Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnessess (Questions 200-219)

PROFESSOR JOHN O'REILLY, PROFESSOR IAN DIAMOND, PROFESSOR KEITH MASON AND PROFESSOR PHILIP ESLER

19 APRIL 2006

  Q200  Chairman: Okay. Why was the panel criticised for not evaluating specific research councils' knowledge transfer schemes? Surely that is your job, not theirs?

  Professor Diamond: The panel looked at the individual research councils and the panel responded to the evidence that was given and then further evidence was given in response to the panel. That seems to me an entirely appropriate process to go through.

  Q201  Chairman: The business of Science in Society, to rule that out and say that that is nothing to do with this particular piece of work: we found that strange.

  Professor Diamond: That is an interesting question and that is an area for discussion. It depends on your definition of knowledge transfer. When the panel's terms of reference were agreed between research councils and the now Office of Science and Innovation, Science in Society was not included in the terms of reference. Had it been included in the terms of reference then, of course, much more evidence would have been given by the research councils on the activities in that area. The question you would then wish to raise would be whether or not Science in Society was actually part of what we defined as knowledge transfer. We would say that, while there is clearly a grey area where they meet in the middle, the definition of knowledge transfer would not include the way we look at Science in Society although there has to be a continuum moving across.

  Q202  Chairman: Has anybody any other comments about the report? Have you all seen it now, gentlemen?

  Professor Mason: Just to add one brief comment, this was commissioned by the research councils so that we could learn from it and go forward, and I think any issues there have been with the report are because we want it to be useful for us and we want it to be evidence based and we want that evidence to be something we can build on. I do not think there was anything untoward about the process at all. I think it was a difficult exercise. The panel did a very difficult job; they did it very well, but clearly in the short time available it was not perfect and we tried to work with them to make it as useful as possible.

  Q203  Dr Iddon: Do you think anything useful has come out of it? Are you going to take any notice of the recommendations? Are there any major ones which are going to change the way you work, Ian?

  Professor Diamond: Again, speaking for ESRC, it makes some helpful suggestions around the concordats with industry, which I think is a way forward that we will be considering very seriously given the huge success of our concordats with government departments. It also makes some suggestions around the way in which we might continue to develop our interface, if you like, where more and more social scientists are spending time in government, in industry and vice versa. Those are really helpful suggestions which we will be considering how best to take forward. Yes, I think it does make sense and I do think that for ESRC the suggestions are incredibly helpful. Some of the RCUK suggestions, if I may say so, do not quite understand the nature of RCUK; others are very helpful and yes, we will be considering them very seriously and I think they will make some differences.

  Q204  Dr Iddon: In view of the difficulties that have become obvious as the process has gone along, do you think you will be repeating this process?

  Professor Diamond: I think we will be talking about the way in which the process went forward. I think that to say there were difficulties is rather overstating things. Basically the report came,—

  Q205  Dr Iddon: It is a word you have just used.

  Professor Diamond: It has been through a couple of iterations, but iterations around the factual accuracy, not around the recommendations. We now have a document which is factually accurate about what the research councils do and makes some suggestions which we are digesting and which we will respond to.

  Q206  Dr Iddon: There is a current review taking place of research council economic impact. Is there going to be a lot of overlap between the two reports when the second one is ultimately published?

  Professor Diamond: I am going to pass that over to John O'Reilly if I may because John sits on that committee and would perhaps be best to respond to that.

  Professor O'Reilly: There is an Economic Impact Group. It involves people from the research councils. Julia Goodfellow and myself sit as representatives in that sense. She is Chief Executive of BBSRC. It is chaired by a senior industrialist who is also chair of one of the research councils. It has industrial participants and so on. It includes, incidentally, John Murphy, who is a member of that group, so in a sense that is a bringing together where we can look at the economic impact that is being achieved, gaining an understanding of that, a shared understanding, I would say; I think we do have a good level of understanding within the research councils. I view that rather as a learning and understanding exercise as distinct from the External Challenge where, if I might add to what colleagues have said, one of the most valuable things of the External Challenge was not just that it was independent but that we sent them information and then they played it back to us, and the fact that the report that came back contained factual errors, inconsistencies and so on tells us something about communication, about how hard it is to communicate the diversity and richness in this area. I think that is a strength in the sense that, perverse though it may seem to you, the fact that we had that dialogue was underscoring the diversity, the strength and so on that is there. That makes it all the more appropriate that we now have the Economic Impact Group that brings these different facets together, allows these different perspectives to come into play, and shares them.

  Q207  Dr Iddon: But the question was, is there going to be duplication?

  Professor O'Reilly: I do not view it as duplication. There is overlap, usefully so. It would be inappropriate, if there was an Economic Impact Group working now, given that we have just received that report, if some aspect of that did not feature in it in just the same way that, when you and your committee eventually publish your report from this hearing, that will feature in the considerations of the research councils. We learn from all the interactions and we will learn from this interaction in the same way that we have learned from these other two.

  Professor Diamond: And economic impact is but one facet of the wide and rich cornucopia of activities which is knowledge transfer. That particular report is just focusing on the economic impact and, as John says, absolutely rightly, there will be some overlap but it will not be total.

  Q208  Dr Iddon: Can I be a bit of a devil and ask the question, do you think the Government is putting too much pressure on the research councils to have an economic impact and taking you away from blue skies more and more?

  Professor Diamond: Again, if I might speak for my own council, absolutely not. I do not feel that pressure at all. I personally believe it is an absolute necessity that anyone who wishes to take public money to do research should, where appropriate, use the results of that research to have an impact on the economic development and quality of life of the people of the United Kingdom who funded it, and indeed further afield. I think that is entirely appropriate and I think the research councils' role is to act as a conduit where appropriate to identify that and enable it to happen because it will not necessarily happen everywhere. I do not feel any pressure from the Government to do that.

  Q209  Dr Iddon: Is that a general view within the councils?

  Professor Mason: I would pick up on that and say that I see it as a positive thing because a two-way flow of knowledge between the research communities and the wider scene is good for everybody. It creates an environment where innovation and new ideas can flourish and that is to the benefit of everybody.

  Q210  Margaret Moran: I am interested in this non-tiff with the External Challenge Panel report. You referred to problems being in relation to matters of fact, but one of their conclusions was that the research councils' lack of strategic vision and approach to knowledge transfer was pretty fundamental. They said that they "had concerns about the apparent lack of long term vision . . . at the highest strategic level" and "there was little evidence of a coherent and structured approach to knowledge transfer or knowledge creation . . .". That is not a matter of fact. That lies at the heart of what we are discussing here. What is your long term vision?

  Professor Esler: As far as the Arts and Humanities Research Council is concerned, we have only been in existence for a year so knowledge transfer activity has really only begun significantly since we came into existence on 1 April 2005. We have recently begun to redo our strategic vision and a central aspect of that vision is knowledge transfer. At the council meeting we had in March we spent an hour and a half brainstorming the vision and central to it was knowledge transfer. I think everyone there was absolutely delighted at the real passion that members around the table expressed for knowledge transfer, especially the view expressed by one of them that was widely adopted, that we are really situated in relation to the creative industries in what is a kind of new industrial revolution where content is being integrated with digital media in many different sectors. We are, if you like, the custodians and the impresarios of the content in the UK and there was tremendous enthusiasm for that. As far as our council is concerned, we are very excited about knowledge transfer. That, of course, happened after the report had been compiled but, commenting on it, it is not an accurate reflection of where we are as a council.

  Professor Diamond: We have already said that we will be reflecting on it and responding and I think as the ESRC we would not agree with that statement, but indeed the section on the ESRC certainly does not make that view. There is a long term vision and I have given it to you already.

  Q211  Margaret Moran: Could you articulate it very specifically for us?

  Professor Diamond: I have already given it to you, if I may say so, and that is that research from ESRC, where appropriate, should impact on the economic development and quality of life of the people who funded it. In addition there should be activities to ensure that there is an interface of people moving in and out of policy and of industry so as to be able to maximise the evidence base on which industrial and government policy at both local and central level is made in this country.

  Q212  Margaret Moran: And that applies across all of the research councils?

  Professor Diamond: That is the ESRC mission and I am going to ask Keith and John for their views as well.

  Professor Mason: As we said earlier, the whole point of the report was to learn from it and if the report concludes that there is no long term strategy we have to take note of that, and I think that is again a communication issue because I think that in each research council there is a very good strategy. Certainly within PPARC our whole programme is based on the fact that we have to take a long term strategic view because we are engaged on programmes that extend over many years and the knowledge transfer aspect of those programmes is fully integral to that long term strategy. We actually operate in a forum where we have both to commission the knowledge that we use in our programme and then to propagate it back to the industries that are supporting the programme. That whole thing cannot exist without long term planning so it is integral to what we do from the very beginning.

  Professor O'Reilly: First of all, you will find differences between the research councils; you should not be surprised. We are very different entities. Some are directly involved in knowledge creation themselves and others are exclusively involved in funding those who create the knowledge. So you will find, rightly, that a council that has its own institutes will engage in certain aspects of knowledge transfer differently from councils that do not. In the case of EPSRC, we are a pure funding research council. All the knowledge creation takes place in the universities and our role is to support, foster and enable that. That said, we have a vision for knowledge transfer which we say is the EPSRC vision but in a real sense it is a vision for the UK and it is for the UK to be as renowned for knowledge transfer as it already is for knowledge creation. We have a long established pattern in the UK of absolute excellence around the world, and acknowledged, and I underscore the word "renowned". It is recognising the excellence. There is excellent practice of knowledge transfer in our universities; that can be made yet more effective by bringing it out—and sharing that best practice is where we are from our perspective.

  Q213  Dr Harris: Can I ask on Margaret's question, do you think that these business people that you appointed, the External Challenge Panel, were disappointed that each research council had not paid a vast amount to consultants to advise it on its mission statement that it should put on the letterhead, because that is what business sometimes does which is less interested in the specifics? Do you think that is a possible explanation of why there is this disjunction between their report on this area and what you feel you are actually doing and saying you are doing?

  Professor Diamond: You would have to ask them that.

  Q214  Dr Harris: But you would recognise that there is a difference in cultures, that everyone in business is into mission statements, whether airy-fairy or otherwise, whereas people in the world of science are actually into getting on with it and not navel-gazing and coming up with arguments about which adjective or verb to put in a mission statement?

  Professor Diamond: I think you would find that the great majority of research councils—and I say "the great majority" only because I admit that I could not speak to every research council but those that I know—have statements about knowledge transfer in their mission. I simply do not know also of a research council that has spent any money on developing that mission statement.

  Q215  Dr Harris: The point about your mission statement, which you have said twice, is that the opposite of what you have said is pointless, is ridiculous, so it is hardly worth saying that your research council should, where appropriate, make sure that economic gain is maximised because that would imply that if you did not do that you would want them, where appropriate, not to maximise economic gain.

  Professor Diamond: No. I am terribly sorry, but the use of the word "appropriate" is because there are parts of the research base which it would simply be silly for people to rush around trying to maximise the economic impact of because it is developing and underpinning theory, for example.

  Q216  Dr Harris: I was not arguing with those words: I think you are right to include them, but what does that add, that mission statement? It is a statement of the obvious, is it not, because not to do it when it is appropriate would be ridiculous?

  Professor Diamond: But surely one should be making an effort to make sure that that is happening and have an underpinning set of strategic activities and objectives which do make that happen, and both the report of the ESRC for the last few years, and indeed the External Challenge report, say that this is being done pretty effectively.

  Q217  Margaret Moran: I want to look to something which Professor O'Reilly mentioned, which was the university funding. Obviously, I am sure you are all very pleased at the ongoing commitment that the Chancellor announced in the Budget to funding for knowledge transfer, but you appear to be suggesting that more effective use could also be made of or greater value could be gained from the existing money spent on research in universities and that that was not happening currently.

  Professor O'Reilly: That was not what I meant to say, so let me clarify. I think very good use is being made of the funds that are made available to universities. I think in the UK the universities are very impressive organisations. What we want to do is maximise the value that comes from that work. There is a process that goes from knowledge creation right the way through to economic impact, and there is a part that is very strongly in the domain of the research councils through the universities and then through into business. If again I were to take it to EPSRC; what do I think is the most important thing for EPSRC and where we are channelling our efforts to improve the effectiveness? It is to do what we can to stimulate and increase the appetite of business for engaging in research and associated training and in knowledge transfer. It is that coupling and playing a part in maximising that. And many of the innovations that we have put in place over the last two or three years are very much focused on that. I believe it is the case now that over 40% of EPSRC grants involve collaboration with business directly: substantial in-cash and in-kind contributions. That has been brought about in large measure by us talking with the universities and them responding. We talk with business as well, but I am very clear in my own mind that simply shouting more loudly at the universities is not going to increase that further. What is going to be much more effective is if we can communicate much effectively to business the importance of that and do what we can to increase their appetite. In the case of EPSRC that is achieved largely by empowering the universities and fostering it.

  Professor Diamond: I think the EPSRC does this extremely well and there is also an imperative, certainly for ESRC, that what we do is make this a country where it is much easier than it is at present for people to move in and out of academia and business, or indeed government. The people transfer is something that is not always seen as being as important as it actually is in this area and I think that is a real challenge for the next few years, to really increase the opportunities and activities in that area.

  Q218  Margaret Moran: I take it from that that you are content with the value that is being offered by the universities. Could you say the same thing about the research councils? How would you measure whether the work the research councils are doing on knowledge transfer is actually adding value? What is your measurement?

  Professor O'Reilly: We have recently agreed a set of metrics, stimulated, I have to say, by the ten-year framework. The ten-year framework for investment in science and innovation is a really positive thing that has been done and it stimulated us. When that was articulated down—you take the vision that is in there—there are two key outputs that have been identified, which are what the science vote is about really; that is what it says. The first is a healthy science and engineering base. Because if we do not have that—and to some extent this is a response to Dr Harris, which is that we have to make sure that it is healthy and productive,—whatever else we do is lost. And the second—and these are equal—is better exploitation. What we have done as a family of research councils now is to agree a set of performance metrics that you could put on to those two outputs and say, "Can we have leading indicators on them?" and so on. So those are available, and if they have not been sent to you we would be very happy to send them to do so.

  Q219  Chairman: We are going to raise the issue of the metrics later on because it is a very important issue and we were somewhat, I would not say confused, but we need a greater understanding of how they have come about and indeed what is involved in them and how much agreement there is across the research councils.

  Professor Esler: We have a very distinctive approach to this. We see the benefit of some metrics but we do not think metrics alone can measure the impacts that we have. One of our issues with the External Challenge definition was that it was good as far as it went but it did not quite go far enough. It did not, for example, cover knowledge transfer which is simply the production of social capital. For example, when people go to a significant exhibition, such as the Michelangelo exhibition which is on at the British Museum at present, things happen to them. Those things are difficult to demonstrate but they can be demonstrated. Lives can be changed, for example, careers can be amended and so forth. We are working on ways to measure that kind of impact, which may not necessarily be quantitative, so it is a rather different challenge as far as we are concerned. We have, as you will have seen in the information we provided, four impact fellowships that we are at present funding to explore this rather new area.

  Professor Diamond: It is also worth saying, although we will return, as you say, Phil, to the metrics a little later, that metrics are not always quantitative and within the cells of the matrix which John O'Reilly has described already, there are a number of metrics for different research councils which are both quantitative and qualitative, and I think it is terribly important going forward that we do that.


 
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