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UK summer news round up

The biggest research policy and HE news you may have missed over the summer

Equality letter

One year on from a strongly worded letter accusing UK Research and Innovation of perpetuating inequality in research, some of the letter’s authors have told Research Professional News that they are “disheartened” that the funder has still not published a public response. The letter, published on 17 August last year, called for a review of the national research funder’s systems and processes after it emerged that none of the principal investigators on Covid-19 grants awarded for research into death rates among people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were Black. “I consider it a deep failing by UKRI that one year on, there has not been a public response to the open letter,” said Ruby Zelzer, one of the 10 Black authors of the letter.

Full story: Black academics hit out at UKRI’s lack of public reply to open letter
 


 

R&D spending

UK expenditure on R&D in 2019 grew by its lowest rate since 2013, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. Figures released on 4 August show that total UK R&D expenditure rose by £1.3 billion to reach £38.5bn in 2019, a rise of 3.4 per cent. The ONS noted that “the long-term trend has been for very small growth over time”, with total R&D expenditure representing 1.74 per cent of GDP in 2019, up from 1.59 per cent in 2008.

Full story: UK sees ‘lowest percentage growth’ in R&D spend since 2013
 


 

Business R&D

A survey has revealed that almost half of UK firms have decreased their R&D activity since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, prompting warnings of long-term damage to UK research. Richard Harris and John Moffat, economists at Durham University’s business school, surveyed around 4,500 UK companies between October and November 2020 to assess the impact of the pandemic on firms’ R&D plans. They found that 45 per cent of firms had decreased their R&D investments during the pandemic, with 18 per cent halting theirs altogether.

Full story: Fears of long-term damage as business R&D falls during Covid
 


 

Picture of the week

LJMU

 A project to build the world’s largest robotic telescope has received £4 million from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The New Robotic Telescope will be built by an international consortium led by Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Oviedo in Spain and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. It will be based on the island of La Palma.

 


 

Covid on campus

The UK government has advised universities to take extra action to contain Covid-19 on campuses if the number of positive cases suggests a growing outbreak. In guidance for those working in education settings in England, including universities, the Department for Education said that leaders should think about taking “extra action” to tackle clusters of the virus—on top of existing measures such as providing good ventilation in buildings—if certain conditions come into play. Those conditions are either five students or staff who have mixed closely testing positive for Covid-19 within a 10-day period, or positive test results among 10 per cent of those who have mixed closely together.

Full story: Universities advised on ‘extra action’ to stop Covid outbreaks
 


 

Open access

A leader of Plan S has said that the open-access initiative will not support journals that commit to making more of their content openly available but fail to show they have achieved the required milestones. Under Plan S, which is supported by the national funder UK Research and Innovation, funders are requiring researchers they support to make resultant papers openly available immediately and under certain other conditions. One kind of venue that may be acceptable is ‘transformative journals’, which mix open and paywalled content but have pledged to increase the share of content they publish openly.

Full story: Plan S insists it won’t fund lagging transformative journals
 


 

Scottish politics

The Scottish National Party and the Scottish Greens have confirmed a power-sharing agreement that will put Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP in a minority government and be a first for the Greens, who have never been in national government anywhere in the UK. The two pro-independence parties will govern Scotland at a critical time for the nation’s research, with the recovery from Covid-19 ongoing and talk continuing of a post-Brexit independence referendum for Scotland.

Full story: What the Holyrood deal means for research and higher education
 


 

Red tape review

Adam Tickell’s review of research red tape has asked the sector to weigh in on how funding bureaucracy can be slashed. On the agenda for the Tickell review—which was announced in March—are sector-wide standards and reviews of export controls as related to research, according to a consultation announced on 23 August. The review is tasked with advising ministers on how to make “a substantial reduction in unnecessary research bureaucracy in government and the wider sector, supporting…researchers to focus on research”. 

Full story: Tickell review outlines red tape reduction questions for the sector
 


 

Quote of the week

JBB

“My career has not fitted a conventional—male—pattern.”

Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell on how she “swung sledgehammers and built radio telescopes” as well as discovering pulsars, after she once again donated her prize money from a top science award to a scholarship fund that supports students from underrepresented groups.

 


 

Homeworking

Research staff funded by UK Research and Innovation are to be allowed to work remotely on a permanent basis, from home or even overseas, under rules announced by the national research funder—as long as that is compatible with their projects and their institutions’ rules. Many researchers have been forced to work remotely over the past 18 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The rules, which were set out in the funder’s updated terms and conditions for ‘full economic cost’ grants on 17 August, do not apply to investigators.

Full story: UKRI allows grantees to work from home or overseas
 


 

Publishing

An initiative backed with £650,000 in UK government funds is to try to reinvent science publishing by breaking down traditional journal papers into constituent parts and publishing those parts individually on an online platform. The Octopus platform, due to launch in spring 2022, is being developed by Octopus Publishing and the higher education IT firm Jisc. It is intended to provide a “new primary research record for recording and appraising research as it happens”, Jisc said.

Full story: Platform funded by Research England ‘to disrupt publishing’
 


 

EU students

The number of European Union-domiciled students placed with a UK university has fallen by 56 per cent in one year, but there has been a rise in acceptances among other international students. As students in the UK received their A-level, BTEC and Scottish Highers results on 10 August, data released by the admissions body Ucas revealed that the number of students from the EU taking up places at UK universities had fallen from 22,430 in 2020 to 9,820. The fall coincides with the Brexit-induced change that means most EU students are charged much higher international student fees, rather than the maximum home fees of £9,250 in England.

Full story: Sharp fall of over 50% in EU acceptances to UK universities
 


 

Data shake-up

An influential group of IT professionals has raised ethical concerns about government plans to shake up data laws after Brexit. Last month, digital secretary Oliver Dowden announced plans for data adequacy partnerships with the United States, Australia, South Korea and other nations, which could support research initiatives that rely on data flows. But in a statement on 27 August, Bill Mitchell, director of policy at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said the government needed to be clearer about how it planned to build on and maintain existing international adequacy agreements.

Full story: Concerns raised over UK government’s data shake-up
 


 

Energy use

Universities’ energy consumption fell by 7 per cent as the Covid-19 pandemic hit campuses, data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency have shown. The statistics, published on 19 August, show that institutions used 6.6 terawatt hours of energy in the 2019-20 academic year, down 7 per cent on the previous year. For comparison, between 2017-18 and 2018-19, universities’ energy consumption fell by 3 per cent.

Full story: UK universities’ energy use falls by 7 per cent in one year
 


 

Soft power

The UK has fallen further behind the United States in the Higher Education Policy Institute’s soft power ranking, which records how many serving world leaders were educated in a country other than their own. Hepi’s research reveals that the US has increased its lead as the country counting the most world leaders as alumni, with 65 current prime ministers or presidents being educated in the US. This is up by four since the last soft power ranking was carried out in 2020, while the UK has stagnated in second place with 57—only one more than last year.

Full story: UK loses out to US again in annual soft power ranking
 


 

Gender and authorship

Women tend to feel they get too little credit for their contributions to research papers, whereas men feel they get too much, a study has shown. With many studies indicating that women are systematically disadvantaged by aspects of academia, Chaoqun Ni of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her colleagues gathered experiences of authorship from over 5,500 researchers worldwide. “This devaluation of women’s work in science creates cumulative disadvantages in scientific careers,” Ni’s team said.

Full story: Women ‘more likely to feel short-changed on authorship’