send via emailPressure for European Research Area progress grows
A combination of the economic crisis, social challenges and increasing competition should accelerate the development of the European Research Area (ERA), according to speakers at a Brussels conference held in October.
The ERA was launched to establish a single European market for research. The idea was to improve Europe’s research and innovation landscape while fixing a number of perceived problems, such as the difficulties researchers have in moving between jobs, making more effective use of expensive technical infrastructure, and encouraging and enabling academic institutions to raise their standards and improve the quality of their offering. There were other ambitions, too: more effective sharing and application of knowledge; better-coordinated research programmes at regional, national and European level; and stronger links with countries beyond Europe.
Progress towards this vision has been discussed in a public consultation in 2007 and a resultant green paper called The European Research Area: New Perspectives, and in a declaration signed late last year called Vision 2020. The October 2009 conference discussed progress towards the ERA in today’s more challenging context.
“Europe's future wealth depends on how the challenge can be met,” said Tobias Krantz, minister for higher education and research in Sweden, in his opening remarks, adding that the priorities for the ERA should include a focus on effectiveness and social relevance.
Today's research is tomorrow's welfare
“It's fundamentally important that breakthroughs in research are of benefit to society,” he said. “Today's research is tomorrow's welfare.”
Visions for Europe
Several groups have been busy formulating visions and roadmaps for European research.
Luc Soete, chairman of an EU expert group on ‘the role of community research policy in the knowledge-based economy’, told the conference that the research community faces several major challenges, such as the rate of scientific and technological change; the actual and desired direction of that change; the requirement for excellence; and the emergence of open innovation and global connectedness. Each of these challenges affects the rationale and approach to European and national research policies, for example in terms of the regional impact on social cohesion of steps that are designed to raise quality but achieve that effect by concentrating resources.
The group recommends that European governments should focus on knowledge investments in response to the forces of globalisation, but with a fundamentally different target to that set in Barcelona in 2002. Instead of calling for an aggregate R&D intensity of 3% of GDP, and expecting private sector funding to make up most of the shortfall, the group is recommending that, by 2020, governments invest 1% of GDP from public funds on R&D and 2% of GDP on higher education.
Let's get back to what governments themselves can do
“Let's get back to what governments themselves can do,” said Soete.
The group also wants to see a shift in policy away from focusing solely on the rate of technology change to also focus upon its direction. It recommends coordinating research and innovation policies toward the Grand Challenges that society faces, and (recognising the huge difficulties in running large public-private initiatives) using StageGate™ processes and innovative procurement to support that shift. And it wants Europe to create a world-class environment for open innovation, establish the community patent, achieve greater mobility for researchers, and build stronger intermediary organisations. There’s support for greater competition in the education sector, to enable greater differentiation among universities and research and technology organisations, a call for national research policies to evolve towards a European research policy, and a plea to political leaders to recognise that engaging in the knowledge society is risky and requires risk-tolerant approaches rather than overweening bureaucracy.
“It seems unsustainable to have 27 national research councils in the long term,” said Soete. “Research has no frontiers and it makes no sense to stick to national boundaries.”
The European Commission’s leading advisory team on research, ERAB, has formulated its own vision for the ERA, which looks out to 2030 and sets some ambitious targets.
John Wood, chair of ERAB, told the conference that the Board’s vision for the ERA in 2030 was a response to global change.
The challenges before us are so immense we cannot afford [to research for fun] any more
“The world of research is changing dramatically. The challenges before us are so immense we cannot afford [to research for fun] any more,” he said. The Board’s first annual report is an effort to call for a new Renaissance. “We saw our role as creating a paradigm shift,” he said.
The ERAB vision calls for a united ERA, driven by societal needs to address Grand Challenges, based on shared responsibility between science, policy and society. Again, it should enable open innovation between all public and private stakeholders, deliver excellence and achieve social cohesion.
Wood laid out a number of milestones for some aspects of the ERAB vision. For example, it wants to triple the mobility of researchers so that by 2030 up to 20% of researchers are working outside their home countries. To tackle Grand Challenges, such as climate change and the ageing population, 30% of all scientists should be trained in relevant research areas. And R&D should be more speculative: “We’ve got to increase the risk. Many of the projects Europe supports should fail. If they don't we’re not at the cutting edge. That's very difficult for politicians to take on.”
ERAB has suggested that Europe should aim to achieve an aggregate R&D intensity of 5% by 2030. Wood said: “If we’re going to get anywhere we have to be realistic about what we can achieve, but we need stretch milestones and the funding doesn't have to come from traditional sources. It could come from the European Investment Bank, or by adjusting procurement policies.
“Why should we hide behind state aid rules when we could use procurement to really get somewhere? What I am most concerned about is that we get the ball rolling.”
ERAB also recognises the importance of popular backing for R&D: “Every member of society throughout Europe should own the success of the ERA.”
I look at children in prams and think that if they see we haven't done anything, then we should be ashamed
He gave an impassioned plea for action to change the European R&D landscape to maintain the region’s competitiveness and to tackle its biggest challenges: “I look at children in prams and think that if they look back on our generation and see we haven't done anything, then we should be ashamed.”
Improving feedback
Anton Anton, vice rector of the Technical University of Civil Engineering in Bucharest, called for greater feedback in European research projects. He pointed out that some programmes follow on so quickly from each other that there is no time for analysis.
“ERA-NET began in 2002 and ended in 2008. An analysis of the programme started in 2008 and was published in 2009. But ERA-NET Plus launched in 2008 - based on what? Wishful thinking? There’s a lack of evidence-based action.”
Martin Curley, senior principal engineer, global director, IT innovation, Intel, echoed some of Anton’s thinking in his presentation, when he said: “The worst measure of effectiveness is what you spend, and the poster child for that is General Motors. We need to care more about outputs and conversion effectiveness.
We need to move from the ERA to a closed-loop system
“We need to move from the ERA to a closed-loop system,” he added. “If you're leading in publications and lagging in everything else then all you're doing is enabling the competition.”
Curley recommended that the ERA should become a European Research System, in which innovation becomes a systemic capability rather than a set of singular acts.
He also praised the Framework Programmes for an openness that other major innovation countries have yet to achieve: “FP7 is probably the [world’s] largest open-innovation fund. Researchers in the US and Asia look at the programme as something that Europe is doing right.”
Openness and sharing
Norman Neureiter, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), added his praise from an American perspective: “What a wonderful concept the ERA is, trying to do for science what your statesmen have done for your countries.”
The great thing about the European Research Area is that you have set money specifically aside for cooperation
He went on: “The great thing about the European Research Area and the Framework Programme is that you have set money specifically aside for cooperation. I think it is tremendous and very forward-looking. I’d like to see the Framework Programme as one giant agency of science diplomacy, though it would help us foreigners if you could simplify the paperwork.”
The AAAS is now involved in two Framework Program projects, both designed to act as a bridge between American and European research.
Jean Marc Rapp, president of the European University Association, pointed out that universities are key stakeholders in the ERA, supplying researchers, undertaking research, offering interdisciplinary research skills, and forming focal points for dialogue with society.
“Strong universities and research institutions need greater autonomy to offer increased salaries and be able to act quickly,” he said. “They also need to move towards full-cost accounting and away from being a low-cost provider.”
He highlighted the Responsible Partnering initiative, developed by the EUA, EIRMA, EARTO, and Proton Europe, as a way to crystallise best practice in industrial/academic partnering. Its guidelines have been updated to address state aid, the European Commission’s requirements on intellectual property rights, and the role of doctoral candidates in collaborative research.
“If these guidelines were fully put into practice we would make major progress in Europe,” he said. “We invite the European Commission to fully endorse them.”