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Welcome to this week’s Research Agenda. In this launch edition of our briefing, we’re introducing the thinking behind the sector’s new research news service.
Plus: each week you’ll get all the main stories – this week there’s new data on research cost recovery, BIST ministerial profiles, controversy over Copernicus, and plenty more – as well as a round-up of what’s been happening elsewhere across the research system and in the media.
Michael Salmon, Editor
michael@researchagenda.news
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Our top story
Introducing Research Agenda
The research system is too important to stop making sense. That’s the guiding principle behind our new website: that the sector, in all its wonderful yet at times overwhelming diversity, needs a sustainable and independent newsroom which shines a light on the issues people are talking about – and those that are flying under the radar.
Research Agenda is a new publication from the team that brought you Wonkhe. UK research is undeniably in flux, with new departments and strategies, undeniable financial pressures, political vulnerabilities, and an onslaught of new initiatives. We want to make sure that what’s happening across the system does not go unreported.
The purpose of Research Agenda is to illuminate the recesses of the policy debate. The goal is not for consensus – but to bring attention to what matters. The areas where there is not enough coverage, the system-level change where impacts are poorly understood, and the legacy of decisions that are quickly announced and even more quickly forgotten about. We are going to look back at what has happened and look ahead at what is to come, in everything from AI, funding, international relationships, industry, technology, translation, measurements and those being measured, and everything else in between.
We want to develop this briefing, and the website that underpins it, in collaboration with those who work in the organisations it covers. We’re building it in the open, with no log-ins or paywalls in 2026, to try to get a feel for what works best. That you have chosen to come with us as we begin this journey is enormously appreciated, and we’d like to hear from you whenever you have thoughts on what we should be writing about or how we can run a better service. For all its flaws and areas for improvement, we have a genuinely inspirational research system which benefits this country in a thousand different ways every day, and we’re looking forward to doing something to support it.
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In brief
The week’s smaller print.
| University-linked investment firm Northern Gritstone is opening an office in San Francisco, to facilitate investment in spinouts and startups in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. |
| The Royal Academy of Engineering announced eight new recipients of its Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowships. The next round of fellowships is open to applications, with an increased maximum award value of £70,000. |
| Beauhurst’s new startup index for the first half of 2026 saw a further decline in new company starts, but diagnoses signs of a “resilient underlying system” overall. |
| The Research Excellence Framework team published a set of FAQs covering the elements of the exercise which are currently out for sector feedback – the deadline to respond is 4 September. |
| The Medical Research Council and the Science and Technology Facilities Council both published the minutes of recent council meetings. |
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