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National governments spend significant amounts of money supporting public research. However, in an era where the international economic climate has led to budget cuts, policymakers increasingly are looking to justify the returns from public investments, including in science and innovation. The so-called 'impact agenda' which has emerged in many countries around the world is part of this response; an attempt to understand and articulate for the public what benefits arise from the research that is funded. The United Kingdom is the most progressed in implementing this agenda and in 2014 the national research assessment exercise, the Research Excellence Framework, for the first time included the assessment of research impact as a component. For the first time within a dual funding system, funding would be awarded not only on the basis of the academic quality of research, but also on the wider impacts of that research. In this paper we outline the context and approach taken by the UK government, along with some of the core challenges that exist in implementing such an exercise. We then synthesise, together for the first time, the results of the only two national evaluations of the exercise and offer reflections for future exercises both in the UK and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer review of manuscripts is labour‐intensive and time‐consuming. Individual reviewers might feel themselves overburdened with the amount of reviewing they are requested to do. Aiming to explore how stakeholder groups perceive reviewing burden and what they believe to be the causes of a potential overburdening of reviewers, we conducted focus groups with early‐, mid‐, and senior career scholars, editors, and publishers. By means of a thematic analysis, we aimed to identify the causes of overburdening of reviewers. First, we show that, across disciplines and roles, stakeholders believed that the reviewing burden is distributed unequally across members of the academic community, resulting in the overburdening of small groups of reviewers. Second, stakeholders believed this to be caused by (i) an increase in manuscript submissions; (ii) inefficient manuscript handling; (iii) lack of institutionalization of peer review; (iv) lack of reviewing instructions and (v) inadequate reviewer recruiting strategies. These themes were assumed to relate to an inadequate incentive structure in academia that favours publications over peer review. In order to alleviate reviewing burden, a holistic approach is required that addresses both the increased demand for and the insufficient supply of reviewing resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholders might have diverging or conflicting expectations about the functions that peer review should fulfil. We aimed to explore how stakeholder groups perceive peer review and what they expect from it. We conducted qualitative focus group workshops with early‐, mid‐, and senior career scholars, editors, and publishers. We recruited participants following a purposive maximum variation sampling approach. To identify purposes of peer review, we conducted a thematic analysis. Stakeholders expected peer review (1) to assess the contributions of a manuscript, (2) to conduct quality control, (3) to improve manuscripts, (4) to assess the suitability of manuscripts for a journal, (5) to provide a decision‐making tool for editors, (6) to provide feedback by peers, (7) to curate a community, and (8) to provide a seal of accreditation for published articles. Stakeholders with different roles and tasks in the peer review process differed in the value they attached to the functions of peer review. Early‐ and mid‐career researchers valued social and feedback functions of peer review, while senior career researchers and editors expected it to instead perform a technical assessment of manuscripts and serve as a decision‐making tool. Publishers expected peer review to assess the suitability of manuscripts for their journals and to provide a seal of accreditation. This revealed a potential tension between functions of peer review. Stakeholder expectations are shaped by how stakeholders perceive their own roles both in relation to the peer review process and within their scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a sector characterised by patenting, direct appropriations and returns from investment, the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) constitutes a radically different public-private and entirely open access approach to pre-competitive research. This paper discusses the significance of findings from the first independent review of the SGC. We argue that the SGC offers a shared knowledge resource for drug discovery which is distinctive from other types of knowledge production and, as such, provides a knowledge infrastructure for the wider scientific community. We distinguish three ways in which this infrastructure functions as a model for investing in, extracting value from, and generating knowledge for the field. Our analysis suggests there is a future for open science models such as the SGC in health research and innovation, but that such models raise a set of challenges over the role of different public and private institutional actors and the way in which value is extracted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare systems with limited resources face rising demand pressures. Healthcare decision-makers increasingly recognise the potential of innovation to help respond to this challenge and to support high-quality care. However, comprehensive and actionable evidence on how to realise this potential is lacking. We adopt sociotechnical systems and innovation systems theoretical perspectives to examine conditions that can support and sustain innovating healthcare systems. We use primary data focussing on England (with 670 contributions over time) and triangulate findings against globally-relevant literature. We discuss the complexity of factors influencing an innovating healthcare system's ability to support the development and uptake of innovations and share practical learning about changes in policy, culture, and behaviour that could support system improvement. Three themes are examined in detail: skills, capabilities, and leadership; motivations and accountabilities; and collaboration and coordination. We also contribute to advancing applications of sociotechnical systems thinking to major societal transformation challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions linking social needs with new technologies have continued to be raised but only very recently have they begun to occupy more of the centre-stage in innovation policy debates. In this narrative review, we draw from innovation and health systems literature and thinking to trace and analyse the deployment and uptake of innovative point-of-care testing in the early infant diagnosis of HIV in Zimbabwe, one of 15 UNITAID supported early adopter countries. Following a literature review and discussions with policy-makers in Zimbabwe, we distil key lessons from this implementation context and delineate the implications of our findings for the debates on new technological and socio-economic approaches and the health systems strengthening agenda in low-middle income countries (LMICs). We conclude this article by proposing new avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents recent trends in science funding support in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We analyse these trends at the SSA regional level alongside a summary of four case studies of science funding in four Science Granting Councils (SGCs) in East Africa. Our findings support the literature on science funding in SSA regarding low levels of funding, cross-country engagement, and the need for capacity building. However, we also find there are tensions among funding and policy actors around the perceived ways in which investment in science will benefit society. We argue that the narratives and logics of science funders and their roots in 'Republic of Science' vs. 'Embedded Autonomy' rationales for SGC activity must be more transparent to enable critical engagement with the ideas being used to justify spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing policy demand for real-time evaluations of research and capacity-building programmes reflecting a recognition of the management, governance and impact gains that can result. However, the evidence base on how to successfully implement real-time evaluations of complex interventions in international development efforts is scarce. There is therefore a need for reflective work that considers methodologies in context. This article shares learning from the experience of conducting a participatory, real-time, ‘theory driven’ evaluation of the African Institutions Initiative, a Wellcome Trust-funded programme that aimed to build sustainable health research capacity in Africa at institutional and network levels, across seven research consortia. We reflect on the key challenges experienced and ways of managing them, highlight opportunities and critical success factors associated with this evaluation approach, compared with alternative evaluation approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networked models are often proposed as a means to enhance health research capacity-building in Africa. This paper addresses a knowledge gap on what works and does not in capacity-building in African research settings. It provides an analysis of how multi-partner networks are built and how their success depends on building institutional level capacity-strengthening within partner institutions. To do this, the paper focuses on the Wellcome Trust's African Institutions initiative, drawing on initial learning and evaluation project data. We identify priority areas for policy attention and share emerging early insights on mechanisms and strategies being implemented by consortia to address key challenges. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open innovation has gained increased attention as a potential paradigm for improving innovation performance. This paper addresses crowdsourcing, an under-researched type of open innovation that is often enabled by the web. We focus on a type of crowdsourcing where financial rewards exist, where a crowd is tasked with solving problems which solution seekers anticipate to be empirically provable, but where the source of solutions is uncertain and addressing the challenge in-house perceived to be too high-risk. There is a growing recourse to crowdsourcing, but we really know little about its effectiveness, best practices, challenges and implications. We consider the shift to more open innovation trajectories over time, define crowdsourcing as an open innovation model, and clarify how crowdsourcing differs from other types of 'open' innovation (e.g. outsourcing and open-source). We explore who is crowdsourcing and how, looking at the potential diversity and core features and variables implicated in crowdsourcing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural biotechnology is typically analyzed critically by means of a political ecological focus on the science and its ecological implications – agbio science as a radical, and ‘non-natural’, break with ‘normal’ trajectories for ‘new plant science’. Surprisingly, less attention has been paid to a range of key political economic issues, many of which were important in the last big food production technology ‘revolution’, the Green Revolution. This paper will focus on three areas of political economy. First, we discuss the corporate drivers of agricultural biotechnology, and examine whether these drivers have already set the technology so that it cannot be changed. Second, we investigate the present economics and technology of genetic modification in plants, and its possible future. Third, we examine empirical evidence for alternative visions of the technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction of the periodical is presented where the editor discusses several articles published in the issue including one on Enhancing the role of knowledge and innovation for development by Watu Wamae, another on Societal beliefs, scientific technologies and HIV/AIDS in Africa by Susan M. Kilonzo and colleagues and another on improving access to health technologies to prevent Malaria in Africa by Rebecca Hanlin and colleagues.

Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of global R&D occurring in low-income economies rose from 2 per cent to more than 20 per cent. However, this rising commitment to R&D does not easily translate into the emergence of a family of innovations meeting the needs of low-income consumers ‘at the bottom of the pyramid’, since much of these technological resources are invested in outdated structures of innovation. A number of transnational corporations are targeting these markets, but it is our contention that much of the previously dominant innovation value chains are either ignorant of the needs of consumers at the bottom of the pyramid or lack the technologies and organizational structures to meet these needs effectively. Instead, the firms and value chains which are likely to be most successful in these dynamic new markets are those which are emerging in China and India and other developing countries, disrupting global corporate and locational hierarchies of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Brain drain' is viewed as a curse for developing countries but analysis suggests it may provide crucial advantage to some countries. 'Reverse brain drain' of engineers and scientists trained in the USA or Europe can accelerate technological catch-up. Communities of returned scientists and engineers can provide skill and know-how to help local firms shift to higher value-added activities. However, transfer of knowledge through human mobility is not a straightforward process. This paper presents insights regarding diffusion of knowledge through migration of scientific labour, using case studies of innovative Indian pharmaceutical firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to think about participation not as an event but rather as part of an effort to build systems and institutions in science, technology and innovation in developing countries. It uses two notions of participation, one as a mechanism to facilitate democracy and broader control and another as a means to achieve development goals. The article looks at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and in particular considers the way in which more grassroots participation is linked to communications strategy in the IAVI's case. It argues that examining the extent to which participation efforts are embedded in broader communication strategies may be important in distinguishing between ways in which participation is deployed and used, and it distinguishes between 'communication for participation' and 'participation for communication'. The article also explores Hirschman's ideas around 'exit', 'voice' and 'loyalty' and innovation systems as frameworks, which help to situate participation in the broader context of institutional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some industrially advanced developing countries have, in the last decades, built substantial pharmaceutical scientific and industrial capabilities. The more advanced of these countries have built chemical and biological R&D, generic and reverse engineering, and drug discovery capabilities. There have been tremendous barriers to entry but nevertheless a range of imitative approaches have evolved, with some significant scientific, health and industrial advances. Opportunities in India are in part created by the problems of maturity being faced by big pharmaceutical firms in developed countries. Big pharmaceutical firms are searching for novel approaches to retain a high value-added model of innovation for drug development. These difficulties provide opportunities for innovative companies in developing countries. This paper explores the challenges faced under these circumstances by Indian pharmaceutical companies. Are they attempting to 'catch-up' by chasing a failing model of innovation? Do they have an alternative model? Or can they become an important part of a transformed new global model of pharmaceutical innovation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how Indian pharmaceutical firms have transformed themselves from reverse-engineering firms focused on the domestic market to research-driven firms with global presence. It analyses the crucial and changing role of national, then international, innovation and regulatory policies and their impact on growth, performance and technology evolution of Indian pharmaceutical firms. The paper argues that although public policy increased market turbulence, it also provided new opportunities for firms to expand and build new technology, knowledge and market capabilities. From the 1950s Indian firms have pursued a variety of research, marketing and internationalization strategies to tackle changes prompted by policy, markets and knowledge complexities. The paper traces firm strategies that vary both in time and by firm, and argues that the successful firms have evolved substantively towards knowledge-based strategies. The paper then attempts to identify future directions for strategy, knowledge and markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the development of pharmaceutical industry before and after the implementation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in India. They cite that between 1950s to 1960s the industry has a weak growth due to multinational company subsidiaries while in 1970s it has massive changes because of the government policy. The TRIPS legislation has driven transformations in the industry that lead to global competitiveness.

The article introduces various topics related to vaccine development in developing countries.

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This article introduces several papers which focused on the promotion of innovation, productivity and industrial growth to address poverty problems.

The question of how to build science and technology (S&T) capacity in Africa has been on and off the agenda for decades, as has the issue of how to use partnerships to accelerate capacity building. Recent policy proposals have focused on expanding S&T capacity but have emphasized less the need for a rigorous rethink about how science, technology and innovation can be better organized for development. This paper aims to assess, using evidence from recent cases, the importance of new theories and practices based on the role of innovation and knowledge systems. The paper argues that lessons can be learned from transformations in research policy and from practices that better integrate new ideas from innovation, knowledge and development. It focuses on the changes required for science, technology and innovation to be accepted as key for the alleviation of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multinational companies in the life science sector are heavily influenced by government policies and regulations and in turn attempt to influence these actors nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on recent and on-going research, principally on the agro-biotechnology and, to a lesser extent, on the pharmaceutical industries, covering the evolution of policy and regulation in Europe, how policies are influenced by stakeholder pressures and how policy in turn influences company strategies for product development. We focus particularly on new ‘governance’ agendas in Europe and consider the relative impacts of enabling, constraining, discriminating and indiscriminate policies on company strategies as part of our development of an integrated approach to policy and governance. We also consider changes in external operating environments for multinational companies and compare past histories and present pressures on agro-biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The paper argues, with evidence, that a more enabling and discriminating policy and regulatory environment can achieve public goals more efficiently and effectively, taking account of impacts on innovation, than more blunt policy instruments. This type of environment takes into account the resources and capabilities available to firms and research laboratories rather than relying on broad brush carrot and stick approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biotechnology represents hope for those who believe that new technology can contribute to overcoming a range of pressing productivity and environmental constraints facing poor farmers. Pouring money into the science and technology however without recognizing institutional and systemic complexities associated with creating ‘pro-poor’ technologies is unlikely to deliver much for those farmers. Moreover, there are a range of economic and political contextual factors which further complicate efforts to put the technology to use for poorer farmers. This article outlines some of the issues and possible new approaches which are discussed in more detail in later articles in this special issue. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the relationship between knowledge management and development. First it highlights the ways knowledge has become a major issue and why it matters, arguing the danger of oversimplifying its application as the new panacea for development. The paper then emphasizes the need to understand better institutional and industrial change processes through detailed investigation of production transformations ‘on the ground’. The paper suggest that knowledge-based industrialization demands a change in the ways we think about development and in policies to promote industrialization, focusing on issues of knowledge transfer, local knowledge and institutions, and knowledge management. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the management of agriculture and food-related biotechnology. Issue of firm management; Importance of technology in the operation; Advantage of biotechnology firms.

Examines the status of biotechnology-based innovations in Europe. Applications of biotechnology in agricultural and food-related industries; Existence of revolutionary techno-economic paradigm shifts; Motivations underlying the statements about the revolutionary nature of biotechnology.

The article comments on the progress of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals in eradicating poverty and hunger through crop biotechnology partnership in sub-Saharan Africa. This is one of the eight goals set by the organization with the specific target of alleviating poverty by 50 percent between 1990 and 2015. Reports and analyses conducted showed that food production is way behind its population growth due to poor governance, poverty, plant diseases and calamities.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the editorial on the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development Report published in the March 2008 issue.