Nature Materials on value of research
This year is turning out to be an interesting one for research funding in the UK. Everyone wants the best science to be funded, but it's not clear that the proposed policy changes will achieve this. So begins the July Editorial in Nature Materials (8, 535; 2009), entitled Value for money.
In April, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) introduced a policy intended to reduce the burden on those who referee the grant proposals by refusing to allow resubmissions of rejected submissions within 12 months. The reaction of angry researchers included a petition to government, and forced the EPSRC to amend the policy, though the basic premise remains. (See Peer to Peer for more details). Nature Materials asks whether this regulation will curtail new avenues of thought. "Researchers may shy away from more exploratory proposals in case failure prevents future applications for grants to extend established work...... X-ray and magnetic resonance imaging stem from fundamental physics research. The question arises as to whether this research would have been funded within the current system, but more importantly, it demonstrates the need to keep supporting blue-sky research."
How much is the UK government meddling with the science and research that it supports?, asks the Editorial. "The research councils have been asked to collectively generate £106 million of efficiency savings that will be put back into research. The Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, asserted that the research councils themselves should decide how. The Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills stated: "The councils will be developing plans...to refocus their research programmes...into new priority areas such as the green economy (and) life sciences. Bearing in mind that the research councils have to describe how they distribute their funds to the government, it would seem unwise for the research councils to 'save' money by directing funds away from these priority areas."
Research councils, including the EPSRC and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), now require an economic impact plan to be included in each application. The opportunity to mention any likely economic outcomes was already present, but the new plan makes a more formal presentation obligatory. "Materials research is in a better position than most areas — for many materials scientists it is relatively simple to imagine a route from their basic research to practical applications that can affect society. It is therefore easy for the government to justify spending on these areas. A danger is that if expectations are not met, questions will be asked, even if a whole new branch of research has been discovered along the way. This could be perceived as lying to the tax-payer and ultimately worsen government and public perception......To reap the economic growth that the government believes science will provide, instead of debating the details, a significant increase in overall levels of research funding is needed."
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