Skip to main content

The European Union and fundamental research

The European Commission (EC) has sought feedback from the research community base in the form of a survey for its Horizon Europe research plan. It can be found in
 
 
The overall strategy is already decided, in terms of basic themes etc, and the questions in the survey are already quite specific. Here is a general comment on EU research as funded by the EC. It relates to fundamental research as opposed to directed or applied. 

The framework programs (as all EC endeavors) are meant to complement national efforts and not duplicate them (as a fundamental mandate of relevant treaties). Blue-skies fundamental research is left for national programs, and  is therefore not EC funded, except for the Marie Curie program with the training and mobility argument, and the European Research Council (ERC) with the excellence argument. The latter is essentially an award program, which funds (very generously) a very small number of people, around 1000 grants per year for a community of around 2 million FTE researchers. Most of the thrust of the Horizon programs is for directed research. 

A key problem of research in Europe is its the HETEROGENEITY OF THE NATIONAL PROGRAMS which severely affects European research. If the EC is serious about its research ambitions, this problem should be addressed, clearly and directly. As we have it, the only talent in fundamental research that can flourish is the one in countries with good and well-funded programs (very few). Poorer countries cannot afford a healthy balance between fundamental and directed research. A goal of the EC should be that good fundamental researchers in the EU have same chances of developing their potential irrespective of country within the EU. It is a structural flaw that has been perverting European research since its beginning. It should be at least confronted.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Research antiefficiency principle

It is an intriguing thought (and admittedly a provocative way to put it). University funding in the USA, UK and other research-powerful countries is partly based on grant overheads. That is, funds payed by research agencies to the research institutions, beyond the direct costs of the research itself, to cover for a proportional part of the costs of running the institutions themselves. Sensible. Overheads do represent a significant part of institutional income. It makes sense in many ways, but, in essence, it leads to the antiefficiency principle: Since overheads scale with the direct research costs, universities and research institutions, more or less directly, tell their research staff: "do your best, for as much money as possible". The title of this post is provocative because the quoted statement above is not as antiefficient as it sounds. "Do something for as much money as possible" would be antiefficient, but the actual statement implies two maxmisations, &
Post a Comment
Read more

The spirit of the San Francisco DORA in scientific meetings

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) advocates for avoiding the use of journal impact factors in evaluations of scientists and their contributions. I very much agree with the idea, and so do the many signatories of the declaration, both personal and institutional. Impact-factor fascination syndrome (IFFS, the very thing DORA wants to counter) is however spreading and thriving in the research community. I would propose to extend the spirit of DORA to scientific meetings: Speakers in adhering research meetings should avoid quoting journal names in what they show . Nowadays, the names of one or two authors and the year should suffice to find any paper, if there is no arXiv reference for instance. It sounds sensible that when speakers describe their work, they show the reference of where to find the relevant publication. But we all know that showing references to high-impact-factor journals is used to impress the audience (not to mention journal covers), and I can
Post a Comment
Read more