Generating Priorities

Deep in the heart of Death Star House, RCUK
workers tirelessly adjust the settings for the Priority Generator

Sometimes, calls for thematic programmes make complete sense. Sometimes they sort of make sense, once you dig a little deeper. Sometimes they make no sense at all.

It was the last category that prompted me to develop the Research Council Priority Generator for my blog. It was a tongue-in-cheek look at how the funders seem to jam together apparently random and often conflicting ideas to create new themes. The generator would give you Nanotechnology and Remembrance, for instance, or Progress towards Language, Radicalisation beyond Space and Expressionism in Transport.

None of these seemed a million miles from the real thing, such as Science in Culture, Lifelong Health and Wellbeing, Nanoscience through Engineering, Care for the Future and Living with Environmental Change. Indeed, the random generation of priorities gave us themes that were all too plausible, such as Progress and Islam, Technology of Wellbeing and Curating the Future.

A Hundred Years of Haldane

Philosopher-politician Richard Haldane

It was a very odd experience to read about the higher education green paper as I sat on a train rattling past Romford and Chelmsford. I was on my way to the first Eastern Academic Research Consortium conference at the University of Essex, and I was receiving emails and tweets about the approaching tsunami.

“If all its measures are enacted as planned,” suggested one commentator, “[it] will represent the biggest changes to the higher education sector since 1992.” I looked out the window. Chelmsford looked pretty much like it had always done. There was no evidence of “sweeping changes”, no apparent “battle lines drawn”. Just a grey autumn morning, rows of houses and early-morning dog walkers.

The New Regionalisation of UK Higher Education

In February this year a research team from Loughborough University published a report on The New Regionalisation of UK Higher Education. New regionalisation might be a phenomenon unfamiliar to many, but the authors suggested that this would not be the case for much longer.

Describing it somewhat dramatically as "a silent revolution", the report maps out "a distinctly new regional geography of higher education…[that is] currently unfolding at an accelerated pace". More ominously for the majority of higher education institutions, the report says "Larger research-intensive universities are likely to gain most from the new regionalisation of higher education, and, moreover, are the only ones likely to gain significantly from the reorganisation."

Beyond the Safety of the Silo

Earlier this year Nesta and the Technology Strategy Board, now known as Innovate UK, launched the £10-million Longitude Prize. The competition to choose the subject for the prize offered the public a feast of intractable problems, from which it had to select a winner. It was a fairly ghoulish spectacle, akin to an X Factor-style contest to choose the most dangerous Horseman of the Apocalypse. “But how important is dementia, really?” we were asked. “Is it worse than hunger? Or thirst? What about paralysis? Or Pestilence?”

“Pestilence” roared the audience, and the returning officer duly offered up antimicrobial resistance as the Horseman Most in Need of a Good Kicking, or a Christmas Number One, which might be the same thing.

Saving Peer Review

In June an eminent group of academics, including Nobel laureates, wrote the following to The Daily Telegraph: "Peer review [of funding applications] is now virtually unavoidable and its bureaucratic, protracted procedures are repeated for every change in direction or new phase of experimentation or for whatever an applicant might subsequently propose. Consequently, support for research that might lead to major new scientific discoveries is virtually forbidden nowadays, and science is in serious danger of stagnating."

Keith Bontrager, the legendary designer of bike components, once said about bicycles: "Strong, light, cheap: pick two." You can never have all three. A similar universal law seems to be at work with systems for selecting funding proposals and academic articles, but perhaps the elements here should be: robust, equitable, easy.

Equalising Research

Earlier this year, Research Councils UK published data on the ages and sex of people who applied for grants between 2010 and 2013. There was a large discrepancy between the sexes in the success rate for large grants: men, on average, had a 38 per cent chance of success; for women, it was 24 per cent. The trends were more mixed for standard grants, but men almost always had a higher success rate than women.

RCUK also published the gender composition of its peer-review panels, councils, boards and committees. Startlingly, the strategic bodies were, on average, 73 per cent male. The composition of the peer-review panels was a little better (69 per cent male), with some councils, such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, edging closer to even (58 and 52 per cent male, respectively). 

Are these two findings linked? Does a male-­dominated panel rule disproportionately in favour of men? After all, the ESRC, which has the most even-gendered panels, has bucked the trend, giving women a higher success rate for 2 of the past 3 years. But association is not causation. To say there’s a strong causal link would be to do the research councils and the panelists a disservice. From my time at the AHRC, I know that the council strives to be fair and to use excellence as the primary criterion in deciding on applications.

A Decade of Development

Research Fortnight asked me to write an article to coincide with the 2013 ARMA Conference. I've reproduced it below (thanks to John Whitfield for this), but you can see the original on their website, here.

_________________

Spoiler: Neil Young doesn't feature
in this article. At all. 

Ten years ago, Iraq had just been invaded. Tony Blair was still in office. The iPhone hadn’t been invented. John Peel was still alive.

Ten years ago, I started working as a research funding officer at the University of Kent in Canterbury. University research offices up to then had essentially been branches of finance: they acted as accountants, costing applications and managing awards. Anything else—an occasional visit from a funder, a termly newsletter—was an add-on.

The introduction of a research development service was intended to provide more proactive support to researchers at the university. We could do whatever we thought necessary to help staff improve the quality and quantity of applications. Here was a service that aimed to change the role of university administrators: to have them stand beside academics, take them by the hand and lead them through the funding maze.

In the decade since, research development has become embedded in higher education, transforming the relationship between academics and administrators. It is now unthinkable that a research-intensive university would not have a research development team, says Adam Golberg, a research manager at Nottingham University Business School. “An institution where researchers have no access to specialist information about funders, and no-one sending them possible leads, is not one that is serious about research,” he says.

Each university has defined the job in its own particular way. Some focus on supporting applications, others take a more strategic view; some have a dedicated research development officer, whereas others combine the role with costing and contract duties. David Young, research funding manager at Northumbria University, sees funding development as falling into two categories: direct and indirect. “Direct support,” he says, “is about one-to-one or group-based co-writing support for particular grant applications. Indirect support covers the whole framework or environment surrounding research bidding activity—such as mentoring schemes, training programmes and mock panels.”

Development is still a relatively small part of research support. Jon Hunt, deputy director and head of the Research Development and Collaborations team at the University of Bath, estimates that such roles account for about 10 per cent of the team’s service. However, though the team gets involved in only a fifth of grant proposals, they “have supported nearly 40 per cent of the value of this year’s awards—around £20 million”, he says.

Even so, it’s difficult to attribute a successful application to a development office’s input. This makes practitioners wary of taking the credit. “It is hard to attribute increases in success rates to any one element,” says Linsey Dickson, research funding and liaison manager at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

For Justine Daniels, head of research development at the University of Sheffield, proactive engagement with funders is vital. They discuss schemes and applications and listen to feedback “that principal investigators can’t always hear”. As a result, Sheffield’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council applications have become more in tune with the council’s priorities, success rates have improved, and 20 Sheffield researchers hold fellowships from the European Research Council, up from four in 2010.

Daniels thinks that research development will increasingly become linked with post-award activity. As funders aspire to become sponsors, rather than distant bodies distributing funds, universities need to build on a relationship that begins before an award, and project managers will need to interact more closely with funders. Hunt agrees: his team has both research development managers and a research project management service that works on 14 projects worth around £17m.

Research development is a child of these straitened times, its bullish rise shadowed by the bearish withering of the economy. Budgets are tighter, and schemes have been axed or restricted by demand management. In this climate, research development has not led to a great leap forward, but it has prevented a slow slip backward.

At Kent, I believe the funding team has fostered a more positive research environment, from supporting individuals to developing an internal peer-review system. This has led to some notable wins, but more importantly has kept research—and research funding—at the top of the university’s agenda when the shutters outside have been banging in the cold wind of austerity.

STFC: 'Too Narrow a Focus'

An advisory panel has today criticised the STFC for having 'too narrow a focus', Research Fortnight reports.

'For far too long STFC has thrown money at projects within its remit,' complained the 900 page report from the panel. 'Does it not realise that it should be launching expensive, half-baked interdisciplinary programmes?

'It's time it took advantage of RCUK's Priority Generator. Big Science needs this kind of cutting edge, outside-the-envelope thinking. Why fund astronomy and particle physics when you could be creating exciting, dynamic new research in 'Syntax beyond Food', or 'Enlightenment towards Remembrance'?'

No one from STFC was available for comment.

Universities UK and the Hanging Chads

In the week that saw the world breathe out again as Barack Obama was re-elected, there was a far more intriguing election drama unfolding over at Tavistock Square. According to Research Fortnight, the election of Surrey chief Prof Sir Christopher Snowden to the top job at Universities UK was declared null and void, as they'd forgotten to tell people that there was actually going to be an election.  Thus, Snowden was returned unopposed.

Just a minor thing, then.

Will the debacle match the US 2000 election, when George W Bush got into the White House on the back of hanging chads and a little help from his brother, Jeb? Is there a Prof Sir Jeb Snowden, VC of  the University of East Croydon (Miami Campus), on hand to ease his brother into the lofty post?

Excitement's mounting at Fundermental Towers. We just hope and pray that this situation is sorted out sooner rather than later. I mean, where will we be without the guiding hand of Universities UK to leadeth us and make us down to lie??

It doesn't bear thinking about. I'm already coming out in hives and hyperventilating.

H2020: Is Europe's Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

I attended the Research Europe Conference 2012 yesterday, which focused on the forthcoming Framework Programme, Horizon 2020. They'd rustled up an impressive roster of speakers, kicking off with the European research funding queen bee, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.

She gave a confident and robust overview of the forthcoming framework programme. The Commission had become more open, and H2020 was the result of an extensive consultation. 'This is your programme', she asserted, whether you are a scientist, an entrepreneur, or a businessman, working for an SME or a multinational. It was intended to be enabling and inclusive, slashing red tape, and allowing 'more time in the lab, less on administration.'

At its heart was simplification. The complex structures of past frameworks had been boiled down to three pillars: support for excellent research, support for industrial leadership, and support for societal challenges. By keeping it simple, it was hoped that the best people would be encouraged to engage with Europe, including those who hadn't been involved before, or who were 'small players'. They would be willing to take risks, and decision making would be speedier. However, writ through the programme was excellence, and this would inform all that they did. In difficult economic times it was the countries that had invested in research and development that succeeded. Europe needed to grasp this nettle and accept this challenge.

Brave words, and she left the hall with a David Steel-esque rallying cry to return to your constituencies and prepare for – um – involvement. No sooner had she left the stage than Banquo entered in the shape of Chris Hull, Secretary General of EARTO, cooling the delegates ardour somewhat by highlighting the shortcomings of the plans.

He reminded the hall that, despite all the fanfare around the inclusion of 'innovation' in H2020, this had been the case before, and it hadn't been a great success. The Commission needed to look to the past and learn the lessons if it was to avoid repeating them. Whilst he recognised the worth of simplification, he dismissed the three pillars as nothing more than 'clever marketing': there was something there to please everyone, but would anyone be satisfied?

The wording of the Commission's proposals was ambitious, and the requested budget similarly so. But in reality, when compared to Europe's competitors, €80bn was the minimum that was needed to keep up. The Commission intended to use this budget wisely, to leverage money from private organisations and national public governments. However, with the Eurozone heading for melt down, national governments were unlikely to stump up any matched funding, and commercial organisations were likely to be more bear than bull.

He finished by signalling that a different style of programme management was needed if Horizon 2020 was to succeed. Governance should be the substantial focus, with stakeholder buy in. More than anything there was a need for more detail as to (a) what innovation was actually defined, and (b) how it would fit within programme governance. This, for Hull, was 'perhaps the critical, insufficiently addressed issue absent from the Commission's proposal.' 

Hull regularly comments on the H2020 LinkedIn Group, and I'd encourage you to join this group to get a sense of the way the wind is blowing as the Programme develops.

Not with a Bang but a Whimper

Well, there was I, popcorn in hand, ready to watch it all kick off after the EPSRC's announcement of the latest runners and riders in the 'Shaping Capability' sweepstakes. Imagine my disappointment at the muted response from the sector. What, no angry letters to The Times? No resignations? Surely some mistake?

The response could, of course, be because the EPSRC has effectively dodged the bullet by (a) only looking at a relatively small number of areas, (b) saying that only two of these will be cut. They had learnt, I think, from their experience with the first tranche of disciplines, when there was a strong backlash against the Council's actions. This time both Research Fortnight and The Times Higher were struggling to find dissidents to rail against the EPSRC. Prof Neal Skipper from UCL suggested that one of the areas to be cut, Hydrogen Storage, was not at a mature stage of development, as the EPSRC Chief David 'Derek Smalls' Delpy seemed to suggest. But that was pretty much it.

The rest seemed to shrug and move on. Even Twitter, the medium of choice for hysterics, was relatively subdued about it. Which is all very disappointing. I'll put my popcorn away until the main feature later in the year, when a decision on the remaining 51 areas (out of a total 111) will be made. There's sure to be fireworks then.

Globalisation: Notes from Research Fortnight Conference

The Research Fortnight conference this year was held at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, and focused on 'Globalisation: the future of research institutions.' The title could have been framed as a question: as the world convulses with economic shocks, is now the right time to be reaching out in partnership?

They'd brought together an impressive roster of speakers to discuss this. Some faces were familiar – such as Julia Lane of the NSF who spoke at the ESRC Seminar Series on Impact a few weeks back – whilst others were new to me. But all gave thought provoking insights into issues around collaboration.

'Research belongs to no country'

Lord Bhattacharyya, Chairman of the Warwick Manufacturing Group, kicked off the day by quoting Louis Pasteur: 'Knowledge belongs to no country.' UK research had considerable strengths, said Bhattacharyya, that placed it well in the global market place: it was both high quality and covered a broad range of disciplines, as well as being relatively open and academically free. However, these were offset by areas of concern: the UK's disciplinary strengths didn't match the research interests of the emerging economic superpowers; collaboration - both with overseas partners and industry - wasn't happening fast enough, and its spending on research and development was too low.

The UK needed to think strategically about dealing with the challenges of the new global research environment. It needed to be more open to attracting new business research funding, and look to the market priorities of the BRIC countries, namely engineering, biology, and the physical and health sciences. Incentives needed to be created to overcome the potential reluctance to engage with Chinese or Brazilian colleagues, resulting from such considerations as lower citation rates from such partnerships.

'Collaborate to compete'

Throughout the day this analysis was knocked about, questioned, confirmed or refuted. Prof Anton Muscatelli, Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow, emphasised the need to 'collaborate to compete.' He agreed with Bhattacharyya that the UK faced challenges in doing so, at a time when it was facing its own, internal uncertainties. However, he was upbeat about Britain's ability to cope in this brave new world. British universities were both efficient and effective, he said, and the key to their success was the autonomy they had, coupled with the shark pool they swam in for research resources.

But why should UK institutions collaborate? Muscatelli suggested that there were three reasons: to diversify their income streams, as funding became tougher in the UK; to 'bring the best together'; and to address common, global challenges. These were all positives, but equally you could see that they had no choice: the UK was too small to go it alone. The Darwinian race for partners would see the open survive and prosper, and the insular wither and perish. The research map of the UK would be radically redrawn.

'Science is like a parachute: it only works when it's open'

Jeremy Watson, Global Research Director at Arup, outlined the view from industry. Arup had been behind such iconic buildings as the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre and the Gherkin. It had always relied on what Watson described as a 'knowledge supply chain', building on both internal and external research. For him, the case for collaboration between industry and academia was clear, and he suggested frameworks by which this might happen in the future, such as transnational 'centres of excellence' (as Rolls Royce had already developed); open innovation clubs with multinational industrial partners; and 'co-innovator' partnerships between academia and industry with 'permeable boundaries.'

Haggit Messer-Yaron, President of the Open University of Israel, concurred. Universities and industry had very different agendas, but it could be these differences that made partnerships work. There needed to be openness, however: 'science is like a parachute,' she quoted: 'it only works when it's open.' There should be a synergy, a complementarity. Governments could act as brokers for these relationships, providing early stage funding and support for 'bridging the development gap' as well as a conducive legal framework in terms of IPR laws and taxation. However, governments tended to act in the national interest, and as such may act against the principles of globalisation.

'It's the intersection of technology and liberal arts that makes our hearts sing'

After lunch we broke up into parallel sessions. I went along to the one that focused on the engineering and physical sciences, which quickly veered productively off track. Prof Graham Galbraith, DVC at the University of Hertfordshire, complained of the blinkered 'siloism' of current research policy. The difficulty with engaging with business, he said, was that most universities think within disciplinary boundaries, whereas most businesses don't. Of course, these disciplines may be useful – or indeed necessary – for running large organisations, but they were unhelpful in thinking creatively. 'Real innovation is not really rewarded or recognised,' he bemoaned. The ghost of Steve Jobs was conjured up: 'technology alone is not enough,' he had said. 'It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the the results that make our heart sing'.

So were the funders to blame for holding apart the disciplines? A representative of EPSRC was on hand to defend them, and the sense was that it was more to do with an engrained culture within academia. The discussion swiftly moved on to developing the necessary mindset for exploiting the opportunities offered by internationalisation. Phil Clare, Associate Director of Research Services at the University of Oxford, was bracingly breezy in his acceptance of the new deal offered by BRIC nations. 'We need to stop worrying about selling our birthright,' he said. Universities exist to generate knowledge, but can also act as catalysts for collaboration, and foci for local economies.

The conference finished with a final plenary on the experience of different institutions in developing and managing cross-continental relationships. The day had crackled with ideas and questions and, whilst no conclusions were reached, it had been a valuable opportunity to develop and debate our thoughts on this critical new horizon.

100 Greatest Novels on Research Funding

Right! I've been away on the Atomic Ride for the last two weeks, and the sparkling world of research funding has moved on. Plenty to chose from when I was catching up, including an interesting item in Research Fortnight on research funding concentration. Whilst today's elite benefited from a wide dispersal of funding in the past, claims the article, they now want to kick away the ladders and concentrate the funding on the few. The article uses George Orwell, or rather Napoleon and others of his elite in Animal Farm, to help illustrate this: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Interesting point, but a missed opportunity by Research Fortnight. What a chance to mine the wider canon for literary allusions that could be used to explain the state we're in.

• Catch 22, Joseph Heller: you have to be in a Russell Group university to get the lion's share of research funding. But in order to join the Russell Group, you need to have the lion's share of research funding.
• The Trial, Franz Kafka: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bureaucracy of Applying for Grants.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Random Surreal Beauty of Grant Decisions.
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley: the dangers of stitching together collaborations, and how they can turn against you.
  
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville: the madness and majesty of seeking the 'Great White Grant'.
  

I could go on. Some titles speak for themselves: Things Fall Apart, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Songs of Innocence and Experience, for instance. But that's enough of that. I need to get on with helping some rejected applicants. Now where did I put my copy of Les Misérables..?

Night of the Long Knife

Research Fortnight has reported that Adrian Smith, Director General of Science and Research at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (that's DGSR at BIS) for the last two years, is for the chop.

Now stiffle that yawn and pay attention at the back. This is more important than it sounds. See, the DGSR is the person responsible for the Research Councils at BIS. If he's to be replaced by a career civil servant - which looks likely at the moment - research might lose its strong voice.

The cutting of the DGSR is part of a bigger shake up of BIS. Science, research, universities and space will now all be bundled together in the somewhat gnomic and Orwellian 'Knowledge and Innovation'. Surely that's doubleplusgood?

Not so. The Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington, considered the decision 'deeply regrettable'. His predecessor Robert May went further, calling it 'substantially both stupid and ignorant and it is politically foolish..If [the head of the new section] is a successful civil servant they are very unlikely to know much about science.'

Let's hope the career civil servant is sympathetic to science - or wears a hard hat.

Research Fortnight: How 15% Cuts Will Hit

Exquisite Life, the Research Fortnight blog, has done some modelling of the effect that 15% cuts will have on the sector. It's not good. It models three different scenarios: the Cable, the Willetts and the Universities UK (UUK).

The Cable one spreads the pain most widely, cutting funding to 2* and some 3* research. The Willetts concentrates funding on the bigger, broadly strong departments, maintaining critical mass across the system but at the expense of smaller, sometimes higher quality departments. So, a loss of diversity. A spreadsheet showing the effect of this is available here. The UUK suggests that departments have to cross a quality threshold (based on the last RAE) before they can receive funding.

All choices are awful, but some cuts are inevitable. However, the blog's author, William Cullerne Bown, thinks that 'bad as they may be, all three scenarios are, in my book, better than the Russell Group’s preferred Option 4 - limiting QR to the top 30 or so universities. At least these scenarios all leave some dynamism, some competition in the system.'

Research Fortnight: Glass Half Full

I'm still catching up with various updates in my inbox. Interesting editorial in the last issue of Research Fortnight, which makes comparisons between the current government and the early days of Thatcher's government in 1979. As we all know, the current goverment's list of priorities 'does not include a place for university research.' So what should researchers do? They have a number of choices, Res Fortnight say:

'Those who want to be heard in the corridors of power need to start identifying influential thinkers. Willetts is important as the minister in charge. But he is not in the Cameron inner group. The so-called ‘Cameroons’ with research interests include the Conservatives’ policy guru Oliver Letwin, Nick Boles and Michael Gove, co-founders of the Policy Exchange think tank.

'Second, researchers should begin to find ways of working with the grain of coalition priorities. Instead of banging on about how state support for technology creates jobs, say how research can support the Big Society or free schools. Researchers with ideas and insights on these and other issues will have a guaranteed hearing in Whitehall.'

RF also suggests that, counter-intuitively, it might be a good time for critical researchers. After a time of boom when the government was giving a good deal of money to researchers, the relative dearth of funding will release critical researchers from any attachment to the government, and allow them to really speak their mind.

Good to hear that some are seeing the current situation as a glass half full...The full text of the article is available here (you'll need an RF login or campus access).

Proposal to Simplify EC's Funding Process Published

Good news from Europe: an EC proposal to cut the bureaucratic nightmare of applying to the Framework Programme has been published. It's intended to cut the byzantine rules governing the negotiation of the funding contract, but retain the necessary accountability and transparency.

The proposals also suggest that the payment procedures be simplified, including allowing researchers to submit expenses claims in full rather than having to submit hundreds of smaller ones for individual items. Researchers will have to show that project milestones—or outputs—have been met, but they won’t have to account for every single euro.

It is hoped that the proposals will also make the auditing of Framework projects less onerous.

Reported in Research Fortnight, the proposals will suit those applying for funding for basic, or frontier research projects. They are intended to attract more applications from organisations such as small businesses, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the research commissioner, said.

This leaner approach has received widespread praise. “It is a breakthrough on the scale of the ERC,” says Jerzy Langer, a member of Academia Europaea, the European academy of sciences. “As various institutions have different cost systems, this flexibility and understanding will make the programmes much simpler and easier to deal with.”

“One can see the amount of thinking that was put behind this communication [from the Commission],” says Thomas Estermann, a senior programme manager at the European University Association. “Finally this issue is being taken seriously by all players, and it is accepted that some areas of the Framework programme do not work well and need to be addressed.”

The Commission’s proposals will now be forwarded to the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, who will discuss the paper and publish their responses. Changes to Framework’s legal or financial structures need to be approved by the European Parliament.

Willetts Named as Universities and Science Minister

Research Fortnight is reporting that David Willetts has been named as minister for universities and science. He was previously the Conservative's shadow higher education minister. He will work within the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, under Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary.
Willetts has been given the rank of Minister of State. He is not a Cabinet minister but the Cabinet Office says he will attend Cabinet meetings. Former science minister, Paul Drayson, also attended in this capacity, but held an additional place on Privy Council, which Willetts will not.
Willetts has previously said he would like to delay the Research Assessment Exercise by up to two years and look again at the importance attached by the Labour government to assessing the impact of research in the exercise.

ResearchResearch gets Professional

ResearchResearch, the fortnightly journal for all things related to research funding, and database for funding opportunities available to all UK researchers, has had a rebrand. Oh yes. No longer is it the satisfyingly Hellerian ResearchResearch (distant relative of Major Major Major Major), it will now be Research Professional. Ho-hum. We're all professional now. However, you'll be pleased to hear that their 'new logo incorporates a dynamic chevron, which stresses the word Research in our masterbrand and is used to continue this representation across all our product logos, so you know where they come from.' Which is nice.

Unfortunately there's no talk of overhauling the recently overhauled website, which must be one of the clunkiest, most counter intuitive and user unfriendliest on the planet. Despite this hinderance, RP is one of the most comprehensive funding opportunity repositories I know of, and believe me, I've tried a few. If you haven't signed up for their email alert service, give it a go. You've got nothing to lose - except your time, hair, patience...Alternatively contact me, and I'll act as Virgil to your Dante.

Research Escapes the Cut

Last week it was announced that teaching would bear the brunt of the major cutbacks to the 2010-11 higher education budget. HEFCE stated that research funding will be increased by £32 million in the year ahead to just over £1.6 billion, a 2% increase on last year - i.e. a flat settlement in real terms. This compares well with the teaching budget, which was cut by 1.6%.

Elsewhere, Research Fortnight report that HEFCE unveiled the formula by which it will distribute quality research funding in the future: ' In cash terms the change is minimal, but it is a direct response to the government’s desire for greater concentration of research funding. As part of plans to distribute the cash amongst a smaller number of universities, Hefce will change the distribution of funding for 2*, 3* and 4* work, as judged by the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. The old weightings of 1:3:7 will be changed to 1:3:9. The shift will benefit institutions that have a higher proportion of 4* research in the 2008 RAE. First estimates from the Research Fortnight Benchmarking application show Oxford and Cambridge gaining about £4m a year between them, a rise of about 3 per cent, with the losers scattered among the English members of the various university groupings.'