Welcome to Research Agenda, with an edition all about missions. Not one but two essays dive into the inner workings of UKRI’s missions accelerator programme, as we think about what it looks like to respond to government priorities without being hamstrung by them.

Plus: The British Academy on dual support, ODA funding in Parliament, a voluntary exit scheme at UKRI, and the Horizon Europe budget debate explained.

All the reader feedback from last week has been much appreciated – some notes on what we’ve already changed can be found below.

Michael Salmon, Editor

michael@researchagenda.news

Mission control

Before Labour came to power in 2024, we were told that this would be a new mission-driven government. The corridors of power would be restructured around national ambitions, with departmental silos a thing of the past. Once the new government took office, however, this idea largely fell flat, replaced with “first steps”, then “milestones”, then infighting and drift. And Andy Burnham’s administration certainly doesn’t treat missions as a touchpoint.

In this context, committing half a billion pounds of UKRI’s budget to “accelerating the delivery of the government’s missions” – as last year’s spending review described it – has all the hallmarks of a classic Whitehall misstep. Something was politically sexy for a brief spell, the machinery of the state creaked slowly and expensively into action in an attempt to respond, and by the time there was something to show for it, the conversation had moved on.

But this would be an unfair reading. UKRI’s Missions Accelerator Programme, which this morning’s Research Agenda essays take a deep dive into, is what the £500m investment has become, and its diverse workstreams are now up and running. While the language of missions may have faded from politics, the issues being researched through the programme – special educational needs, energy storage, tackling dementia, and many others – appear ripped from the headlines. And it matters: getting “bucket two” right – responding to national priorities without sacrificing research excellence – is arguably an existential question for the UK research system (even if the term “buckets” ends up going the way of missions).

ESRC executive chair Stian Westlake’s essay explains how the missions programme fits into UKRI’s wider purpose, as well as the importance of empowered programme management. Stian will also be joining us for the Research Agenda live event on 11 November, so make sure that’s in your calendar. And new on the site this morning, Anne-Marie Canning and colleagues look at the societal missions taking place within UKRI and around the world, and what they tell us about how to get mission-oriented policy right.

Thanks to everyone who filled in the feedback survey last week – here are three quick fixes we’ve already made. First, site articles should now work better with text-to-speech tools – please let us know if any problems remain, as we’re committed to getting this right.

Second, we’ve added bylines to news articles so that you can see who wrote them. The original thinking had been to separate straight news reporting from our team’s commentary and analysis, but this was clearly causing some confusion. Third, the steer on including more “explainer” articles was appreciated – the first one is now live on the site, with more to come.

The survey will remain open for at least another week, so if you’ve not yet completed it and can spare either one or five minutes, all feedback is hugely welcome.

The week on the wire – every item reported in full on the site.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report on its public engagement exercise in which contributors made proposals for scientific topics which the committee should take an interest in.

A team at China’s Wuhan University has launched a framework for measuring fundamental research around the world, tracking changes over time in publication outputs, research assessment, funding, and more.

An article in the journal Research Policy explores public perceptions of scientists in the UK and Sweden, finding a “rather bleak picture”.

Researchers at the University of Sydney business school released a report on the profitability of the “big four” academic publishers, looking at how the publishing arms of the wider businesses have performed as well as the returns paid to shareholders over the last two decades.

Former UKRI chair John Kingman has been appointed as the chair of Great British Railways.

Worth your time from Wonkhe and across the wider community.

Science and university research can’t deliver economic growth – at least not as we measure it  Don Webber and Alan Collins · Wonkhe

How to communicate  Athene Donald · Occam’s Typewriter

Don’t be dazzled by fools’ gold  Stephen Curry · Research on Research Institute

Universities are overlooking their established researchers  Steve Joy · Wonkhe

The Welsh innovation economy and the new R&D devolution agenda  Richard Jones · Soft Machines

Where research policy made the news this week.

Financial Times   The Nobel Prize is not an exact science

The Guardian   Letters: To unlock Britain’s innovation potential, Labour needs to think outside the box

The Times   Britain risks driving away talented young innovators

Financial Times   The aesthetics of quantum computing

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