Written evidence
CONTENTS
MEMORANDUM 1 Submission from Evidence Ltd)
MEMORANDUM 2 Submission from the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London (DCAL)
MEMORANDUM 3 Submission from Professor Shaun Quegan, Director of the NERC Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics (CTCD), University of Sheffield
MEMORANDUM 4 Submission from the UK Computer Research Committee (UKCRC)
MEMORANDUM 5 Submission from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
MEMORANDUM 6 Submission from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)
MEMORANDUM 7 Submission from the University of Warwick
MEMORANDUM 8 Submission from Rothamsted Research
MEMORANDUM 9 Submission from the University of Sheffield
MEMORANDUM 10 Submission from the Royal Society
MEMORANDUM 11Submission from the ESRC Centre for Competition Policy, University of East AngliaAppendix
MEMORANDUM 12 Submission from the Royal Academy of Engineering
MEMORANDUM 13 Submission the Royal Astronomical Society
MEMORANDUM 14Submission from the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research
MEMORANDUM 15Submission from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
MEMORANDUM 16 Submission from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory
MEMORANDUM 17 Submission from the University of Leeds
MEMORANDUM 18 Submission from the Department for International Development (DfID)
MEMORANDUM 19 Submission from the University and College Union (UCU)
MEMORANDUM 20 Submission from the Met Office
MEMORANDUM 21 Submission from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
MEMORANDUM 22 Submission from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
MEMORANDUM 23 Submission from the Centre for Market and Public Organisation
MEMORANDUM 24 Submission from Research Councils UK
MEMORANDUM 25 Submission from Universities UK
MEMORANDUM 26 Submission from the Office of Science and Innovation
MEMORANDUM 27 Submission from the British Computer Society
MEMORANDUM 28 Submission from the British Council
MEMORANDUM 29 Submission from the Royal Society of Edinburgh
MEMORANDUM 30 Submission from the BioIndustry Association (BIA)
MEMORANDUM 31 Submission from Professor John Wood, ex Chief Executive of the former Council for the Central Laboratories of the Research Councils (CCLRC)
MEMORANDUM 32 Supplementary evidence from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Ecology and Hydrology following the oral evidence session on 6 June 2007
MEMORANDUM 33 Supplementary evidence from Sir Keith O'Nions following oral evidence session on 20 June 2007
MEMORANDUM 1
Submission from Evidence Ltd
Summary
The UK's exceptional relative international performance in science and technology, reflected in the data we present in our annual report to the Office of Science & Innovation, should make it an ideal research partner for many other countries. Other data confirm that international collaboration is expanding very rapidly, as are the domestic research bases of countries such as China, India and Iran. That means that not only are opportunities for international partnerships increasing but also the diversity of likely outcomes will increase: there will be new approaches to research as well as a greater global knowledge pool. The UK has a good share of international collaboration, but it is not as strong as might be anticipated, it is not expanding as rapidly as some countries, and it is less consistent in the biomedical areas where the UK has a position of world leadership on research quality. The UK might benefit from a more assertive approach to collaboration and from promoting the mobility of its own researchers as well as encouraging visits from elsewhere.
Background
1.We note that the Science and Technology Committee has decided to hold an inquiry into the international policies and activities of the Research Councils. We are submitting this note and attachments to the Committee so that it is aware of emerging evidence relevant to that inquiry and on which we are currently working for UK Government offices but which is not yet in the public domain.
2.Evidence Ltd works for the Office of Science & Innovation (OSI) and individual Research Councils, and for the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCs) and HE Institutions in analysing their research activity and performance in order to support better management of their research portfolios. For OSI, we have produced the annual Public Service Agreement (PSA) target indicators on the “relative international performance of the UK research base". We also publish the UK Higher Education Research Yearbook, which this year included a Foreword from the Chief Executive of HEFCE.
3.Evidence has particular experience in using bibliographic and bibliometric data (data on publications and their citations) to analyse research activity.
4.We are currently carrying out work for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) Science and Innovation network, to evaluate changing patterns of UK collaboration with China and India. We have just completed work for OSI on “international patterns of research collaboration" but this remains unpublished at this time.
Relative International Collaboration
5.In current work for OSI and the FCO S&I network on international collaboration, which should be published later in 2007, we find that the UK has a well developed network with other leading economies but it is not expanding its collaborative links as quickly as some competitors. This is noticeable in considering links with China and India.
6.Research collaboration can be measured by analysing inputs (money), activity (the numbers of projects and the numbers of people involved) and outputs (publications).
7.It is difficult to assign funding to international activity because many collaborative links draw not only on dedicated funds but on separate funding held by one or both partners. This is particularly true of bottom-up collaboration, driven by researchers' desire to be involved in high-quality or particularly innovative research, whereas the dedicated funding that emerges from top-down collaboration initiatives tends to be driven by policy priorities. Thus, on balance, analysing dedicated funding may concentrate more on the research platform than the research peaks.
8.On project and people numbers, it is difficult to validate data and acquire useful international comparisons. We simply do not know the substantive value of a “visit" of a researcher to or from a laboratory in another country. We do not have the information on the pattern of movement for other countries.
9.Publication data are therefore the key evidence of international collaboration, because researchers do not freely give away co-authorships so where a paper carries addresses from more than one country we know the data is likely to be valid. Databases provide ready international comparisons, and data can quickly be aggregated by field. Furthermore, the associated citation data allows us to attach quality measures.
10.The main data source is Thomson Scientific®, which covers around 8,700 journals of international standing. About 35% of 700,000 catalogued research articles published by UK-based researchers over the last ten years have a co-author from another country. The rate of international collaboration has increased progressively, but the UK has a slower rate of increased collaboration than some of its competitors.
11.The UK has a record of close collaboration with the USA. About 30% of its international links are with that country.
12.The UK also collaborates closely with France and Germany. Its links with Germany have expanded more rapidly than those with the USA (1.5 vs 1.4 for 2001-05 compared with 1996-00, see table below). The relative increase in collaboration for France and Germany with the UK is greater than it is for them with the USA (France 1.39 vs 1.31, Germany 1.50 vs 1.37). The leading European nations have therefore increased their relative interaction, which is likely to be a consequence of EC cohesiveness measures.
RECENT INCREASE IN COLLABORATION (RATIO 96-00/01-05) MEASURED BY CO-AUTHORSHIP OF RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
UK / USA / FRANCE / GERMANY / CHINA / INDIAUK / — / 1.40 / 1.39 / 1.50 / 1.94 / 1.65
USA / 1.40 / — / 1.31 / 1.37 / 2.23 / 1.54
FRANCE / 1.39 / 1.31 / — / 1.40 / 2.05 / 1.48
GERMANY / 1.50 / 1.37 / 1.40 / — / 1.96 / 1.81
Collaboration Outside the G7
13.The UK has good and growing links with both China and India and, as a research-excellent partner, should be well positioned to build on these. However, Germany is increasing its general rate of collaboration with both countries more rapidly than the UK (table above).
14.For the UK, in many science and technology fields the rate at which collaboration is increasing is slower than that for other major research economies. The problem is therefore pervasive.
15.The UK has particular research strengths in the Biological sciences.[1] China and India have thus far focussed much of their expansion in the Physical and technological sciences. (for example, China published 132,000 papers in Physical sciences in 2001-2005 compared with 28,000 in Biological sciences; the UK published similar numbers in the two areas, as did the USA). It is essential that the UK places itself in a good position to capitalise on its existing competency so as to take advantage of the opportunities for collaboration that will appear as China and India move into the bio-medical area.
The Benefits of Collaboration
16.International research collaboration provides access to larger pools of innovative ideas, emerging knowledge and highly trained people. The work it produces also has “value added".
17.In a study carried out for Sir Gareth Roberts' study of “International Partnerships of Research Excellence", Evidence demonstrated that both UK and US research partners gain added value from their collaboration compared with their domestic outputs.
18.We have now extended that analysis and created an Impact ProfileTM to illustrate the overall gain made by the UK through its international links over the last ten years. The unpublished note on this is attached. A related analysis on five-year windows will be included in the current work for OSI.
19.It is quite clear that significant value accrues to international collaborative work, but it is important to disaggregate the reasons for this. Perhaps the most important factor is opportunity cost: researchers only spend time and resources to create links when they look promising at the outset. The exception to this is when national agencies put up money for such links, when the researchers' goal changes and becomes the acquisition of a share of the inputs rather than the outcomes.
Researcher Mobility
20.China offers not only “more" research but also “different" research. There is a growing research base in Iran which will offer further challenges to western research paradigms. The UK can acquire knowledge of what China and Iran are doing, albeit belatedly, by reading what they publish. It can only find out how and why if it actively collaborates and, particularly, if UK researchers travel to and work in China and Iran as well as those researchers travelling to the UK.
21.In 2004, in a report published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), we used bibliographic data to track the career pathways of samples of individual highly-cited researchers from a number of countries (highly cited researchers are those who have an exceptional number of publications that are recorded as being in the most-cited 1% of world publications).[2]
22.Rather than indicating problems of “brain drain", which had been repeatedly claimed, we showed that the typical pathway for the highest performing UK researchers was to spend some time overseas—particularly in the USA—before returning to the UK to pursue a successful career. By contrast, the few USA researchers who left north America tended not to return.
23.We argued that international research mobility not only contributed to individual career development but also conferred significant national benefit. Evidence has noted that some smaller countries with profiles of exceptional research excellence are associated with relatively high levels of researcher mobility. A notable example is Switzerland where most elite researchers have spent time abroad and where national research performance is world-leading in some fields, which is unusual for a relatively small research economy.
24.We suggest to the Committee that it is essential that more UK researchers should be encouraged to spend time overseas at an early stage in their career. UK research mobility is better than some countries but is not exceptional in European terms, and the UK is therefore losing the opportunity to gain from making contacts with and learning lessons from others.
25.Contacts made early in a researcher's career also lead to collaborative links which are then maintained for life. This enables the UK to tap into innovative research across a global network and to gain value form investments made in other economies.
The Research Councils and OSI
26.We have not sought to comment on the current international initiatives run by the UK Research Councils but to provide evidence to contextualise the significance of the Committee's inquiry.
27.For the same reason, we have not provided full details from our report on international collaboration to OSI. OSI will wish to convey its own views when it has had an opportunity for due reflection and interpretation. However, with OSI's agreement, we could supply more detailed information if this is useful to the Committee.
Overview
28.We have been analysing UK research data for over ten years. Research is an increasingly global activity and both knowledge and knowledgeable people are sourced globally. If the UK is to maintain the competitive edge that we have demonstrated in our annual reports for OSI, then it must do so by ensuring that it is intimately linked to the most research-active economies elsewhere. We suspect that this will not be done by open-ended agreements on the development of cultural links but through much more specific compacts on clearly identified research objectives supported by tangible resources and with clear and substantive benefits to each party. Allied to this must be programmes that motivate UK researchers to work in those partner countries and thereby to further UK understanding of those research cultures and enhance our ability to interact. Relying on links maintained primarily by visits of others to the UK, where their objective is to learn about UK research culture but not to convey their own, will no longer suffice.
April 2007
@HR25@
MEMORANDUM 2
Submission from the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London (DCAL)
1.DCAL (the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre) is one of a number of social science research centres funded by the ESRC. Research Centres are major investments in one or more of the ESRC's priority themes. They are funded for an initial period of ten years, subject to a satisfactory mid-term review. Selection is based on a competition steered towards one or more of the themes, with peer and merit review processes involved.
2.DCAL comprises a series of thematically linked research projects, each directed by a senior researcher, with Professor Bencie Woll as Centre Director. The five specific themes of DCAL's research are (1) Language processing; (2) Face-to-face communication; (3) Language development; (4) atypical sign language—developmental and acquired disorders of sign language; and (5) the deaf individual and the community. The study of communication and cognition in deafness is used as a model for the broad study of human language—its origins, development and processes.
3.DCAL has a budget of around £4.2 million for the first five years of its activity (2006-10). DCAL is based at University College London and is affiliated to the departments of Human Communication Science and Psychology within the Faculty of Life Sciences. There are four directors; nine post-doctoral research staff; four administrative staff; 12 associated research staff; and ten research students. Eight of the current research staff and five of the research students are from outside the UK;
4.While some opportunities for international collaboration have been effected through Research Councils, our experience as senior scientists responsible both for scientific programmes and for training new scientists, is that initiatives founded in European funding have generally been more successful in fostering international collaboration at all levels than those based from UK Research Councils. However, the level and amount of bureaucracy involved in the various framework schemes, and a perception of less than transparent assessment and appraisal, have often deterred would-be UK applicants from major involvement—even where a good scientific case could be made.
5.The picture concerning outcomes from such schemes is mixed. On the whole, graduate and postgraduate training seem to have been more successful in fostering genuine international cooperation at the highest level, whereas Euro-wide projects in life and social sciences show a more patchy profile in terms of value for money, whether assessed in relation to scientific advance or closer collaboration between possible partners.
6.In relation to postgraduate study, the UK is losing out competitively, particularly in comparison to the USA, because of the limited funding available to support overseas students. Inevitably there are more applicants seeking opportunities for post-graduate study in the UK than in other countries, for both academic and linguistic reasons. Although the ORS and Dorothy Hodgkin Scholarships provide a degree of assistance, European applicants are disadvantaged by Research Council restrictions on subsistence allowance funding and the competition among applicants from outside the EU means that there is insufficient or no funding available for many highly qualified applicants. In our own area of work, this problem is particularly acute for applicants for studentships who are themselves deaf since we are especially committed to capacity building and training of deaf researchers who may be unable to obtain appropriate places for study in their own countries.
7.Among very useful UK small schemes are those funded by the Royal Society and similar learned societies: typically these are unbureaucratic and are seen to work efficiently. Similarly, overseas scientific foundations including the Max Planck Institutes, Human Frontier Science and MacArthur Foundation have been more successful in supporting genuine international cooperation at the highest level. These are seen to be driven by top-level science, with commensurate prestige and clarity, rather than by a variety of competing social and economic pressures.
April 2007
@HR25@
MEMORANDUM 3
Submission from Professor Shaun Quegan, Director of the NERC Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics (CTCD), University of Sheffield
Summary