Memorandum from the Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change Research
1. SUMMARY OF
EVIDENCE
1.1 We believe our evidence and experience
suggests that it is essential to address the functioning and culture
of the Research Councils and RCUK to become a science administration
that is fit for purpose to support interdisciplinary research
centres in the UK. Our evidence reflects on five years of interaction
between Tyndall Centre Directors and Managers and three of the
Research Councils (NERC, EPSRC and ESRC). In particular our evidence
draws upon the period 2004-05 when the Tyndall Centre was asked
to submit a proposal for renewed funding for the following five
years.
1.2 We write this submission on the premise
that deeply inter-disciplinary research in the UK is both necessary
and creative, should be adequately supported in the UK science
base, and that old funding principles and mechanisms need renewing
if this new challenge is to be met. These are sentiments reflected
back from the OST 10-year strategy for Science and Innovation
published in 20042 and recently re-iterated in the March 2006
document "Next Steps" (see Appendix). Our broad conclusions
are:
— Interdisciplinary research is essential
if we are to understand and find sustainable solutions to many
of the environmental problems that we face today.
— The review and decision processes
towards collaboratively-funded Research Centres remain instinctively
disciplinary, or at best grudgingly multi-disciplinary. There
is a clear need for more rapid organisational learning by the
Research Councils to adequately, intellectually and culturally
support interdisciplinary Research Centres.
— The Tyndall Centre exposes some real
conflicts in the Research Councils between measuring the success
of research Centre investments using measures of "quality"
versus measures of "impact". This equates to whether
performance criteria for Research Centres should revolve around
the generic and conventional Output Performance Measures (OPMs)
or around issues concerning what is broadly termed knowledge transfer
(KT).
— There is also the problem that the
weightings given to quality and impact measures vary from Council-to-Council
and vary over time. This lack of consistency and commensurability
presents real problems for funders, researchers and Research Centres
alike.
— The Tyndall experience has exposed
the real tensions between Research Council investments aimed at
capacity-building for developing a long-term research capability
and short-term funding of near-horizon research programmes.
— Consideration should be given to
an independent review/audit of the processes used by RCUK and/or
Research Councils to fund inter-disciplinary research Centres.
If this is really such a high priority for OSI—and the UK
science base—then a clearer basis of Research Council accountability
for such funding decisions is needed. This is still new territory
for Research Councils and mechanisms for review and learning are
needed.
— No infrastructure exists within the
RCs to facilitate coordination instead of competition between
research institutes, or perhaps more importantly, between their
knowledge transfer efforts.
— Inter-disciplinary research in policy
sensitive areas is difficult to fund, difficult to do and difficult
to evaluate. It raises issues of learning and interactivity, of
capacity building, of working within conventional academic and
funding structures designed for a different era, and of finding
powerful and appropriate performance measures (for purposes of
accountability). Yet the potential contribution of inter-disciplinary
research to the development of evidence based policy surely requires
that these difficulties be overcome.
— The Centre refunding process was
clearly the victim of triple jeopardy—NERC, EPSRC and ESRC.
Even if a common vision is achieved for interdisciplinary research,
however, there needs to be appropriate structures for joint decision-making
between the funding Councils when it comes to specific investments
in Centres to articulate that vision.
2. INTRODUCTION
2.1 The Tyndall Centre has five years of
experience of how to (and how not to) execute and deliver inter-disciplinary
climate change research in the UK. This document reflects on the
case-study of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (a
collaborative Research Centre funded by NERC, EPSRC and ESRC)
over the period 2004-05 in seeking renewal of its core Research
Council funding.
2.2 The Tyndall Centre was the first tri-partite
Research Council research centre (a collaborative Centre in NERC
terminology) to be established in the UK. Considerable authority
was devolved by the Research Councils to the Centre to use its
expertise to set priorities and to allocate and manage the core
funds within and outside the consortium. Put in the context of
a five-year operational programme, the Tyndall Centre has acted
as an experimental laboratory where researchers, funders and external
stakeholders have all been forced to learn lessons about the nature
of this new research process and what it can and cannot deliver.
2.3 We write this submission on the premise
that deeply inter-disciplinary research in the UK is both necessary
and creative, should be adequately supported in the UK science
base, and that old funding principles and mechanisms need renewing
if this new challenge is to be met. These are sentiments reflected
back from the OST 10-year strategy for Science and Innovation
published in 20042 and recently re-iterated in the March 2006
document "Next Steps" (see Annex 1).
2.4 We seek to draw lessons on how the UK
Research Councils and RCUK can better support collaborative Research
Centres, specifically those that are charged with inter-disciplinary
research. We ask how Research Centres dealing with policy sensitive
complex phenomena (such as climate change) can be better valued,
administrated and funded. While this document outlines the experience
of one particular initiative, we believe our lessons may well
be more generic and hence of wider relevance to the UK funding
system for Research Centres and therefore this present Inquiry.
3. THE ROLE
OF RC INSTITUTES
IN MAINTAINING
THE UK RESEARCH
AND SKILLS
BASE
3.1 The role of the RCs is to support or
even enhance intellectual excellence and to further the UK's scientific
economy and to help transfer this knowledge to stakeholders and
wider society. The RCs likely excel at supporting curiosity-driven
disciplinary basic research (the previous speciality of three
of the submitters of this evidence, totalling several decades
of experience), but in the case of interdisciplinary research,
the question has to be asked if the Research Councils' approaches
are not a hindrance to establishing and/or maintaining UK excellence.
3.2 Short-term and safe research projects
should not always be favoured over high-risk intellectual endeavour.
Though (it would seem) a real and necessary tension, both are
important priorities within the overall OSI/RCUK portfolio of
funded research. Here again, the Tyndall experience suggests that
evaluators and decision-makers in the RCs do not pull in the same
direction. Worse, is that at different points in the decision
process the Centre's Directors were encouraged down different
paths. For example, the Science Management Audit review team made
recommendations that emphasised sustainable capacity, whilst the
final decision made by NERC Council 18 months later reflected
the desire for conventional scientific outputs from a time-limited
(three-year) programme. The prospect of reopening a nationwide
competition in 2008-09 as suggested by NERC for future RCUK investments
in this area also argues against any coherent UK vision of sustainable
capacity-building in climate change research that is truly useful
for policy.
3.3 There is a tension between measuring
research "quality" (peer reviewed papers in top quality
journals that are not read by any policymaker or industrialist)
versus "impact" (well designed and communicated research
that better informs evidence-based policy making). Despite the
rhetoric of their mission statements, the Research Councils in
reporting to OSI seem to have no capability to measure KT. The
terms-of-reference of the international review of phase 1 did
not consider communication.
4. THE BALANCE
BETWEEN RESEARCH
COUNCIL EXPENDITURE
ON RC INSTITUTES
AND ON
GRANT FUNDING
4.1 The Treasury no longer ring-fences funds
for wholly-owned or collaborative Centres but it is not necessarily
good economic or knowledge economy reasoning to abandon them.
(Even if valued from only a wholly economic perspective, the Tyndall
Centre's publications cost an average of £5,000 less than
the NERC average of £25,000 per scientific publication, if
that is indeed the real cost of a NERC publication). If Centre's
are not seen to be as desirable as they once were, then cross-Council
Collaborative Centres like Tyndall and UKERC are a "third
way"—a much more flexible mode of capacity building
and coherent research endeavour.
4.2 The prolonged process of re-funding
Tyndall, with NERC as the lead Research Council, took more than
24 months to complete and the cost to the Centre in time and resources
has been estimated to be c. £400,000. This was taking place
at a time when the Centre had reached full operating capacity
and was to be at its most productive. This amount does not consider
the costs to the Research Councils of administering an eventual
grant of £5.7 million.
4.3 As additional evidence we also include
the editorial from the leading scientific magazine, Nature.
It calls for special Government provision for Centres of such
international calibre as Tyndall. Please see Annex 2.
5. THE RATIONALE
BEHIND THE
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
ADOPTED BY
THE RESEARCH
COUNCILS TO
SUPPORTING RC INSTITUTES
AND THE
CASE FOR
GREATER HARMONISATION
OF PRACTICE
5.1 The Research Councils do not have a
collective vision for the Tyndall Centre or of interdisciplinary
climate change research in the UK. The Research Councils' convened
Moderating Panel, NERC Science and Innovation Strategy Board and
NERC Council seemed unable, or unwilling, to grasp the inter-disciplinary
vision of the Centre and of OSI. This was evidenced the further
the Tyndall Centre went into the refunding process; the less clear
became the Research Councils collective vision. Was the Tyndall
Centre a sustainable research capacity, or a short-term programme?
Was it to operate an integrated inter-disciplinary research agenda,
or an itemised disciplinary agenda where each Council could see
its own slice of the cake? Was it about publishing high quality
science or about conducting and exploiting research to make an
impact and a difference in society? Ironically, the body who best
revealed their strategic vision for inter-disciplinary research
was the international Science and Management Audit review team
consisting of internationally-renowned experts and business stakeholders,
yet their perspective played little role in the subsequent local
UK decision-process.
5.2 Despite assurances to the contrary from
the RCs, the Centre's various proposals for Phase 2 are clearly
the victim of triple jeopardy—NERC, EPSRC and ESRC. Even
if a common vision is achieved, however, there need to be appropriate
structures for joint decision-making between the funding Councils
when it comes to specific investments to articulate that vision.
Such structures were notably absent in the Tyndall case.
5.3 The eventual outcome of Tyndall Centre
Phase 2 is sub-optimal because:
(a) the final three-year Phase 2 work programme
is a cut-down version of an original five year strategy;
(b) the various pulls and requirements from
the different review and decision-making bodies—international
Science and Management Audit team, anonymous reviewers, Moderating
Panel, NERC Science Innovation Strategy Board, NERC Council, ESRC
and EPSRC—result in the ultimate "camel"—everyone
gets a bit of something they wanted, but any coherent vision is
dissipated;
(c) the duration of the renewal process seriously
impeded the on-going work of the Centre and the several changes
of direction along the way eroded staff morale;
(d) the uncertainty, the protracted process
and the prevarication by the Research Councils resulted in a loss
of confidence in the sustainability of the Centre of research
and support staff, of stakeholders and of international research
partners.
5.4 With a reduced rate of core investment
from the Research Councils—almost a 20% cut in real terms—and
a three-year programme rather than five years, a more fundamental
issue has now emerged. Creating and bringing to fruition a new
type of inter-disciplinary research capacity and institution,
staffed with people who can operate effectively in such challenging
territory, is no short-term venture. The Centre will not thrive
in a Research Council contractual framework in which staff are
hired for two or three years and then dismissed. Nor where the
short-term delivery period dictates against taking risks with
new inter-disciplinary methods and against developing sustainable
relationships with stakeholders where mutual learning—essential
for co-production of knowledge—can occur.
5.5 New research institutes like the Tyndall
Centre need a longer planning horizon than this for the ethos,
culture and practise of the Centre to be established, embedded
and sustained. This is especially true when the Centre, in several
important respects, is counter-cultural to the prevailing higher
education (dominated by the RAE paradigm) and Research Council
(dominated by traditional disciplinary science outputs) environments.
5.6 The fundamental question of the Research
Councils and OSI is whether the Tyndall Centre in Phase 2 is executing
a traditional time-limited three-year research programme or whether
the Centre is seeking to continue to develop a sustainable capacity
of international renown for inter-disciplinary climate change
research in the UK? The UK Research Councils seem implicitly to
believe it is the former; the Centre, the international review
panel and many national and international stakeholders believe
it is the latter.
5.7 The above balance between RC expenditure
on Research Centres and grant funding is an important economic
question, but the purpose of the RCs in supporting science for
society and the clear aims of OSI is more fundamental and must
be urgently addressed in RCUK. The UK's international reputation
for interdisciplinary climate change research is despite the RCs.
5.8 Our recent interviews with key Tyndall
stakeholders to help inform our communication plans show that
funders themselves don't want competition between investments,
but no infrastructure exists within the RCs to encourage coordination
between research institutes or perhaps more importantly, between
their knowledge transfer efforts. Research and KT coordination
is entirely self-organising, duplicating considerable effort and
resources and competing largely for the same stakeholders. RCUK
climate change and energy investments, for example, include Tyndall,
the UK Energy Research Centre, RAPID, QUEST, NERC Centres for
Atmospheric Science and many specific funded projects such as
www.climateprediction.com. Outside of the RCs are DEFRA's Hadley
Centre and UK Climate Impacts Programme.
5.9 To close, we quote Professor Bill Clark
of Harvard University, who led the RCUK international review of
the Tyndall Centre; "The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research is a breathtaking experiment. Even from the other side
of the Atlantic, it was clear in the opening years of this Millennium
that while other countries were talking about new approaches for
bringing intelligence to bear on the unprecedented challenge of
climate change, the UK was actually doing something about it.
Rumours of what was that precise `something', fuelled by a growing
number of working papers and press releases, drifted across the
waters during the Centre's formative years, leaving many of us
over here alternately excited, envious and confused... The Tyndall
Centre is maturing as an extraordinarily ambitious effort to tackle
an extraordinarily important problem. Experience suggests that
under the best of circumstances it will require a decade or more
of active learning-by-doing and capacity building before a venture
of this magnitude and difficulty can be reliably judged to have
succeeded. But I do not know of any comparable programme that
in its initial years has come further, faster, or produced more
exciting results. " In, Tyndall Centre (ed) (2006) Truly
useful... doing climate change research that is useful for both
theory and practice. Tyndall Centre, UK, pp 44. May 2006.
We are very happy to give further evidence to
the Inquiry on both our experience as a case-study and on how
we believe the situation could be best improved to help make the
Research Councils fit-for-purpose to support the UK interdisciplinary
research base. The views expressed are of those people named above.
June 2006
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