Research Council has revised its responsive mode funding streams to better encourage “adventurous, technology-led and multi-disciplinary proposals”.

Responsive mode is the funding stream that supports research in response to unsolicited ideas from research groups, consortia and individuals, and is intended to provide support for cutting-edge areas of science.

The new guidelines are intended to encourage “adventurous research” which NERC defines as being innovative and high-risk, and “technology-led proposals” that focus on technological applications of research.

Technology-generating research was not specified as a target area for funding on the council’s Funding Streams and Categories webpage of September 2008. Here the research council defined the responsive mode stream as encouraging blue-skies research: “supporting original investigation and training undertaken to gain, advance or expand knowledge and understanding”.

The new guidelines also encourage collaboration across and within disciplines and institutional boundaries as well as with international and non-academic partners.

The change comes as a result of NERC's 2004 Blue Skies Review that found that the research community has a varied understanding of what responsive mode is and what it is for.

The new definition was formed following a consultation exercise including two current Science and Innovation Strategy Board members and is one of the main actions identified in the research council’s 2009 Responsive Mode Action Plan.

Irish Education head warns of greater government intervention in higher education

by Brian Owens

*****
This from Dick Ahlstrom, our Irish correspondent. Could it be the shape of things to come in other countries? -- BO
*****

The days of limited government regulation of higher education are drawing to a close, and higher education sector may see its income linked to national economic priorities, according to the chief executive of the Higher Education Authority.

Tom Boland was speaking on 12 June at an international colloquium on higher education at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He was expressing his personal views rather than the official line of the HEA, he told delegates.

He said that the days of low-key regulation by government were coming to an end. Lack of controls had “given us unnecessary and inefficient duplication in programme provision. It has give us mission creep, inflexible staffing structures and practices and it has given us a fragmented system of institutions which to a very great extent stand apart and aloof from each other,” he told delegates.

He suggested there was a case for significant change in the sector, where university income was coupled to national economic priorities.

The current situation could not remain, however, he said. “We cannot afford this mode of operation and organisation any more. We cannot afford the cost and we cannot afford the implications for quality,” he stated.

The sector needed to place a greater emphasis on collaboration and coherence. This would make it possible to build up a critical mass of expertise in particular disciplines. It would take a “shrewd use of resources” but was necessary if Ireland were to have any research impact internationally.

“Collectively our higher education institutions represent a very valuable national resource and it is imperative for Ireland’s economic and social development that its full potential, across all institutions of all types, be realised,” he stated.

"Further work"

by Brian Owens

The phrase "we will need to undertake further work..." crops up several times in HEFCE's consultation document on the new Research Excellence Framework.

The biggest area that is still up for debate is how to deal with the arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and statistics. For these, HEFCE will "develop a quality assessment regime involving a light touch form of peer review informed by quantitative indicators". But, so far, "we have not undertaken significant development work on this," says HEFCE. The consultation is seeking preliminary input on how this system should work. The time line for this is not as tight though, it only needs to be in place by 2013, to inform funding from 2014.

Other areas that are still under development include how researchers should be assigned to institutions and subject groups, the algorithm to produce the quality indicator based on citations, and indicators of research income and numbers of research students will be used. HEFCE is also looking for suggestions for quantitative indicators that can be used to capture user value and the quality of applied research.

HEFCE has commissioned further technical advice, to report in early 2008, on some of the data and methodological issues, and will run a "substantial" pilot exercise next year.

All this shows that the REF is still very much a work in progress, and although the general framework has been decided, there is still room for academics to tweak it here and there to try and deal with the problems that are bound to crop up.

But the timetable is tight, as HEFCE acknowledges:

November 2007 to February 2008 - Consultation on key elements of the framework and on bibliometric indicators. In parallel, further work on developing bibliometric techniques.

March to August 2008 - Substantial pilot of proposed approach

Autumn 2008 - Further consultation and decisions on the framework and indicators to be used for the science-based disciplines

Early 2009 - Launch of full bibliometrics exercise for science-based disciplines

November 2009 - Output of bibliometrics exercise available for use in funding; decisions on new funding approach to be phased in from 2010

From late 2009 - Consult on light touch peer review to run in 2013

The science-based disciplines

by Brian Owens

Here are HEFCE's proposed subject groups for the science-based disciplines for the new Research Excellence Framework. The six groups map to Main Panels A to E and G in the 2008 RAE, except for Unit of Assessment 23, Computer Science and Informatics, which has been taken from Panel F and combined with the engineering subjects covered by Panel G. The rest of Panel F, mathematics and statistics, will be assessed with the light-touch peer review system being developed for the arts and humanities.

Subject group	RAE 2008 units of assessment	HESA cost centres
Clinical Medicine (RAE Panel A)	1 Cardiovacular Medicine 2 Cancer Studies 3 Infection and Immunology 4 Other Hospital based Clinical Subjects 5 Other Lab based Clinical Subjects	1 Clinical Medicine (part)
Health Sciences (RAE Panel B)	6 Epidemiology and Public Health 7 Health Services Research 8 Primary Care and Other Community Based Clinical Subjects 9 Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology	1 Clinical Medicine (part)
Subjects Allied to Health (RAE Panel C)	10 Dentistry 11 Nursing and Midwifery 12 Allied Health Professions and Studies 13 Pharmacy	2 Clinical Dentistry 5 Nursing and Paramedical Studies 6 Health and Community Studies 8 Pharmacy and Pharmacology (part)
Biological Sciences (RAE Panel D)	14 Biological Sciences 15 Pre-clinical and Human Biological Sciences 16 Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Sciences	1 Clinical Medicine (part) 3 Veterinary Science 4 Anatomy and Physiology 8 Pharmacy and Pharmacology (part) 10 Biosciences 13 Agriculture and Forestry
Physical Sciences (RAE Panel E)	17 Earth Systems and Environmental Science 18 Chemistry 19 Physics	11 Chemistry 12 Physics 14 Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences
Engineering and Computer Science (RAE Panel G, with part of F)	23 Computer Science and Informatics 24 Electrical and Electronic Engineering 25 General Engineering and Mineral & Mining Engineering 26 Chemical Engineering 27 Civil Engineering 28 Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering 29 Metallurgy and Materials	25 Information Technology, Systems Sciences and Computer Software Engineering 16 General Engineering 17 Chemical Engineering 18 Mineral, Metallurgy and Materials Engineering 19 Civil Engineering 20 Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering 21 Mechanical, Aero and Production Engineering

The utter pointlessness of Nick Clegg

by Brian Owens

The latest developments in the ongoing saga of the National Institute of Medical Research:

PART 1 Like all other important decisions on science in the UK, the future of the National Institute for Medical Research now lies with the Treasury. It’s weighing up whether to allow the MRC and chums to buy the three acre site behind the British Library near St Pancras station so that they can construct the world’s biggest biomedical lab around a relocated NIMR. No one can move until the men in charge of Northern Rock give the nod. But of course, our economic overlords won’t be taking responsibility for the decision or answering any questions about it. So the unaccountability of the UK
government grows.

PART 2 The land is actually owned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which bizarrely—but totally consistently in the case of the celebrated anti-science department that still has no chief scientist—has tried to put the land on the open market. It’s the Two Cultures in action—it’s like something straight out of CP Snow’s The Corridors of Power.

PART 3 The site is in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency of Labour’s Frank Dobson. He’d prefer a local use but says the backing of Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust will make the development very difficult to stop. So rather than lead Somerstown on a hopeless charge, he’s pushing for planning gain on the previous, smaller Temperance Hospital site bought by the consortium nearby on Hampstead Road.

PART 4 The site is also within the London Borough of Camden, now controlled by the Lib Dems with the aid of the Conservatives. Its borough plan has the site zoned as a mixture of local housing and other local-friendly amenities. Both Ming Campbell and Nick Clegg have been along to tell locals that the site must be saved for local use.

PART 5 Now that he wants to be Prime Minister, we called Clegg to find out what he thought should happen to the NIMR and why it was right in this case to put local concerns ahead of the future of a large chunk of Britain’s medical research. We phoned and phoned. We emailed. We left messages. Nada. Oops, could that be the embarrassed silence of a tinker toy politician we hear, one who thought it would be nice to play to the local gallery and wasn’t interested in the bigger questions?

Medical research is of course only one of a multitude of issues any leader has to deal with. But that’s why this story is telling. It’s not a case of vision and spin. It’s a matter of making a decision. The most damaging accusation levelled at Lib Dems has always been that they’re irrelevant. But Clegg is in a different league. The man who wants the keys to Number 10 is making an art out of evasive pointlessness.

Science at the top

by Brian Owens

Science and innovation was given a fairly high profile in today's announcement of the 2007 Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review. After outlining spending on defence and law and order, science came next. Although those devoted to basic research may be slightly concerned about the Chancellor's choice of words.

"I can confirm investment in science and university research will rise to over £6 billion a year in three years time, helping ensure British research and industry are brought closer together to develop the new products and services the world wants to buy," he said.

He also promised to fully fund the recommendations in the Cooksey Review, giving OSCHR £1.7bn by 2010. A new Environmental Transformation Fund will get £1.2bn over three years to develop new energy technologies.

And although Alistair Darling "borrowed" several ideas from the Tories, including a green levy on air travel and reforms to inheritance tax, he steered clear of their plans to improve the R&D tax credit, which he failed to mention in either the science and innovation, or tax sections of his speech.

You can read his speech for yourself here. And, if you're a real glutton for punishment, the full PBR and CSR is here.

Carving up the pie

by Brian Owens

DIUS will be announcing each research council's allocation of funding and other spending for the science budget after the chancellor's speech this afternoon.