Report 00/48

KPMG

Review of Generic Research

Read on-line

Download

Review of Generic Research

The report and annexes
[ MS Word 175K | Zipped MS Word 46K | PDF 117K ]

Foreword

The HEFCE introduced generic research [GR] funding in 1994, in response to the theme of wealth creation in the 1993 Science and Technology White Paper, ‘Realising Our Potential’. GR recognises and encourages collaborative research which does not have a single beneficiary, and where the institution retains some part of the intellectual property and publication rights. Under the fund £20 million has been allocated each year to HEIs, distributed in proportion to their external income for such projects.

This study was commissioned to help us assess the effects of this funding and to help inform a decision about the future of the programme. It was undertaken in parallel with the HEFCE’s fundamental review of research policy and funding, which is the subject of consultation until 8 December 2000. Decisions on the future of GR funding will be taken early in 2001 in the context of the fundamental review.

Contents

1 Introduction

1.1 Background to our Report

We are pleased to present this Report to HEFCE into the Generic Research [GR] funding stream and its effects on university research activity.

GR was first established by the Council in 1994 as a relatively small fund to support institutions’ generic research collaborations with industry and commerce. It represented a positive response to the earlier publication of the Science, Engineering and Technology White Paper entitled ‘Realising our Potential’ (Cmd 2250). According to HEFCE publication C16/94 ‘Generic Research: Method and Data Collection’ the Council stated the objective of GR as being ‘...to provide funding incentives for institutions to work with users of research and more speculative projects, where the aims of the project are consistent with the “mission” of the relevant group/department or institution, and where the sponsor cannot expect to appropriate all the outcomes or benefits of the research’.

To qualify as generic research, institutions needed to retain the intellectual property rights [IPR] to any marketable discoveries, and also retain the right to publish their findings promptly in academic journals . Thus GR sponsored research is able to make its publication contribution to the Research Assessment Exercise [RAE].

Since in such generic research no one sponsor or organisation receives exclusive benefit, and since - as just noted - IPR and other rights remain with the institution, such research was felt at the time to be unlikely to be a very high priority for funding from benefiting external organisations. Yet it is clearly highly important for the country and the economy as a whole. GR was designed to bridge this mismatch of perceptions, and as a market intervention to encourage and stimulate such research.

As for the great majority of HEFCE grant allocations, it was the intention that the allocation system would distribute funds by reference to objective indicators which reflected the aims of the fund. The actual pattern of distribution of grant emerging from this has indicated surprisingly wide variations in the volume of demonstrable existing activity, with some institutions known to be active in contract research receiving a lesser share than others.

There was - until this study - no conclusive direct evidence available on what GR has accomplished in those institutions benefiting from it. It is a general principle that funding tends to drive behaviour - certainly this is the case in funding for learning and teaching - and if GR funding was achieving its intended aims one would expect to see the type(s) of research that are eligible increasing in volume in the great majority of participating HEIs, and the qualifying income figures for GR growing. Indeed if GR funding in its current form is not driving behaviour in this way then there is little point in maintaining it.

It was always intended that GR would be reviewed when the latest ‘round’ of funding finished in 1999. Accordingly, in September 1999 HEFCE invited tenders to carry out a fieldwork based review of GR in order to provide advice on the real effects of GR funding in practice. Late in the year, KPMG were appointed to carry out the work concerned and the fieldwork took place during the first four months of 2000.

1.2 The project remit

In discussion with the Council, the following remit was agreed for the study:

• the effects of GR on institutional activity, particularly in ‘leveraging’ additional research or reducing the cost to sponsors of research already taking place;
• the range of industrial and commercial sponsors of GR, and whether this range is wider than it might be if GR were not in place;
• the academic units and disciplines which benefited most from GR funding;
• the interplay between GR funding and an institution’s mission;
• the effect of GR on other aspects of institutions’ behaviour;
• institutions’ views on the way GR is allocated;
• institutions’ views of whether GR as a funding route should continue, be increased, or be decreased/abandoned.

Taken together, the answers to these issues were intended to give the Council the evidence to determine what the future for GR funding should be.

1.3 Project design

Our project design has included the following stages, all pursued more or less concurrently:

• visits to six institutions. Both ‘old’ and ‘new’ universities, and a specialist institution, have been included;
• interviews with a number of national bodies with a direct interest in the sponsorship of research by industry and commerce;
• an invitation to all English HEIs to comment on the issues raised above, either by writing to the consultants or through a web-based questionnaire (see Annex C);
• a number of meetings, discussions and conversations with HEFCE officers.

Of these, the institutional visits deserve amplification.

1.3.1 Institutional visits

Our institutional visits, typically of one or two days, included:

• review of documentation;
• interviews with the Vice Chancellor or (more usually) a Pro Vice Chancellor centrally concerned with research;
• interviews with institutions’ Research Support Units - where relevant - or other members of Registrars’ staff concerned with the administration of research contracts;
• interviews with Directors of Finance and/or their colleagues concerned with research income and expenditure;
• interviews with practising academics involved in GR research, usually at Dean or Principal Researcher level.

It had been our intention also to talk to employers from industry and commerce who were benefiting from GR supported research. However, with one exception our institutional contacts were of the view that employers would be unaware of GR as a funding route and therefore unable to contribute to our project. In addition, our contacts were worried about employers learning that some of the costs of their research contract were being met by HEFCE funding: this had not always been pointed out to the employer concerned.

With this one exception, therefore, we agreed with institutions not to pursue employer contacts at institutional level - but instead to rely on our national interviews for the employer view.

Annex A lists all the organisations consulted during our fieldwork.

1.4 The design of this report

Following this Introductory Section, the report is divided into five further Sections covering:

• views of GR expressed by our national interviewees;
• our findings on the administration of GR within institutions;
• conclusions, based on interviews, concerning the effects of GR funding at institutional level;
• institutions’ views on the effectiveness of GR and how it might be increased;
• a brief concluding Section setting out the major options for the future.