In this love letter, Joeri Tijdink voices the perspective of a continental academic who will miss the UK when it leaves the European research community after Brexit. He reflects on the contribution that the UK made, from good journals to bad jokes- and the emotional disturbance that this rift will cause. There is also rock-solid … Continued
Category: Research funding
From Impact to Inequality: How Post-COVID-19 government policy is privatising research innovation
Post-COVID-19 government policy has included an increase in investment in the UK’s research sector. However, Daniel Hook finds that the emphasis on the impact of this research means that longer-term, less measurable, blue skies research is being pushed into the private sector. Not only is blue skies research the key driver of technological change, but … Continued
As COVID-19 hits Australian universities hard, how have online writing groups enabled researchers to stay connected and sustain their work?
The COVID-19 crisis has amplified the instability of funding streams in Australian universities, resulting in an already precarious system for researchers being exacerbated. However, in the face of an ongoing retraction of income which is threatening research and the livelihood of researchers, Dr Lisa Hodge and Dr Jason Murphy discuss the flourishing forms of academic … Continued
A post-pandemic research agenda
As governments refocus their attentions from managing COVID-19 to planning for the aftermath and recovery from the pandemic. Steven Hill, draws on the work of the economists Mariana Mazzucato and Kate Raworth, to suggests now is the time to rethink research policy along more equitable and sustainable lines. This post first appeared on Steven Hill’s personal blog. … Continued
Evidence for Policy in the Wake of COVID-19: Short – Medium – Long Term Impacts
COVID-19 has rapidly and radically reshaped interactions between academics and policymakers and the kinds of evidence being used to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this post, Vivian Tseng, considers how research-policy relationships might develop in the short, medium to long term and how research funders might seize opportunities presented by COVID-19 to design equity-centred … Continued
2019 In Review: Metrics and research assessment
As governments increasingly look to national research systems as important inputs into the ‘knowledge economy’, developing ways to assess and understand their performance has become focus for policy and critique. This post brings together some of the top posts on research metrics and assessment that appeared on the LSE Impact Blog in 2019. Working to the rule – How bibliometric […]
2019 In Review: Research on Research
2019 has seen an increased focus on the ways in which different national and international research systems function and how they can be improved. This post brings together some of the top posts on the theme of research on research that have featured on the LSE Impact Blog during 2019. Pushing research to the limit – Who innovates in social […]
Blind Luck – Could lotteries be a more efficient mechanism for allocating research funds than peer review?
Peer review is integral to the award of funds for academic research. However, as an increasingly large number of researchers attempt to secure limited funding, it is clear that much funding is awarded based on marginal assessments of the quality of different proposals. In this post, Lambros Roumbanis argues that randomly awarding research funding via lotteries presents a more rational, […]
Old-fashioned peer review is still seen as the best way to allocate grants, but reviewers deserve greater recognition
The allocation of research funding on the basis of peer review has recently come under scrutiny, due to the difficulty of assessing the difference between growing numbers of high quality applications. Presenting evidence from a large-scale survey of academics involved in the peer review of grant applications, James Hardcastle argues that academics largely see peer review as the best mechanism […]
Pushing research to the limit – Who innovates in social science research?
Innovation in any field of research often runs the risk of being poorly judged and misunderstood by researchers beholden to more conventional methods. What then allows researchers to undertake research that could leave them ostracised from their disciplinary communities? In this post, Sharon Koppman and Erin Leahey highlight how the development of interdisciplinary identities, association with key organisations, and the […]