Search

China has become an impactful science superpower, but it is asserted that its influence provides it with disproportionate benefits that some national research policies have not thus far appreciated. To create context, Web of Science data are used to analyse research collaborations between the UK and China: trends in volume of output between 1981 and 2019; citation impact; and comparative performance across research fields. UK–China collaboration increased from fewer than 100 co-authored papers before 1990, to 750 per year in 2000, 3,324 in 2010, and 16,267 papers (10.9 per cent of UK output) in 2019. UK–China collaboration is concentrated in technology-based fields: in some (e.g. telecommunication), over 30 per cent of UK papers are in collaboration with Chinese-based researchers. The paper discusses the policy consequences to the UK of this indicative dependency, arguing that exiting from such collaborations is ill advised, provided the risks, perceived or real, are mapped, managed, and mitigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's technological frontrunners are tomorrow's economic champions. In order to triumph in the global innovation race, nations go to great lengths to boost domestic innovation. An increasingly popular instrument of such government support is known as the 'R&D tax incentive'. Scholars have particularly noted its greater incentive impact on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, correct use of this fiscal tool remains clouded by legal and economic complexities, often leading to misallocation of tax money. This study draws on the rich experience of the UK as a seasoned lawmaker in this field, to derive internationally transferrable policy lessons and principles that may be used in assessing and optimizing the potency of research and development tax incentives for SMEs. Following a theoretical analysis of the historical legal developments, annual government statistics, literature, and policy papers, this study argues that policymakers must take into account appropriateness, cost-efficiency, and accessibility in the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Greta Thunberg's school strike in Stockholm in August 2018 and the October 2018 'declaration of rebellion' by activists in the UK, 2019 saw several climate protest movements rise to public attention, including Fridays for Future (FFF), Extinction Rebellion (XR), and the US Sunrise Movement. What is striking about them is that they rather bluntly refer to science in their campaigns. In this paper, we present an in-depth and comparative study of how the new climate protest movements relate to scientific evidence. Employing a narrative analysis of different types of data (websites, press releases, and media coverage), we study the movements' understandings of 'the science' as well as of science's role in policy processes. We find that the movements in their initial phase predominantly rely on science for their legitimation and adopt a scientific worldview with very little 'green ambivalence'. Notably, FFF and XR hold a deficit model of existing climate communication and enact roles as science communicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses promissory discourse for genome editing and human health in the UK, attending to the articulation of public goods and their beneficiary publics. Focusing on promissory reasoning about an emerging technology field as anticipatory and ethical considerations as integral to such debates, the notion of ethical regime as a mode of governance is applied to the concept of promissory regime. By analyzing key documents and interviews with opinion leaders—thus focusing on the discursive dimension—an enabling promissory ethical regime for genome editing and its contestation are identified. This regime posits scientific knowledge production now, and improved treatment or prevention of hereditary diseases later, as key goods of genome editing for human health and as a sociotechnical project worthy of support. Specific publics are created as beneficiaries. These publics and goods play out as ethical rationales for the promissory governance of the emerging field of human genome editing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential for engagement in local innovation activities of six rural university campus developments in the UK. A number of common narratives emerged around the tension between local educational interests, and the needs of local industry. The paper examines both the strategies of the campuses and the expectations of local partners. Whilst these new campuses have been able to add to the regional innovation systems of rural areas, they struggle with economies of scale and scope. Where disciplinary specialisation has been pursued, potential exists for engagement with niche clusters, although a long development period is required. Where campuses have focused on broad educational equity issues, engagement with business has been difficult to achieve. Overall policies to enhance rural innovation through new university campuses must be seen to be very long term strategies and not necessarily congruent with strategies to increase HE participation and equity of opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, horizon scanning has been recognised as part of forward-looking government processes in a number of industrialised countries. It helps policy-makers in addressing the diversity of future societal and environmental challenges and in addressing the potential of emerging areas of science and technology in an integrated way. This paper discusses the usefulness of horizon scanning as an additional tool for future-oriented technology analysis activities, such as technology foresight and scenario building. Analysing the national horizon scans of the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark in a joint horizon pilot project initiated under the ERA-Net ForSociety, this paper makes a series of recommendations regarding horizon scanning processes at the national level and the construction of common future-oriented policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how investments in knowledge codification may be used as innovation policy tools, in a non-interventionist policy environment. Analysing statistically and historically the case of the UK's Department of Trade and Industry, from the early 1980s to 2002, the paper shows how knowledge codification can be used as policy-instrument for restructuring the design, characteristics and implementation of public innovation support as well as for developing new national competitive competences. This paper suggests that within a context of outsourced policy implementation and execution, the continuous upgrade of public support for innovation requires that both governmental department and external suppliers engage in 'learning-by-codifying'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the strengths and limitations of 'metrics' and peer review in large-scale evaluations of scholarly research performance. A real challenge is to combine the two methodologies in such a way that the strength of the first compensates for the limitations of the second, and vice versa. It underlines the need to systematically take into account the unintended effects of the use of metrics. It proposes a set of general criteria for the proper use of bibliometric indicators within peer-review processes, and applies these to a particular case: the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the scientific/advisory discourse about mobile phone risk that was prevalent in the late 1990s. It argues that advisory responses to public concern constituted a ‘discourse of compliance’, which was strengthened by implicit support from the mobile phone industry. This discourse used compliance with advisory guidelines as the endpoint for discussions with the public. Evidence from non-experts and concerns about the basis of the guidelines were rejected. This discourse acted as a barrier to expert engagement with the public and with the broader context of uncertainties about the safety of mobile phones. The paper explains how this style of scientific advice was exposed as fragile, despite its claims to represent only the best available science, which, it was claimed, was well-understood and consensual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents research taking place in the midst of a series of shifts in biodiversity policy in the UK. It examines recent attempts to enrol volunteer naturalists and lay citizens into biodiversity action planning, suggesting that such attempts can be seen as a nascent form of environmental citizenship, which is based on the exchange of knowledge of nature among the different communities involved (policy makers, volunteer naturalists and lay citizens). By focusing on a range of knowledge practices, the paper explores the selective appropriation of some ways of knowing over others. It documents ways in which some actors involved are beginning to reflect on what it might mean for biodiversity policy to accommodate each others' knowledge and practices. The paper suggests that an increased sensitivity to the range of practices and knowledges embodied within these different domains may result in a redefinition and expansion of the category of citizen, and may in turn have implications for the way in which 'biodiversity' comes to be defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that examined the factors that affect the volume of university-industry (U-I) collaborations in Great Britain. History of research collaborations between universities and industries; Analysis of the nature and extent of the U-I collaborations; Information on the industries involved in the collaboration.

Evidence-based policy-making has been a much-debated concept. This paper builds on various insights for a novel perspective: policy-driven, narrative-based evidence gathering. In a case study of UK priority setting for bioenergy innovation, documents and interviews were analysed to identify links between diagnoses of the problem, societal visions, policy narratives and evidence gathering. This process is illuminated by the theoretical concept of sociotechnical imaginaries- technoscientific projects which the state should promote for a feasible, desirable future. Results suggest that evidence has been selectively generated and gathered within a specific future vision, whereby bioenergy largely provides an input-substitute within the incumbent centralised infrastructure. Such evidence is attributed to an external expertise, thus helping to legitimise the policy framework. Evidence has helped to substantiate policy commitments to expand bioenergy. The dominant narrative has been reinforced by the government's multi-stake- holder consultation favouring the incumbent industry and by incentive structures for industry co- investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional accounts of expert authority frequently over-simplify relations between science and politics, and presume the existence of a singular 'interface' between these domains. In contrast, this article draws on semi-structured interviews to document how the authority of UK Chief Scientific Advisers emerges from their engagement in the construction and bridging of several distinct but interrelated boundaries. Building on co-productionist accounts of science–policy interactions, the paper moreover contends that these various boundaries are themselves constituted within place-specific contexts. The locally-situated, material conditions of advice-giving, in short, fundamentally shape the hybridisation and mutual alignment of science and politics around specific governance objectives. Further analytical work on expert advisory processes and expert authority should, we contend, be more closely attuned to the roles played by discursive, social, and material factors in facilitating boundary bridging and co-production in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop research sectors in many countries are facing reduced public support with public breeding programs being gradually replaced by private ones. This paper explores the UK experience with the privatization of wheat breeding that began in 1987. The analysis presented in this paper is based on interviews with sixteen experts currently involved in wheat research breeding in the UK. Taking a snapshot of UK wheat research today, it would be easy to conclude that the UK sector made a smooth transition from public to private breeding. However, this is not the case. The UK faced many challenges in establishing an integrated wheat innovation system and has only recently developed policies and funding processes that have enabled upstream public scientists to work with private wheat breeding industry. As policy makers around the world contemplate the privatization of crop breeding, important lessons can be drawn from the UK crop research funding model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are often scientific uncertainties and ambiguities surrounding novel industrial technologies. This makes regulatory processes problematic. An examination of the literature on mobile phone technology in the UK shows that whilst government and the telecommunications industry research has not found any clear evidence of ill effects on human health, other studies conducted more or less independently show a more mixed picture. The aim of this paper is to advocate a more open-ended regulatory process when investigating issues that exhibit scientific uncertainty. This process encompasses the views of a wider body of experts and lay persons. In the presence of uncertainty and ambiguity we believe that the precautionary principle is a useful tool with which to examine issues such as mobile phone technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk assessment techniques are regarded as key devices for managing adaptation to climate change; this paper examines their use in the first UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. The conceptual framework is derived from the sociology of knowledge, which treats policy makers as co-producers of knowledge, in interaction with scientists and consultants. The paper considers the framing of the problem, the creation of metrics and their limits, and the validity and legitimacy of such tools in conditions of high uncertainty. While recognising the potential contribution of risk assessment to managing complexity and assessing priorities, it argues that over-reliance on such instruments may risk understating the potential for climate-related disasters, while unintentionally increasing the real risk of failure to act effectively to adapt to inevitable change. Reliance on socio-technical devices entails a top-down approach to policy, which limits engagement with the public in deliberation about social priorities and purposes. Consequently politicians and civil servants may focus on the 'wrong' variables, misunderstand the assumptions and values built in to risk assessments, misuse their outputs, and possibly fail to act on the precautionary principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public unease that stem cell research (SCR) may be proceeding somewhat unfettered raises issues about links between trust in and regulation of science/scientists, with wider relevance to a policy drive to (re)build public trust in science. This paper analyses three themes: different objects of trust in science (individuals, institutions and wider context); links between these objects of trust and potential roles for regulation in trust building; and trust building as a performative practice. The paper draws empirically on deliberations on trust and regulation in SCR at a UK public engagement event. Our findings demonstrate that dialogic encounters between scientists and wider publics can generate considerable openness and sophistication, with participants capable of deliberating on the multifaceted nature of 'trust' and grappling with complex and challenging issues. We reflect on the circumstances in which regulation might enhance public trust in science, on the possible role of public engagement in trust building, and on calls for greater institutional reflexivity by scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of quantitative performance measures to assess the quality of university research is being introduced in Australia and the UK. This paper presents the case for maintaining a balanced approach. It argues that 'metrics' have their place, and can make the process more efficient and cost-effective, but that peer review must be retained as a central element in any research assessment exercise. The role of metrics is as 'a trigger to the recognition of anomalies', rather than as a straight replacement for peer review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999, the UK Government responded to escalating tensions surrounding biotechnology governance by creating two strategic, non-statutory advisory bodies: the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) and the Human Genetics Commission (HGC). They were designed to represent diverse stakeholder perspectives, operate transparently and engage with a variety of interested individuals and groups. This was a shift in meta-governance involving the creation of boundary organisations, discipline-bridging instruments of governance that serve to stabilise, clarify and legitimise policy advice. This paper has two main objectives: to conduct a comparative exploration of the relative success of HGC and AEBC as boundary organisations; and to test the utility of an analysis of public meeting transcripts, supplemented by interview data, in identifying factors contributing to consensus and contention in these twin Commissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of the recent changes that have occurred in the UK government defence research laboratories and the Public Private Partnership process that has created the part-private QinetiQ. This represents a major shift in the UK defence R&D system and the relationship between those defence technological capabilities that reside within QinetiQ and the principal customer for those capabilities (the Ministry of De-fence). In addition, the changes have potentially profound implications for the quality of defence-related scientific and technological advice provided to the government as well as that which supports the UK's defence and aerospace industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide one of the first cross-country empirical analyses of the intensity and diversity of knowledge exchange activities by academics. Focusing on the wide perspective of knowledge exchange, the results are based on two large-scale surveys with academics in the UK and Ireland and compare them in terms of: modes of interactions, types of partners, motivations and impacts of interactions, constraints on interactions and mission of higher education perceived by academics. It is found that academics in both countries are involved in a wide range of activities, with intellectual property activities being the interactions that they are least frequently engaged in. However, academics working at Irish and UK universities show distinct patterns of interactions with private sector companies and public sector organisations. Our analysis calls for caution over one country seeking to borrow policies from another without understanding the specific context of the higher education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the importance of early-career characteristics of academic inventors and how they affect their patenting activity. Using a novel dataset on 555 UK academic inventors, we find that the quality of the first invention is the best predictor for subsequent participation in the patenting process. We further find evidence for a positive training effect whereby researchers who were trained at universities that had already established commercialisation units patent more. In addition, researchers who gained their first patenting experience in industry are able to benefit from stronger knowledge flows and receive more citations than their purely academic peers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the performance of a research programme that sought to address issues of innovation in the water industry through the application of synthetic biology approaches to water problems. We use this analysis to re-imagine the problem of innovation in the UK water sector. Using textual, observational and interview data, we examine how a series of discourses have, over time, become firmly connected in the context of water innovation. Discourses include: conceptualisation of public actors as consumers who are ignorant of the complexities of water and its true value; and the primacy of market-based mechanisms to produce innovation. We show how these discourses shaped the expectations of academic and industry actors as they sought to use synthetic biology as a solution to industrial problems. Expecting innovation barriers of a certain form, these actors helped to construct the very thing they sought to dismantle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

UK science and policy networks increasingly advocate ‘upstream public engagement’, that is, early public deliberation around potentially controversial science and technology. In the last two decades, neuroscience has advanced considerably, and non-medical uses of brain imaging technologies (BIT) are now raising substantial concerns. The 2010 Brain Imaging Dialogue (BID) brought together scientists, health practitioners, sociologists, philosophers, ethicists, religious representatives, citizens, policy-makers and legal experts to deliberate on non-medical uses of BIT. I present the BID as a community of inquiry that sought to stimulate policy deliberation in Scotland. The paper tells the story of the process from the perspective of the public engagement practitioners who organised it, drawing lessons about the community of inquiry method and concluding with reflections on the challenges of connecting upstream engagement to ongoing policy-making. Taking cues from practitioners’ experiences, I propose an institutional mechanism for the uptake of outputs from deliberative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the way in which innovation in science policy in the UK over the last 25 years has been built around a discourse of changing preferences for modes of communication with citizens. The discussion, framed in debates and developments that deal with deliberative democracy and public engagement, draws on discourse analysis of key policy documents, statements made by members of the science policy network, and on interviews with public engagement practitioners. The relationship between science and society emerges as a 25-year old project of crisis management organised into three distinct models: public understanding of science, public engagement, and public dialogue. The analysis questions the existing narrative of progress and evolution constructed around key switch points, highlights the overwhelming influence of public understanding of science approaches, and attends to the question of the viability of public dialogue as the mainstream activity in science communication and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions of timing, phasing and sequence have been central to recent critiques of science policy-making, which have highlighted sustained disjunctures between the relevance and importance given to different stakeholders at different moments in the policy-making process. In this paper we expand upon this recent 'upstream/downstream' literature through a case study analysis of xenotransplantation (XTP), one of the defining controversies of 1990s UK biotechnology regulation. Drawing on insights from the sociology of expectations we trace the emergence of a UK policy narrative concerning the future of XTP and explore how the policy role became narrowly defined as a process of 'reflex regulation', based upon technologically determinist assumptions and producing extremely short-term decision-making. We draw attention to the concrete costs of this delineation of the policy role and reveal that it is neither inevitable or necessary, by considering contrasts between the policy temporalities of the UK, Canada and the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper updates to 2006 material first gathered in the late 1990s. Though Germany has about the same number of firms as the UK its biotechnology economy is far weaker, with many small firms employing few people, relatively low venture capital investment and little interest being shown by pharmaceuticals companies in licensing intellectual property. The reverse is the case in the UK even though the investor euphoria at the time of the first comparative study has not returned. A new policy of 'entrepreneurship outsourcing' has become visible in the UK as venture capital perceives a better business climate for biotechnology entrepreneurship in the USA. Recent developments of this kind may add to debilitating European problems, loosening more proximate links within national and regional innovation systems widely perceived as highly important elements in biotechnology cluster performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists in academia have struggled to adjust to a policy climate of uncertain funding and loss of freedom from direction and control. How UK life scientists have negotiated this challenge, and with what consequences for their research and the research system, is the empirical entrance point of this paper. We find that policy impacts can be modulated and buffered by strategies and compromises devised and deployed at research performer level. This shifts conceptualisation from terms of responses to one of more or less proactive strategies of scientists and science organisations which add up, intentionally or unintentionally, to shifts in the overall system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1994 and 2001, Unilever engaged in dialogue with environmental and consumer nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in the UK over questions raised by the commercialisation of genetically modified foods. This initiative took the form of a 'Contact Group', which allowed members from the company and the NGOs to develop close working relations. Through this group, Unilever sponsored academic social science research into public attitudes to genetically modified foods. This paper explores how Unilever sought to reframe its relations with consumers using the concept of 'consumer-citizens', which had emerged from the work of the Contact Group. This term acknowledges that consumers can reflect on their relationship with companies such as Unilever in citizen-like ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the interests and strategies of the academic researcher as agent in the research and science policy system. It looks in particular at the UK context, and the structural and operational features that mitigate principal--agent tensions and allow academic 'agents' considerable freedom of action. It examines how academics themselves perceive their role, whether they exhibit classic agent behaviour and what they are observably doing. This latter includes some strategies to deal with problems (complementary to those besetting the principal) inherent to the situation of agent. Possible implications are discussed for the conduct of research and the sustainability of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, governments have increasingly employed expert assessments and formal decision-making technologies. While these promise objectivity and transparency, they are just as likely to buffer decisions from public scrutiny. Countries such as Britain and the United States have experienced a sharp decline in electoral participation. Social scientists have responded with participatory techniques to resituate the non-expert citizen at the heart of decision making. This paper explores three specific problems with such methods: evaluation; representation; and agenda setting. It concludes that participatory techniques may have significant potential to inform and supplement representative democracy. However, under current arrangements, it is impossible for them to escape political-cultural constraints that reduce complex moral and aesthetic issues to scientific framings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal impact of academic research has become a central concern of contemporary science policies. As key players in the higher education sector, universities play a crucial role in translating policy into organizational strategies, which then have the potential to shape academics' practices. This article investigates the influence that universities may have on academics' impact practices. We employ an analytical framework that combines a novel method for studying university impact strategies, sense-making theory, and insights from literature on impact. Our data consist of interviews with sixteen philosophers and anthropologists working across four universities in the Netherlands and the UK. We find that, in response to organizational goals and Human Resource Management policies, academics report changing their impact practices. We call for universities to use their influence responsibly in order to enable a broad range of impact practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple institutional affiliations (or co-affiliations) occur when an academic belongs to more than one organisation. Recent research shows an increase in academics with multiple affiliations, but evidence on how these are organised and on academics' motivations is mainly anecdotal. In this study we develop a typology of co-affiliations, which identifies four types based on their purpose and origin. We draw on results from a unique international survey of academics in three major science nations (the UK, Germany, and Japan) to study the different factors that could explain the four types of co-affiliations. The analysis shows that academics' motivations (networking/prestige, resources, teaching, or personal income) correlate with the observed co-affiliation type. Researcher-initiated and research-focussed co-affiliations are often motivated by networking and resource access while co-affiliations that serve other than research purposes are more often income-motivated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact assessments in grant applications can be biased, random, or inconsistent. One reason is that there is not a framework to assist the review process. To develop fair and transparent evaluative criteria, it is necessary to understand what kinds of outcome and impact can reasonably be achieved and expected. Using content analysis, 100 UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 impact case studies were analysed based on the definition of the output, outcome, and impact in the logic model. The analysis shows that (1) outcomes and medium-term impacts, not long-term impacts, are reported in the case studies, (2) impacts can be categorised as use and experience based, and (3) there is a need to recognise the creation and co-creation of impacts. A framework for impact evaluation in grant applications has been developed. In this framework, the criteria for evaluating impact statements focus on process-oriented impacts and that 'impacts' can be outputs, outcomes, and medium-term impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While public research organisations (PROs) are increasingly expected to transfer knowledge to businesses and other stakeholders, their engagement in knowledge transfer (KT) activities is still under-researched. Better understanding of PROs' KT engagement, including how it is shaped by PROs' organisational characteristics, could lead to better tailored policies in support to PROs' effort to transfer knowledge. We develop a conceptual framework linking PROs' specialisation in different fields of knowledge to their profiles of KT engagement and validate it empirically using a six-year panel data set of 33 PROs in the UK. We use multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques to identify three distinct KT profiles, which are stable over time, and strongly associated with the PROs' knowledge field specialisation. We argue that these profiles may depend on the different market readiness and user specificity of knowledge outputs arising from different fields of knowledge and derive implications for theory, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biobanks as collections of population level genetic and health data will be central to the innovation of new drugs and drug targets. The UK Biobank, funded by massive public and charitable investment, was created to store and manage the genetic and health data of over 500,000 people in the UK. The UK Biobank will be available to researchers from both private and public sectors, and is intended to support innovation and serve the public good. We argue that the UK Biobank faces a dilemma in that the knowledge generated is potentially commercialisable and patentable. As knowledge resulting it is transformed into excludable or private goods by scarcity and patenting, it is subject to the tragedies of commons and anti-commons. We question whether the current ethics and governance framework can ensure that benefits will optimally accrue to the public who have funded and contributed samples to the resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In making better use of research to inform environmental policy, advisers and policy people in UK government departments and agencies face a number of challenges, as do researchers and experts. Interviews and a workshop revealed that the challenges in obtaining information from environmental research to inform policy mostly arise from the different social structures and cultures of the researchers and advisers/policy people. They also identified potential solutions that enable social interaction and that increase shared understanding of the different cultures. Examples include more opportunities for advisers, policy people, researchers and experts to meet and maintain contact and improved availability and accessibility of policy-relevant research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea for this special issue arose from observing contrary developments in the design of national research assessment schemes in the UK and Australia during 2006 and 2007. Alternative pathways were being forged, determined, on the one hand, by the perceived relative merits of 'metrics' (quantitative measures of research performance) and peer judgement and, on the other hand, by the value attached to scientific excellence ('quality') versus usefulness ('impact'). This special issue presents a broad range of provocative academic opinion on preferred future pathways for science policy and research assessment. It unpacks the apparent dichotomies of metrics vs peer review and quality vs impact, and considers the hazards of adopting research evaluation policies in isolation from wider developments in scientometrics (the science of research evaluation) and divorced from the practical experience of other nations (policy learning). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst there are increasing and welcome efforts to bring the public into decision making about risk, the underlying shaping of the science agenda remains closed to public scrutiny. Therefore, when debating the questions over new technologies, the kinds of knowledge the public requests may not have been gathered. The goal of wealth generation underlying the UK's science programme may not allow for public interest questions to be addressed. Science's institutions enforce a notion of good science which also excludes wider questions. To address the dislocation of science from the public, there needs to be civil society engagement with setting the research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual property rights are key to the translation of discoveries into clinical use in personalised medicine. This article explores the interaction of intellectual property rights, specifically patents, with the field of genomic personalised medicine, through empirical work investigating the role that patents play in the development and delivery of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Single gene testing (SGT) and NIPT represent examples of two different types of innovation likely to be important in personalised medicine, and which operate differently in terms of how the law is applied in practice. In SGT, on the one hand, previous studies demonstrate that patents have little impact on practice for those developing genetic tests in the public sector in the UK because they are largely ignored. In contrast, however, this qualitative interview study finds that law and law-in-practice in NIPT are much more convergent than found in SGT. Those involved in the development and delivery of NIPT are more aware of patents, and balance the costs and benefits of greater engagement or compliance with patent law, in relation to factors such as freedom to operate, litigation, and licensing, in favour of compliance. Compliance can take different forms; licensing is compliance, as is forbearance from using a patented invention in the absence of a patent licence. This article explores the factors relevant to patent law compliance in NIPT, and further considers the implications for the field of personalised medicine. It argues that, as the prevalent means to promote openness, access, and affordability in biomedicine are founded on the existing legal structures of intellectual property rights, such solutions will only be effective and adopted when these existing legal structures of intellectual property law are recognised and respected in the relevant field. It is therefore essential that such solutions only be deployed with a nuanced understanding of the operation of the law-in-practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent moves towards incentivising 'impact' within the research funding system pose a growing challenge to academic research practices, charged with producing both scientific, and social impact. This article explores this tension by drawing on interviews with sixty-one UK academics and policymakers involved in publicly-funded knowledge exchange initiatives. The experiences of the interviewed academics point to a functional separation of academic practices into three distinct types: producing traditional research, translating research, and producing policy-oriented research. These three types of practices differ in terms of both the epistemic qualities of the produced knowledge and its legitimacy as valid academic work. Overall, the article argues that the relationship between relevance and excellence of research within the impact agenda is characterised by simultaneous contradiction and co-dependence, leading to hybridisation of academic knowledge production and expansion of the boundaries of policy expertise into the traditionally-academic spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the social sustainability of emerging technologies are identified as a motivation behind recent interest in public engagement as a mode of formal technology assessment, nanoscale science and technology (NST) being a key example. Two rival understandings of engagement as a contribution to social sustainability, namely 'restoring trust' and 'building robustness' are identified. These different approaches are analysed as strategic responses to the politics of uncertainty in technological societies, each reflecting different assumptions about how to domesticate an intrinsically uncertain future. Government-sponsored experiments with upstream engagement around NST in the UK were surrounded by rhetoric concerning the need to build robustness into how nanotechnologies develop. It is argued, however, that assumptions held by policy and business actors about the strategic value of narratives of restoring trust, together with deeply embedded assumptions about how technological innovation creates the future, tended to place obstacles in the way of turning this aspiration into reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been considerable interest in public participation in new and controversial technologies in the last two decades, less attention has been paid to how different 'publics' and 'participation' are constructed and defined in the context of policy development and the contingencies (historical, cultural, and situational) that can contextualize these processes. This study examines the development of xenotransplantation policy in the US, Canada and the UK in order to understand the emergence of different publics and versions of participation in the social appraisal of a controversial biomedical technology. By examining publics in invited arenas and those that operate in public spaces outside of these official rooms (paying special attention to animal rights and welfare groups), we suggest that a broader understanding can be gained of the nuances in policy trajectories. Contrasting experiences in three case countries with close cultural and historical traditions further elucidate the nature of the framing activities of policy-makers around public participation and the boundary work around different practices that emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, policy discourse has placed much emphasis on the patenting of the outcomes of academic research. However, universities produce a wide variety of intellectual property (IP), not all of which is suitable for patenting, or which the universities may choose not to patent. Building upon an original survey of 46 universities in the UK, we investigate the extent to which universities exchange several forms of IP (patents, copyright, open source IP, non-patented innovations), whether they are used as complements or substitutes, how relatively effective and efficient they are in allowing universities to reach certain objectives (relating to knowledge transfer, competitive positioning, knowledge creation/innovation and financial income). The results challenge the view, which underpins legislation such as the Bayh-Dole Act and similar provisions now adopted in most OECD countries, that patents are the most effective route for knowledge dissemination in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the intervention to generate structural innovations and with it the structural interaction between organisation actors can be understood as attempts to tackle system failures in innovation systems, mainly as regards networking and actor capabilities. However, these interventions are challenging, they often rest on simplistic assumptions on interaction and networking needs and potentially generate dysfunctional systemic effects. These challenges are discussed using illustrations of structural innovations to improve industry-academic collaborations in the UK and Germany. The article then concludes with a conceptual and policy discussion of opportunities, challenges and unintended consequences of deliberate structural innovation and intervention in structural interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite many attempts to develop high-impact venture capital (VC) policies, most VC markets in Europe are still underdeveloped. Many of these policies were based on 'traditional' (Rosiello et al, 2009) VC policy involving a mix of monetary incentives and institutional changes. In this article, we present an alternative evolutionary VC policy, which is based on a dynamic analysis of emergence processes and on the co-evolution between VC and entrepreneurship, as well as on a dynamic and adaptive view of policy. The article presents four case studies of VC development: Israel, UK, Scotland, and Germany. Evolutionary VC policies rely on few major factors: i) a strategic objective and a long-term commitment to enhancing VC market and high-tech cluster emergence and development, ii) a phased-policy portfolio including both direct and indirect VC-policy components, and iii) a dynamic policy process, which is adaptive to the specific context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical uncertainty, political controversy and public distrust in emerging areas of science and technology is fuelling moves towards new forms of governance centred on ex ante or 'upstream' public and stakeholder engagement with policy. Yet how is such deliberation and inclusion to be achieved in contentious national policy processes? We present a contextual framework that seeks to understand this question better and use it to reflect on two high-profile UK examples of 'new governance' in genetic modification and radioactive waste management. In doing this, we argue for: better definition of who/what is represented in such processes; mixed methodologies both to integrate analytic-deliberative dimensions and address questions of representative-ness; and more systematic evaluation of the outputs and outcomes of appraisal processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically investigates the role 'genetic exceptionalism' and precautionary politics played in the British policy process that resulted in a moratorium on insurers' rights to use certain types of genetic information in underwriting decisions. The article evaluates the recommendations of key advisory committees and regulatory bodies as they tried to construct fair and pragmatic policies in a context of great social, commercial and technological uncertainty. It suggests that in trying to meet the needs of political expediency - responding to broader concern that access to life assurance might be significantly restricted in an age of increased genetic knowledge - policy-makers and regulators marginalised evidence that negated fears of an emerging genetic underclass by adopting a precautionary approach to genetic risk and exclusion [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments play a crucial role in contemporary policy-making, yet their political and epistemological dimensions have been neglected in studies of regulatory practice. This article offers an initial examination of the uses of experiments in regulation. It analyses two examples: the partial release of genetically modified organisms in the UK Farm-Scale Evaluations, and the unleashing of option contracts in the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. We analyze both cases in terms of the dialectic they institute between the 'experimental gap' created to observe these regulatory objects under controlled conditions, and the need to 'project' the experimental evidence onto the world at large. In our two examples, experiments fail to produce a final consensus or definitive certainty, but serve to translate conflicts into amenable forms of uncertainty. Regulatory experiments should thus be seen as tests on the governability of new objects, and should be open to further scrutiny by interested parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the United Kingdom (UK) has no explicit ban on genetically modified (GM) crops, by mid-2005 cultivation of GM crops has uncertain prospects. The UK has taken a 'precautionary approach' that has engaged policy actors in a participatory process going beyond usual regulatory procedures. It has involved a less formal procedure than that advocated by the European Commission's guidelines on precaution. Attempts to accommodate diverse perspectives in a policy decision for GM crops have engaged policy actors in a learning process that raised broader questions concerning agriculture more generally. It has highlighted the need for flexible policy measures, particularly at the European level. However, this process may undermine, rather than help to achieve, the stated Government aim, which is to restore public confidence in science as the basis for policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]