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Report 00/37

Review of research

Consultation

Respond by 8 December 2000

Outcomes of consultation (March 2001)

To Heads of HEFCE-funded higher education institutions
Of interest to those responsible for Research policy and funding
Reference 00/37
Publication date September 2000
Enquiries to Dr David Pilsbury
tel 0117 931 7123
e-mail d.pilsbury@hefce.ac.uk

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Executive summary

Introduction

1. The HEFCE’s fundamental review of research policy and funding arose out of earlier plans to review the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). After the 1996 RAE the four UK funding bodies consulted widely on whether the RAE continued to provide a sound basis for the distribution of research funds. It seemed to the funding bodies that, notwithstanding the very strong response in favour of the RAE, the rapidly changing research landscape, increasing globalisation of research and significant national and regional developments required that a more fundamental review should be carried out. It was agreed that each of the UK funding bodies should conduct their own wider ranging reviews of research policy and funding, before the question of the future of the RAE was addressed jointly. The HEFCE’s review was overseen by a committee, whose membership is at Annex A. This report summarises the conclusions of the committee, who are referred to throughout this document as ‘we’.

2. In some instances issues identified by the committee have been acknowledged in the Government’s recent Spending Review. This has resulted in the investment of additional public and non-government funding on research infrastructure, research student stipends and measures to enhance innovation and knowledge transfer. While we welcome this very significant increase in funding, we consider there is a need for continued and coherent investment of this type in these and other key areas in order to sustain the competitiveness of the HE research base in the future.

3. The recommendations of this report are now the subject of consultation. Specific questions arising from the recommendations are listed at Annex M. In order to aid the preparation and submission of responses, a consultation web-site has been established at www.hefce.ac.uk under ‘Research’. This includes electronic versions of all the reports prepared to inform the review, a library of related material, and a form for electronic submission of responses which will facilitate their analysis. Responses are invited by 8 December 2000.

Key findings

4. We believe that the HEFCE’s guiding principles for research funding have helped to underpin the success of the country’s academic researchers. On many measures UK academics remain among the best in the world. Where problems have arisen, this has been the result of the inadequate level of overall research expenditure rather than the organisation, or basis, of research funding. In our review of research policy and funding, we have therefore sought firm evidence of areas where improvements are needed before recommending any changes.

5. After reviewing and commissioning an extensive array of evidence, we have concluded that the HEFCE’s present arrangements for research funding should stay broadly intact. We believe that funds should continue to be allocated selectively to higher education institutions (HEIs) on the basis of research quality ratings produced in the RAE.

6. But we also propose a number of radical reforms. These respond to the concerns and needs of stakeholders which have emerged over the 15 years since the current research funding framework was established.

  1. We recommend that the policy priority ought to be to protect grants for top-rated departments, but a consequence of this is that additional funds will probably be needed after the 2001 RAE to allow improved departments to benefit from their enhanced performance.
  2. We propose a new capability development fund to enable the Council, through institutions, to respond to strategic needs, including at the national, regional and local level.
  3. We conclude that RAE peer review panels should recognise greater diversity in the characteristics of research excellence which distinguish different disciplines, and we propose measures to further encourage applicable research.
  4. We propose that academic institutions should be required to meet agreed minimum standards for postgraduate training, and be required to provide staff development plans before receiving HEFCE research funds.

7. Taken together we believe that these proposals will create a new funding environment which will underpin the future success of the country’s academic research community and its ability to meet the needs of other stakeholders.

Research funding

8. We believe that the HEFCE should continue to allocate research funds selectively, by subject, on the basis of the quality of research in that subject, and should not seek to concentrate funding in a limited number of institutions. We remain unconvinced by arguments for limiting research funds to a few research-intensive institutions. We have also concluded that considerations of ‘critical mass’ should play no part in decisions about allocations by the Council.

9. We found no convincing causal evidence to support the suggestion that the performance of the research base overall would be further improved if funding were provided only to top-rated departments. We conclude that the present levels of selectivity are about right, and lead to the appropriate spread of research funds between institutions to maintain dynamism and diversity. The current system allows world-class research to stay at the cutting edge and militates against complacency, but at the same time enables new subjects and new centres to flourish. The evidence shows that the UK system is more, not less, selective than that in the US.

10. However, unless there is extra money from the Government to reward any continuing general improvement in research ratings in the 2001 RAE, funding will have to be more selective in order to protect the resources of top-rated departments. If funding constraints force an increase in the gradient of selectivity, it would be at the expense of the enormous strengths shown in the rest of the sector. Such a move would choke off essential seed corn funds for developing research groups, developing research areas and collaborative research endeavours. We also propose that high-performing departments are allocated specific funds to support formal collaborations with centres of excellence in other countries.

11. We recommend that there should be no more, but not significantly fewer, than the present number of subject areas (units of assessment) in the RAE. The HEFCE should also continue to allocate its research funds between subjects formulaically and should not seek to exercise policy judgements about this. But in determining subject budgets we propose that the Council should take account of the relatively lower level of project funds provided to the arts and humanities compared with other subjects. It is also time, we believe, for the HEFCE, with the other direct funders of the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), DfEE (as the ultimate source of much of its funding) and OST (as the major provider of public research project funding in other areas), to explore further the question of whether the AHRB should be formally established as a Research Council.

Research assessment

12. We recommend that there should continue to be a research assessment process, based on peer review, that builds on the solid and accepted foundations of the RAE.

13. We conclude that a number of criticisms of the RAE are based on false perceptions of various aspects of the exercise. Some academics continue to believe, for example, that the number of publications produced is an influential factor in determining RAE scores, despite the fact that panels are given no information about the number of publications produced by individuals or departments. And there remains a widespread view that interdisciplinary work is generally disadvantaged by the RAE processes, despite robust evidence to the contrary.

14. The HEFCE needs to make increasing efforts to provide information about the workings of the RAE, and to ensure that the sector understands the criteria used in making judgements in the exercise, and has confidence that these will be adhered to by the panels.

15. The RAE is sometimes criticised as an expensive exercise. Relatively speaking, it is not. A thorough review of the full costs of the RAE in one institution has been undertaken. If extrapolated to the sector as a whole, the cost amounts to 0.8 per cent of the total funds allocated on the basis of the assessment.

16. We recognise the concern in some quarters that the RAE promotes and distorts staff movement. However, having reviewed the evidence, including comparisons with other countries, other sectors and the period before the operation of the RAE, we do not believe that the RAE has created a major problem of staff movement. Indeed, the evidence indicates that the extent of movement overall is rather low, among all grades of staff in all types of institution, and possibly so low as to be inconsistent with maintaining dynamism in the sector. It is lower than that which occurs, for example, in the US or in some industrial research laboratories.

17. We believe it is right that one of the primary drivers of research funding should remain the quality of research, and that the RAE should continue to be solely concerned with quality. We do not accept that research should be marked up because it is deemed to be ‘useful’, or marked down because it is deemed not to have potential for application. However, there is no dichotomy between quality and applicability: what is required is for high quality research, in all its manifestations, to be recognised as such by the RAE panels in their criteria and assessment processes. We consider that the HEFCE should consider further how to ensure that users are able to engage fully with the assessment process.

18. In addition, we propose that, in their submissions to the RAE, HEIs should be allowed to describe activities in terms that recognise the different characteristics of research excellence in different subject areas. This might mean that in physics or chemistry, for example, impact factors and citation information might play a part; whereas in history more attention might be paid to longer-term scholarly activities such as the editorship of dictionaries or bibliographies. We also recommend that where combinations of disciplines are judged to have given rise to a new discipline, which has achieved maturity, then consideration should be given to creating a new unit of assessment.

Impact on other activities: teaching, business links, capability development, research facilities

19. One criticism of the present funding arrangements is that they encourage academic staff to devote too much attention to research at the expense of other activities, such as teaching and the transfer of knowledge outside higher education.

20. We do not believe that the answer to maintaining motivation and reward for other activities is tinkering with the process of research funding or assessment: that would be to act on the wrong instrument. Rather, it is necessary to create other and parallel reward systems so that academic staff and their institutions see incentives to put their effort into activities other than research, in which they might have greater strengths or can add more value.

21. A key function of academic institutions is to conduct research which can be taken up by industry and the community and used to develop products and services. We recommend that the HEFCE should discontinue the generic research (GR) funding stream, provided to institutions in respect of their success in securing collaborative contracts from industry. An evaluation of GR funding suggests that it lacks the size and focus necessary to produce the benefits initially envisaged. We also urge a substantial and sustained boost in funds for the Higher Education Reach-out to Business and the Community (HEROBC) programme, intended to encourage knowledge transfer more generally, from the current level of £20 million per annum. The additional £80 million of funding announced in the Spending Review to support HEI-industry links over the financial years 2001-02 to 2003-04 is extremely welcome. But if it is to affect individual and institutional behaviour significantly it must become a sustained and credible alternative source of funds to support and embed this third mission as a core activity within HEIs.

22. If academics and academic managers are to make serious choices between the different activities open to them, then HEROBC will also need to be allocated in a more focused way, and we recommend that the HEFCE and its partner in the scheme, the Department of Trade and Industry, should consider this.

23. Most academics argue that good research is necessary for good teaching. However, there is a difference between academics being engaged in creating new knowledge themselves, and being alert to developments in their subject, including new discoveries, so that they can interpret and reinterpret the knowledge base of their subject to inform their teaching. Teaching needs scholarship and scholarship depends on, and is distinct from, research. What is required is for all teaching to be animated by scholarship and for scholarship in turn to be informed by research. We propose that the HEFCE should make it clear that its funds for teaching include an element intended to support scholarship.

24. We also propose that the Council should create a new stream of funding to supplement the existing researcher-driven and user-driven funding streams. This ‘capability-development’ funding should be provided to institutions in response to their proposals for the strategic development of their research effort. The HEFCE can then, through institutions, respond to national, regional and local needs.

25. In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the deteriorating state of HEI’s research facilities and buildings. We urge the Council to consider ways of modifying its funding method to remove incentives to recruit research staff and students at the expense of appropriate investment in research infrastructure. And we call for additional recurrent funding for research infrastructure, which should be earmarked for this purpose. The £1 billion of additional infrastructure funding announced in the Spending Review is extremely welcome and will build on the contribution of the Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) in providing a dedicated source of funding for investment in research facilities. However, we consider that a recurring stream of research capital funding needs to become a permanent feature of the funding landscape if the research base is to maintain its competitive advantage and not deteriorate in the future.

26. We recommend that the HEFCE should no longer include an element which recognises income from charities in calculating the allocations to each subject. Nor should it continue to quality weight funding allocated to institutions in recognition of work undertaken for charities. Instead, it should seek to agree an explicit basis of support which reflects the contribution that charities make to the direct costs associated with projects. The Council should also consider whether it is necessary to amend the funding model to explicitly recognise that grants and contracts from the EU do not meet the full costs of the activities they sponsor.

People issues

27. We paid particular attention to questions concerning the development needs of academic staff and research students. We endorse the conclusion of the 1996 Harris report that research students are entitled to work in a high quality research environment, supervised by experienced researchers, and with close attention paid to their career needs.

28. Given the importance of this issue for the sustainability of the research base, and for a continued flow of highly trained individuals to meet the demands of industry and society more generally, we propose that the HE funding bodies, with the Research Councils, industry, charities and other interested bodies, should develop minimum criteria for postgraduate research training. These would apply equally to all institutions, and be applied as a condition for the receipt of funding for research students. Adherence to these criteria would be judged in future RAEs after 2001.

29. Some academics have raised serious concerns that the RAE may provide disincentives to institutions to recruit staff without an established research record, in particular disadvantaging young academics, women who have taken a career break, and those who are embarking on academic life in mid-career.

30. As far as young people are concerned, the evidence provided by the analysis of staff returned to the last RAE suggests that, whatever the apparent disincentives, the recruitment behaviour of institutions has not discriminated against such staff.

31. However, we welcome the commitment of the HEFCE, and of the sub-group examining the development of research people, to investigate further the reasons behind the relative under-representation of women in the highest-rated departments revealed by this review.

32. A particular change to the RAE which we recommend is that institutions should be allowed to provide personal statements for staff who, for whatever reason, are unable to submit other evidence of the quality of their research, such as publications. This should be of particular benefit to, among others but not exclusively, women who have taken a career break and staff entering the academic profession either for the first time, or re-entering after a period pursuing an alternative career. Changes to the 2001 RAE, which permit explanation of staff circumstances should help in this respect, but the change we propose would go further to ensure equality of opportunity.

33. As stated above, we believe that research training is a key indicator of sustainability and therefore warrants more explicit recognition in the assessment process and funding model. Research training should be the subject of a separate assessment, but linked to the RAE, to establish whether agreed minimum standards have been reached. These would cover, for example, the facilities available and the quality of the environment in which the student works. As part of the assessment process, RAE panels would judge whether a department met the minimum criteria. Funding provided by the HEFCE for postgraduate research training should be calculated and identified separately from the funding provided for research activity, and could be withheld if the minimum standard was not reached.

34. Collaborative arrangements should be established to enable units to meet all aspects of the postgraduate training requirements where they might not be able to do so alone.

35. Another issue raised about postgraduate research training is the number of PhDs being awarded by HEIs. We propose that the capability-development stream of funding should seek to ensure adequate PhD output in subjects where there have been shortfalls in PhD recruitment. We welcome the increase in research student stipends announced in the Spending Review. However, if the brightest and best students are to continue to be attracted to acquire research skills, whether or not they subsequently pursue an academic career, we must also provide financial support to institutions to maintain and develop the quality of their provision.

36. We propose that all institutions should adopt staff development strategies so that the issues identified in this report, and human resources questions more generally, are addressed systematically. This aspect of research policy should feature prominently in the assessment and funding process. Institutions should be required to submit a staff development strategy as a precondition for the release of research funding.