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A post-COVID opportunity for structural reform of science

The manifesto below from European scientists says the COVID-19 crisis should provide an opportunity for Europe to reconsider its science funding models – particularly the emphasis on competitive funding – and focus on a more cross-disciplinary approach to build a better and more sustainable future:

Science seems to have moved to the forefront. Over the past three months, national governments have systematically claimed to rely on scientific advice to provide the most robust analyses of the current pandemic and to develop evidence-based policies.

Simultaneously, funding for research on COVID-19 is largely being made available, many scientific journals are providing open access to their content, an open data policy is being implemented at many levels to speed up the development of possible treatments and solutions and collaborative, cross-disciplinary and open science is being strongly promoted.

The current exceptional circumstances are, of course, the source of the prominence and interest in science. However, many non-critical research facilities have been temporarily closed and scientists are doing teleworking, while clinical labs in hospitals are overloaded.

The present situation and the amount of resources currently unleashed to fight the pandemic also strongly contrasts with research and innovation policies implemented by many European Union countries over the past decades. One may therefore hope that the present enthusiasm for scientific research does not remain an exception and instead ushers in structural changes in research policy beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Research spending

At the 2000 Lisbon European Summit, the European Union set itself the goal of becoming the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. To do so, in 2002 heads of state and governments endorsed the objective of increasing public and private investments in research and innovation activities from 1.9% to 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2010.

After being subsequently postponed until 2020, that target is today far from being achieved, with the latest Eurostat data indicating an average EU level of 2.2% GDP spent on research and development (R&D) in 2018, far behind the United States, Japan or South Korea. Only four EU countries are above the 3% threshold.

In parallel, policy discourses have promoted a change in the modalities of public funding, suggesting a move from an institutional funding model to one of funding based on competition for research grants and promoting efficiency gains from more market-like incentives.

This approach has been embedded in proposals inspired from the so-called ‘New Public Management’ and favours new governance models of science in which competition is based on top down steering and strong management in research organisations, instead of (bottom-up) collaboration between scientists and research institutions.

Results from these trends tell us that there are no identified positive effects of competitive funding on the quality of research, nor from top-down governance of research.

The combination of stagnant funding and its increasingly competitive nature (with many funding programmes having success rates below 20%) in many EU member states has clearly weakened our scientific capacity in terms of the number of scientists and our ability to provide better evidence and answers to global challenges such as COVID-19 or global warming.

A cross-disciplinary approach

In contrast with the cross-disciplinary approach needed to tackle the current crisis, research and academic environments are generally characterised by hyper-specialisation and limited collaboration across disciplines. While specialisation is needed for scientific progress, global challenges and their implications across fields of knowledge show that there is also a need to
enable more collaborative approaches.

Cross-disciplinary research combining the social sciences and humanities with other areas from which they are traditionally isolated (such as medicine, biology, physics, etc) is vitally necessary to tackle challenges such as COVID-19, climate change or threats to biodiversity and, beyond that, to foster sustainable development as defined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Addressing these macro-challenges also means involving all actors in society – from public research institutions to the private sector and citizens – in the definition of possible innovative solutions. Strong bottom-up dynamics in the science system, enabling the combination of scientific talent and resources to explore many directions to find solutions, is necessary, as the coronavirus pandemic shows.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that scientific research in universities and public research organisations is at the core of solutions when it comes to tackling fundamental issues such as a global pandemic or climate change.

Science, as healthcare or social security protection, contributes to saving lives. As such, it should not be considered as contingent expenditure depending on economic cycles, but rather as a necessary feature of EU societies.

This means increasing available public funding and other resources for research far beyond the current levels, which would also mean more young researchers and their creativity entering and staying in the research system.

In parallel, a more extensive development of cross-disciplinary projects involving public, private and civil society stakeholders is needed, together with policies enabling open science.

We need new R&D policies and experimentation with new organisational forms and academic careers that could create novel incentives for researchers.

Societal demands also require a more committed and more responsive research community when it comes to research integrity, ethical norms and general accountability to democratic institutions. The COVID-19 crisis is undoubtedly a human tragedy. It also provides an opportunity to build a better and more sustainable future through a combination of science, knowledge and political responsibility.

Thomas Zacharewicz is based at the department of economics and history of economics, University of Seville, Spain; Luis Sanz Menéndez and Laura Cruz Castro are based at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies, Madrid, Spain; Peter van den Besselaar is based at the department of organisation sciences and the Network Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Ulf Sandström is based at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, industrial engineering and management, Stockholm, Sweden; and Ana Fernández Zubieta is based at the department of applied sociology, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.

Signatories to this manifesto are:
Brenninkmeijer, Olivier AJ. EU Business School Munich GmbH, Munich.
Bucar, Maja. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana.
Campos Palacín, Pablo. CSIC Institute of Public Goods and Policies, Madrid.
Castellanos Gómez, Andrés. Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, CSIC.
Chioncel, Mariana. University of Bucharest, Bucharest.
Conde, José María. Heriot-Watts University, Edinburgh.
Díaz, Mario. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Madrid.
Feld, Adriana. CONICET-Universidad Maimónides, Buenos Aires.
Frank, Karol. Institute of Economic Research, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava.
Garcia-Hernandez, Mar. Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, CSIC.
Gianni, Robert. University of Maastricht, Maastricht.
Hortal, Joaquín. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Madrid.
Jacob, Merle. Lund University, Lund.
Janssen, Matthijs. Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht.
Jordano, Pedro. Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Sevilla.
Jourdain, Édouard. School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS, Paris.
Kelchtermans, Stijn. KU Leuven, Brussels.
Kreimer, Pablo. CONICET-Universidad Maimónides, Buenos Aires.
Levratto, Nadine. EconomiX, CNRS, Université Paris Nanterre, Paris.
Lhuillery, Stéphane. NEOMA Business School and BETA, Paris.
Lindholm Sahlstrand, Åsa. Lund University, Lund.
López Varela, Susana. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, PUCP, Lima.
Machordom, Annie. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Madrid.
Margalef Bentabol, Juan. Pennsylvania State University.
Martin, Tom. Tom Martin & Associates (management consultant and RTDI policy analyst), Dublin.
Molero, José. Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, Madrid.
Moya-Laraño, Jordi. Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, CSIC, Almería.
Nascia, Leopoldo. Sbilanciamoci.info, Rome.
Palma Martos, Luis. Departamento de Economía e Historia Económica. Universidad de Sevilla.
Pérez del Pino, Angel. Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona, CSIC, Cerdanyola del Valles.
Salazar-Elena, Juan Carlos. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid.
Tella, Jose L. Estacion Biologica de Doñana, CSIC, Sevilla.
Udovic, Bostjan. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana.
Valladares Ros, Fernando. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Madrid.
Vargas, Pablo. Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, CSIC, Madrid.
Vieites, David R. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Madrid
Warrington, Brian. independent consultant, Valletta.