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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. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

National research priorities are often the outcome of negotiations between multiple research stakeholders. These stakeholders include groups of research ‘users’, which means that the negotiation processes are no longer controlled by ‘science’. In this paper, we explore the use of the ideographic term ‘users’ in the discourse surrounding the negotiation processes between a New Zealand funding agency, a research institute and an industry body. The case study highlights the implications of translating the ideographic user collective, as it appears in policy, into an individual representative to participate in a negotiation process. The design of negotiation processes should, therefore, recognize that ‘ideal’ user representation may be an unobtainable goal. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.