Research is a promise
The UK has a record research settlement, a system under real strain, and – from today – a newsroom watching both. Mark Leach introduces Research Agenda.
Research is a promise. Spend money today, make tomorrow better, and discover some brilliant things along the way. Everything else – the acronyms, the institutions, the processes, the thousand and one different working days it contains, from labs to form-filling to impact statements to tax credits – is machinery for keeping that promise. It is our collective agreement about what we spend money on: to expand the frontiers of knowledge, make the economy stronger, and invent the things that make society better.
The way we talk about research too often ignores this premise. Coverage quickly becomes about whose income is up or down, what the league tables say, or the latest faux pas by some body or other. Holding those in power to account matters – it will be central to what we do – but power does not exist in a vacuum. The interesting debate is not only what decisions have been made, but their political context, their impacts, and their long-term effect on the country.
That debate is the heart of Research Agenda, our new publication from the team that brought you Wonkhe, now all together part of the Thesis family.
Our belief is that the research policy debate is for everyone. Research Agenda is the home for those who need a rapid update on the latest research news, a deep dive into the issues of the day, the long-term perspective on who said what and why it matters – and for everyone who believes research is too important not to make sense of.
Research is the cumulative effort of all of us. Funders who decide what gets to happen and on what basis. Universities and institutes that employ, build, support, enable and make research work. Businesses that carry out their own research and translate ideas into products and processes. Governments that set the policy direction, broker international partnerships, and create the narratives that touch everyone in the system. We are interested in how all of these components work – or, in many cases, do not work – and equally interested in how they work together.
Too often the sector arrives at the big debates at precisely the wrong time. There is an important technical debate about how to measure culture in the REF – but a much bigger one about what kind of research culture we actually want, how environments produce great research, and how all of it should be funded. The ongoing budget drama at STFC is a salutary lesson in expectation management – but it speaks to bigger problems of accountability, visibility and prioritisation.
And some issues simply slip off the radar. Does anyone have any idea what is happening with hundreds of millions of pounds of freeport spending? Why do we talk about ARIA less now than we did before it launched? Did the Nurse review actually get implemented? Vital questions fade out of sight as the news cycle moves on.
Good news coverage is vital to good policymaking, and good policymaking is vital for a good research system. In a moment like this one – a record research settlement meeting a system under real strain – it could not matter more.
Because many parts of the system are struggling. Everything from funding council grant rates to doctoral studentships seems to be sliding. Universities’ inability to recover the cost of the research they host has become chronic. The salaries of academics, researchers and research-supporting staff have stagnated for more than a decade in most places. And still the infrastructure backlog grows – at times it is genuinely hard to see where the money is going.
The perennial temptation is to fiddle with the system until it produces better results. But governments have lurched between competing ideas of what “better” means, leaving an already complicated system increasingly incoherent. The research system – the sum of phenomenally impressive people, institutions and businesses – ends up in permanent limbo about what governments actually want it to do.
We are presented with a system that is about excellence wherever it is found, and a future that is about devolution and growth in every postcode. There is a national investment strategy – but no match funding for labs. At every turn, an interregnum: a future research ecosystem that cannot be born while the current system buckles. Its morbid symptoms are deteriorating facilities, the loss of disciplinary expertise, pressure to work faster while being monitored more – and no clear sense of what the future could be.
The purpose of Research Agenda is to illuminate the recesses of the policy debate. The goal is not consensus but attention: the areas where there is not enough coverage, the system-level changes whose impacts are poorly understood, the legacy of decisions announced quickly and forgotten faster. We will look back at what has happened and ahead at what is coming – from AI to funding, from international partnerships to industrial strategy, from the measurements to those being measured, and everything in between.
The research sector needs a sustainable newsroom: one that reports the breadth of activity, policy and data that can otherwise feel like an avalanche of initiatives and soon-forgotten promises. So that government and arm’s-length bodies are held to account for their decisions. So that the community is informed and able to take part in the debate. So that change in the system happens in daylight.
In practice, that means a newswire with the day’s decisions, analysis with the context, essays with the argument and a briefing that makes sense of the week. And our colleague Haldane will keep a close eye on the interface of politics and the research system.
Research Agenda is free to read through the founding period, which has now begun – register and start receiving the email briefing. Our model is built to allow research institutes, universities, businesses, policy bodies, and other organisations of all sizes to subscribe to Research Agenda directly. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.
Mark Leach is Editor in Chief of Research Agenda and Chief Executive of Thesis.