Nurse Review of Research Councils: Call for Evidence
Response Form
Please state whether you are responding as an individual, or on behalf of an organisation:
This organisational response is from SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit), at the
University of Sussex, and draws on expertise across SPRU’s research community.
Please write here your name/ the name of your organisation and contact details. This would
help us to contact you if we have further questions.
For any queries, please contact:
Natalie Day
Head of Strategy and Communications, SPRU
[email protected] / 079 1206 1096
Please provide evidence and views in relation to the following themes:
1. Strategic decision-making
Understanding how best to fund and organise research in order to encourage excellence
and impact is an ongoing challenge for all research systems, and has been the focus of
much attention in the UK. As the UK’s oldest and largest centre for science and
innovation policy research, SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) at the University of
Sussex welcomes this opportunity to submit evidence to the Nurse Review. We focus
here on areas where our own research and analysis offers insights into how the
effectiveness of the research system could be further enhanced.
We hope that the Nurse Review will take the recent Triennial Review of the Research
Councils as its starting point. Whilst identifying several areas for improvement, this
review did not recommend wholesale changes to the UK’s research council structures.
We support this view. As the research community grapples with the consequences of
five years of flat cash funding, the outcomes of REF 2014, and the uncertainties of the
2015 spending review, we believe that a major reorganisation of the research councils
would be distracting and counter-productive at a time when the sector requires stability.
If any reorganisation of the councils is deemed necessary, we would argue against a
model which sees a reshuffling of responsibilities across a smaller number of RCs and
would prefer a more radical move to one central council – so, in essence, maintain the
current structure of seven RCs, or go down to a single RC, but avoid other partial
mergers or structural reforms.
Beyond the RCs, it is essential that the whole UK research ecosystem is supported to
foster strength and depth across research institutions, rather than focusing too narrowly
on perceived pockets of excellence which may already be well funded. In order to truly
foster a knowledge economy in the UK, we support recent calls by the Campaign for
Social Science to extend further the ringfence around the science budget and increase
funds in real terms by at least 10 per cent over the next Parliament, with these additional
funds being directed towards cross-disciplinary research.1
Across the RC system, a more appropriate balance of funding between STEM and nonSTEM subjects is required. The current system fails to recognise and reward the value
of social science research in underpinning economic, social and public policy impacts.
Recent analysis of King’s College London and Digital Science following the 2014 REF
provides a valuable database for understanding the relationship between research
disciplines and impact.2 As this demonstrates, strategic decision-making across the RCs
should prioritise the integration of knowledge from a range of disciplines, rather than
trying to prioritise particular subject areas. Barriers to working across disciplines and
boundaries should also be minimised to encourage an academic culture of knowledge
and research integration at all levels.
2. Collaborations and partnerships
SPRU has a long history of fostering high quality, problem-orientated, interdisciplinary
research. It is from this experience that we express a significant concern about the
future health of interdisciplinary research in the UK. This is based on extensive
engagement with the wider academic community through work with the research
councils and hence is partly anecdotal. The lack of solid evidence on inter-disciplinary
researchers in the UK science system is partly a reflection of the subject of our concern
– a lack of attention within science policy to their careers and position within the
research system.
While there is much talk about the importance of interdisciplinary research, particularly
research that cuts across the natural, engineering, computing, and social sciences, we
are concerned that there is little substance behind it. The RCs, HEFCE and HEIs all
stress the importance of interdisciplinary research and researchers, but do not take
proper responsibility for them. As a consequence, there is a growing feeling among
interdisciplinary researchers that their position within the science base is not being
properly recognised. We are concerned that this is a particular problem with junior
researchers.
SPRU analysis for the ESRC has also found that interdisciplinarity is neither a sufficient
nor a necessary condition for achieving societal relevance and impact, despite the
common association of interdisciplinary research with addressing social problems and
fostering innovation. Supporting interdisciplinary research is important, but rather than a
goal of its own, it should be explicitly linked to a meaningful end such as fostering
creativity in science, addressing a societal problem, or enabling engagement across
different stakeholders.3
SPRU research has shown how the disciplinary structure of REF/RAE can have a very
negative impact on interdisciplinary research. There is also evidence that the structure of
1
‘The Business of People: The significance of social science over the next decade’, Campaign for
Social Science, February 2015 http://campaignforsocialscience.org.uk/businessofpeople/
2
“The nature, scale and beneficiaries of research impact: An initial analysis of Research Excellence
Framework (REF) 2014 impact case studies”, Kings College London and Digital Science, March 2014,
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/HEFCE,2014/Content/Pubs/Independentresearch/2015/Analysis,of,REF,i
mpact/Analysis_of_REF_impact.pdf
3
Molas, J; Rafols, I; and Tang, P; “On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and impact: different
modalities of interdisciplinarity lead to different types of impact”, Journal of Science Policy and
Research Management, 29(2), 69- 89, (September 2014)
evaluations is too discipline-driven and penalises interdisciplinary work, leading to a
narrowing of research focus and a turn away from real world problems.4
We are also concerned that the current size of the interdisciplinary research community
is close to, or has already fallen below critical mass. We define this as the ability of the
research system to support and effectively peer review interdisciplinary proposals (see
‘Effective ways of working’ for more on peer review). We are seeing strong demand from
outside the UK academic system for high quality interdisciplinary researchers. As a
result, we feel it would be appropriate to investigate and gather more data on their
international and non-academic career moves. We have direct experience of high quality
post-doc researchers leaving the UK to go to superior appointments in other countries.
In the interdisciplinary area of big-data/social science we are concerned that the demand
for talent, and the high salaries being paid outside academia, mean we are losing
important capability.
A second aspect of critical mass relates to the ability of the UK science system to train
the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers. This depends on there being a
degree of slack in the system. However, there is strong external and internal demand for
the people who can provide such training: these are few in number, and the benefits
they receive from the investments of time and effort are often marginal. Training postdocs and PhDs takes considerable resources.
Interdisciplinary researchers at an early stage of their career are particularly vulnerable
to gaps in funding. Academics working in disciplines can normally get back into teaching
relatively easily, and support themselves for a covering period if they are not funded.
This safety net is not always available to interdisciplinary researchers, who find
themselves on the job market, and in cases where their skills are in high demand,
leaving the academic system or moving to academic jobs in the USA and Europe.
Moving to new research positions in traditional disciplinary academic departments can
be problematic if their skill sets do not fit the traditional disciplinary promotion and
research structures.
Having been involved extensively in reviewing, evaluating, monitoring and analysing
research in the UK, we are concerned that research funding that is given out to support
interdisciplinary research is often redirected towards disciplinary activities after the
funding has arrived. Interdisciplinary researchers suffer from the problem that their
research may not lead directly to disciplinary publications, and the additional time and
resources needed to develop academic outputs is rarely supported, leaving them at a
disadvantage.
We recognise that the problems we highlight are not universal, and there are areas
where the UK research system is producing and supporting excellent interdisciplinary
research. However, there are clear areas where there are problems. The normal way to
investigate this would be through large scale bibliometric analysis, but this is another
example of an interdisciplinary area where the UK has effectively lost almost all its
capacity in academia to the commercial sector and to interdisciplinary research groups
in Europe and the US.
4
Rafols, I., Leydesdorff, L., O’Hare, A., Nightingale, P., & Stirling, A. (2012). How journal rankings
can suppress interdisciplinarity. The case of innovation studies and business and management.
Research Policy, 41(7), 1262–1282.
3. Balance of funding portfolio
SPRU research by Ismael Rafols has analysed “research portfolios” and their use in
tackling complex societal challenges.5 Rafols argues that balancing portfolios should be
seen as a way of fostering greater diversity in science. This is particularly important
when thinking about research options for addressing grand challenges, which seek to
better align science supply with social problems or needs. According to this analysis, the
‘research portfolio’ approach can be a useful analytical instrument for tackling complex
societal challenges if they i) recognise the diversity of the research required; ii) examine
the relations between research options of a portfolio and the expected societal
outcomes; and iii) adopt a systemic perspective to research portfolios which look at the
portfolio as a whole, rather than a sum of its parts. RCs may be interested in these
approaches as they can help to foster social inclusion, help deliberation between
‘alternative’ approaches to complex societal challenges, as well as promote costeffectiveness and transparency.
Analysis undertaken by SPRU for Cancer Research UK has also highlighted the value of
diversity across funding systems, with a variety of funding sources which are both
overlapping and complementary.6 For example, within cancer research, the overlap
between fellowships (including those for early career researchers) and project grants, as
well as the ready availability of studentships from a number of funders (including
industrial partners) is a real strength of the UK research system.
Funders are particularly complementary to each other in areas where there are a range
of different schemes available to suit the diverse needs of researchers. This level of
complementarity and overlap means that researchers can use a series of funding
schemes to develop a line of research over a period of years or even over a decade.
Such timeframes are often necessary to achieve significant breakthroughs. Such
breakthroughs may depend on bringing together and sustaining multi-disciplinary teams
or organisations with diverse missions, meaning that complementary types of funding
scheme need to be accessed. Cancer researchers may be better placed than many
other research areas, due to the relatively good choice of funders, including charities,
RCs and European funding opportunities, but it does illustrate the value of a diverse
funding system which allows researchers to get more than one roll of the dice in order to
pursue path-breaking, highly innovative research.
Related to this, we are concerned that the pressures of ‘flat cash’ funding have now
pushed response mode success rates across some RCs to new lows – for example, to
around 10% in recent ESRC rounds.7 There is good empirical evidence that once
sucess rates fall this low, it puts good researchers off applying and has wider corrosive
effects on the research system.8
The introduction by ESRC of additional demand management measures, including a
new higher starting point of £350K for grants - while understandable - is also alarming, in
5
Wallace, M and Rafols, I; Research Portfolio Analysis in Science Policy: Moving from Financial
Returns to Societal Benefits. Minerva, (April 2015) http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11024015-9271-8
6
Shah, K, Sussex, J, Hernandez-Villafuerte, K, Garau, M, Rotolo, D, Hopkins, M M, Grassano, N,
Crane, P, Lang, F, Hutton, J, Pateman, C, Mawer, A, Farrell, C and Sharp, T (2014) Exploring the
interdependencies of research funders in the UK. Project Report. Cancer Research UK.
7
http://fundermental.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/esrc-success-rate-drops-to-10-for-july.html?m=1
8
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118494
terms of further limiting paths from early career research to full PI. A more systematic
look by the Nurse Review at growing problems in the response mode strand of RC
funding would be valuable - to compare success rates across RCs and assess whether
higher numbers of excellent, highly ranked proposals are now going unfunded.
4. Effective ways of working
As mentioned above, we are concerned that the current size of the interdisciplinary
research community does not hold the critical mass required to adequately support and
effectively peer review interdisciplinary proposals. We have heard of increasing numbers
of complaints from interdisciplinary researchers that their work is not being properly peer
reviewed, they are being subjected to multiple double-jeopardy from disciplinary
reviewers, and that there are areas that are not worth applying for research money in
now because of the biases of reviewers. Clearly, this could be simply a case of sour
grapes from poor quality researchers getting their poor quality proposals properly
reviewed. A properly functioning peer review process will always reject proposals,
including high quality proposals. However, we have recently seen researchers who are
recognised by their peers and by peers in established disciplines as being world class,
complaining about the peer review process in the UK.
In terms of governance, our anecdotal experience of reviewing, sitting on panels,
evaluating and providing oversight of a wide range of research projects in the UK and
elsewhere leads us to have concerns about the effectiveness of the governance
procedures of large projects. While there are many examples of excellence and best
practice in the UK, we have seen evidence of large research projects that would have
benefited from more activist interventions. For large research projects, particularly in
situations where there are a limited number of closely connected peer reviewers, the
need for post-award oversight increases. For some PIs it is not clear that they have
been provided with appropriate training or support from their employers or the funding
councils to manage large projects, particularly projects distributed across a range of
institutions, non-academic research users and disciplines. RCs have a critical role in
helping to ensure research projects are governed appropriately, without micro managing
individuals or institutions.
Another area of concern is the terms under which social science is often expected to
engage with natural science and engineering in RC interdisciplinary initiatives. As
highlighted in a recent paper by Andy Stirling, too often the value of social science
research is seen to lie primarily in aiding the implementation of what remain pre-set
overarching research and policy ends.9 We argue that social science should not be
restricted to this instrumental, ‘end-of-pipe’ service function. Rather it could play a major
role as the ‘objective’ lens, scrutinising the social implications and conditions bearing on
a particular trajectory for science or innovation as well as analysing the more ‘subjective’
environmental / systems pressures in which the science itself is embedded.
9
Stirling, A; The Role of Social Science in Cross Research Council Interdisciplinary Initiatives,
ESRC, January 2012, http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-588-280001/outputs/Read/7e8a7f4b-06a2-46a9-9ced-414fa5f8abbf
5. Any other comments?
SPRU would welcome the opportunity to convene a small seminar or workshop for the
Nurse Review team to explore in greater depth some of the issues we raise in this
response around interdisciplinary research, and ways of strengthening collaborative
research across the natural and social sciences.
The closing date for responses to this call for evidence is Friday 17 April 2015 at 23:45.
Please provide your response in Microsoft Word format. In order to be considered, submissions
should be no longer than 3000 words.
Please email or post the completed response form to:
Email: [email protected]
Postal Address:
Nurse Review Secretariat
Research Councils Unit
5/ Victoria 1
Department for Business, Innovations and Skills
1 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0ET
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This publication is also available on our website at www.gov.uk/bis
BIS/15/126RF