Tag: research

A more focused research system does not by itself solve structural deficits

Financial pressures across the higher education sector have necessitated a closer look at the various incomes and associated costs of the research, teaching and operational streams. For years, larger institutions have relied upon the cross-subsidy of their research, primarily from overseas student fees – a subsidy that is under threat from changes in geopolitics and indeed our own UK policies on immigration and visa controls.

The UK is now between a rock and a hard place: how can it support the volume and focus of research needed to grow the knowledge-based economy of our UK industrial strategy, while also addressing the financial deficits that even the existing levels of research create?

Several research leaders have recently been suggesting that a more efficient research system is one where higher education institutions focus on their strengths and collaborate more. But while acknowledging that efficiency savings are required and the relentless growth of bureaucracy – partly imposed by government but also self-inflicted within the HEIs – can be addressed, the funding gulf is far wider than these savings could possibly deliver.

Efficiency savings alone will not solve the scale of structural deficits in the system. Furthermore, given that grant application success rates are systemically below 20 per cent and frequently below ten or even five per cent, the sector is already only funding its strongest applications. Fundamentally, currently demand far outstrips supply, leading to inefficiency and poor prioritisation decisions.

Since most of the research costs are those supporting the salaries and student stipends of the researchers themselves, significant cost-cutting necessitates a reduction in the size of the research workforce – a reduction that would fly in the face of our future workforce requirement. We could leave this inevitable reduction to market forces, but the resulting disinvestment will likely impact the resource intensive subjects upon which much of our future economic growth depends.

We recognise also that solutions cannot solely rely upon the public purse. So, what could we do now to improve both the efficiency of our state research spend and third-party investment into the system?

What gets spent

First of all, the chronic underfunding of the teaching of UK domestic students cannot continue, as it puts even further pressure on institutional resources. The recent index-linking of fees in England was a brave step to address this, but to maintain a viable UK research and innovation system, the other UK nations will also urgently need to address the underfunding of teaching. And in doing so we must remain mindful of the potential unintended consequences that increased fees might have on socio-economic exclusion.

Second, paying a fair price for the research we do. Much has been made of the seemingly unrestricted “quality-related” funding (QR, or REG in Scotland) driven by the REF process. The reality is that QR simply makes good the missing component of research funding which through TRAC analysis is now estimated to cover less than 70 per cent of the true costs of the research.

It ought to be noted that this missing component exists over all the recently announced research buckets extending across curiosity-driven, government-priority, and scale-up support. The government must recognise that QR is not purely the funding of discovery research, but rather it is the dual funding of research in general – and that the purpose of dual funding is to tension delivery models to ensure HEI efficiency of delivery.

Next, there is pressing a need for UKRI to focus resource on the research most likely to lead to economic or societal benefit. This research spans all disciplines from the hardest of sciences to the most creative of the arts.

Although these claims are widely made within every grant proposal, perhaps the best evidence of their validity lies in the co-investment these applications attract. We note the schemes such as EPSRC’s prosperity partnerships and their quantum technology hubs show that when packaged to encompass a range of technology readiness levels (TRL), industry is willing to support both low and high TRL research.

We would propose that across UKRI more weighting is given to those applications supported by matching funds from industry or, in the case of societal impact, by government departments or charities. The next wave of matched co-funding of local industry-linked innovation should also privilege schemes which elicit genuine new industry investment, as opposed to in-kind funding, as envisaged in Local Innovation Partnership Funds. This avoids increasing research volume which is already not sustainable.

The research workforce

In recent times, the UKRI budgets and funding schemes for research and training (largely support for doctoral students) have been separated from each other. This can mean that the work of doctoral students is separated from the cutting-edge research that they were once the enginehouse of delivering. This decoupling means that the research projects themselves now require allocated, and far more expensive, post-doctoral staff to deliver. We see nothing in the recent re-branding of doctoral support to “landscape” and “focal” awards that is set to change this disconnect.

It should be acknowledged that centres for doctoral training were correctly introduced nearly 20 years ago to ensure our students were better trained and better supported – but we would argue that the sector has now moved on and graduate schools within our leading HEIs address these needs without need for duplication by doctoral centres.

Our proposal would be that, except for a small number of specific areas and initiatives supported by centres of doctoral training (focal awards) and central to the UK’s skills need, the normal funding of UKRI-supported doctoral students should be associated with projects funded by UKRI or other sources external to higher education institutions. This may require the reassignment of recently pooled training resources back to the individual research councils, rebalanced to meet national needs.

This last point leads to the question of what the right shape of the HEI-based research-focused workforce is. We would suggest that emphasis should be placed on increasing the number of graduate students – many of whom aspire to move on from the higher education sector after their graduation to join the wider workforce – rather than post-doctoral researchers who (regrettably) mistakenly see their appointment as a first step to a permanent role in a sector which is unlikely to grow.

Post-doctoral researchers are of course vital to the delivery of some research projects and comprise the academic researchers of the future. Emerging research leaders should continue to be supported through, for example, future research leader fellowships, empowered to pursue their own research ambitions. This rebalancing of the research workforce will go some way to rebalancing supply and demand.

Organisational change

Higher education institutions are hotbeds of creativity and empowerment. However, typical departments have an imbalanced distribution of research resources where appointment and promotion criteria are linked to individual grant income. While not underestimating the important leadership roles this implies, we feel that research outcomes would be better delivered through internal collaborations of experienced researchers where team science brings complementary skills together in partnership rather than subservience.

This change in emphasis requires institutions to consider their team structures and HR processes. It also requires funders to reflect these changes in their assessment criteria and selection panel working methods. Again, this rebalancing of the research workforce would go some way to addressing supply and demand while improving the delivery of the research we fund.

None of these suggestions represent a quick fix for our financial pressures, which need to be addressed. But taken together we believe them to be a supportive step, helping stabilise the financial position of the sector, while ensuring its continuing contribution to the UK economy and society. If we fail to act, the UK risks a disorderly reduction of its research capability at precisely the moment our global competitors are accelerating.

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January 5, 2026
Why the UK should commercialise research for social good – not just profit
Author:

Huw Vasey

Published:

23 December 2025
This blog was kindly authored by Huw Vasey, a Principal Consultant at Oxentia.

For the past six years, I’ve worked across sectors to build an ecosystem that supports the commercialisation of research for social impact – not just profit. While existing schemes don’t exclude social outcomes, they’re primarily designed to attract funding for expensive technological or medical innovations. This often sidelines social value, which rarely offers a high financial return.

Focusing on SHAPE disciplines – Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy – has opened new possibilities. Unlike tech or biomedical innovations, SHAPE commercialisation typically involves service and process innovation, rarely includes protectable IP, and is often rooted in the deep expertise of a small group of researchers. These ventures are quicker to bring to market and require far fewer resources. This creates a unique opportunity: innovations with high social impact can scale sustainably, as long as they generate enough revenue to support themselves, without needing the kind of mega-investment required for a new drug or device.

A common counterargument is that SHAPE academics aren’t interested in commercialisation. They see their work as a public good, not something to be monetised. However, recent programmes have shown that interest grows when incentives shift. Initiatives like the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Healthy Ageing Catalyst, the ARC Accelerator, the SHAPE Catalyst, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Food Systems Catalyst have drawn hundreds of SHAPE academics into commercialisation by offering a pathway to scale and sustain the impact of their research.

So, we have a growing pipeline. But why should society at large embrace research commercialisation for social value?

The case for SHAPE commercialisation: real-world impact at speed and scale

Sustaining and scaling impact beyond grants: Academic projects often deliver significant impact while funded, only to fade when grants end. Commercialisation offers a way to extend and grow that impact. For example, Cardiff University spin-out Nisien provides ethical online safeguarding services, and evolved from the ESRC-funded HateLab, a global hub for data and insight into hate speech and crime. The original lab had great success using AI to both measure and counter hate off and online, but it was faced with a familiar problem. How could it sustain its impact after the funding had ended? In particular, how could it retain key staff members who didn’t have university contracts? The answer they found was to commercialise – bringing in paid customers as well as conducting public research. Whilst this was great for the HateLab team, it was also a big win for both public funders of science and the wider public. Why? Because they get the benefits of research impact (better identification and countering of hate) without being saddled with the costs in the long-term, or losing the impact when an impactful project closes down

Fixing broken systems: Social ventures can address market failures or dysfunctional systems. For example, One World Together (OWT), a University of Manchester spin-out, aims to reform charitable giving and reshape the aid industry. Its aims are radical, and it addresses system-level change, which is rarely an attractive proposition for businesses. Furthermore, it required the deep knowledge and connections that only come from a long immersion in a problem space. Few outside academia would be able to achieve the type of change OWT seeks to achieve

Bottom-up social innovation: Other ventures tackle tangible local issues with scalable solutions – like Arcade, which repurposes disused spaces for community development, or Thin Ice Press, which revives forgotten industries to foster creativity and engagement. Developing such initiatives through commercialisation, rather than solely via grant funding, provides social benefits with a lower associated cost to the taxpayer. Furthermore, it brings academic knowledge and networks into bottom-up social innovation, helping to break down persistent barriers between universities and the communities they serve.

Why This Matters Now

This is a powerful mechanism for translating research into real-world change, both at scale and sustainably. Yet, it remains undervalued.

Policy makers and social scientists often focus on influencing policy as the primary mode of impact. While important, this is an indirect second or third-order influence. Commercialisation, by contrast, allows researchers to do rather than merely influence. It provides the practical demonstration that policy makers often demand: “How do I know this will work in practice?”

So why aren’t we harnessing this potential to meet our social challenges? Why isn’t it embedded in the UK Government’s missions or industrial strategy?

We overlook this opportunity at our peril.

How could we better support SHAPE commercialisation?

So, what could be done at a practical and policy level? Here are three recommendations on how to keep the sector developing

Firstly, we need to keep funding SHAPE commercialisation. Few universities have the resources or staff to do this themselves, so this needs to come from elsewhere. That may be funders like UKRI, or it might be utilising models such as shared technology transfer offices (TTOs) to de-risk the cost of SHAPE commercialisation for smaller or less expert institutions. It also means growing and developing the community of scholars and professional support who provide the blood, sweat and tears which get these enterprises off the ground. Whilst the growth potential for SHAPE commercialisation is very high, as demonstrated by Abdul Rahman et al’s latest work, the ecosystem is still at an early stage in its life cycle and is unlikely to grow successfully without nurture.

Secondly, policymakers and practitioners need to keep celebrating SHAPE commercialisation and focusing its power on societal challenges. Events like RE:SHAPE are a great way of bringing attention to the potential of SHAPE commercialisation and showcasing its successes. Aligning commercialisation programmes to societal missions helps focus the power of SHAPE on our most pressing concerns. Not doing so was a glaring omission from the current configuration of the UK Government’s mission agenda.

Finally, we need to truly understand the value of commercialisation for social impact, by which I mean we all (researchers, senior university leaders, funders and policymakers) need to start to see social impact as being on a par with income when thinking about research commercialisation. That’s not just a mindset change, but one which also suggests we need to think about how we measure and demonstrate social as well as financial impact. Whilst some may be uncomfortable with yet more metricisation in research history and experience teach that, in order for a new approach to be valued in policy circles, it needs to demonstrate its worth in a way that is comprehensible for policymakers and that will likely require some sort of impact measurements
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December 23, 2025
WEEKEND READING: The changing geography of research

In November HEPI, with support from Elsevier, hosted a roundtable dinner to discuss the changing geography of research. This blog considers some of the themes that emerged from the discussion.

Fifty years ago, less than 10 per cent of authors of research articles worked in low and middle-income countries – those in which average annual incomes are below around $14,000. By 2024, the proportion of research authors from these countries had reached 56 per cent. Even excluding China, 28 of them, combined, had more authors than the 27 countries of the European Union plus the UK.

Meanwhile, since 1990, the number of doctorates awarded in China has gone from a few thousand to more than 80,000, while Brazil and India now graduate approximately 30,000 doctorates per year, compared to the UK’s 25,000.

What this means for research collaboration, for research funders and for the UK’s future as a leading research nation was the topic of a recent roundtable discussion, hosted by HEPI in conjunction with the academic publishers Elsevier and attended by senior university and research leaders and funders.

Participants in the roundtable agreed that the research landscape was experiencing major change, with the centre of gravity shifting away from traditional western and northern dominance, to countries including China, India, Brazil, Iran and Mexico, and that the pace of change was accelerating.

This was not just happening in terms of numbers of researchers and research outputs but also in terms of their quality. Many countries not historically considered strong in research are producing original research at scale, developing cross-disciplinary fields and paying close attention to research culture as well as to convergence with the United Nation’s sustainable development goals.

Participants suggested that research in European countries, including the UK, France and Germany, may be moving more sluggishly due to out-dated hierarchies, infrastructure and equipment that is expensive to maintain. University and research leaders often feel overlooked by their governments, which face pressures to direct funding elsewhere, in contrast to Low and Middle Income Countries where Governments are actively driving research and innovation growth.

This shift may not necessarily be negative, participants in the roundtable recognised. Any overall increase in research is a good thing for the advancement of knowledge worldwide, and more postgraduates mean more post-doctorates wanting to travel and more researchers seeking partnerships.

Participants noted the symbiosis between research strength and economic strength, with one tending to feed off the other. Perhaps it is time for science to move elsewhere, suggested one speaker. “We’ve had a good run.”

But he questioned what it could mean for the future nature of science. While it may not be worse, it was likely to be different in terms of ideas around disciplines, education and working practices and “we are going to have to live with that world”.

Many felt that for the UK, a long-time research power, the prospect of relative decline this presented should be ringing alarm bells.

One speaker asked: “Are we Rome?”

Others suggested that it wasn’t that simple. Optimists pointed out that the UK still enjoys extensive soft power and respect for its research and education system. It has one of the highest proportions of co-authored research publications in the world and clever people continue to want to work and study here. Even if its share of world research and researchers is declining, the numbers involved remain high.

On the other hand, pessimists argued that if other countries build up their own university systems, they will have less need to send their students and graduates or even post-doctorates to the UK. One speaker noted the impressive lab equipment he had seen in China.

Meanwhile, old hierarchies still dominate global research structures, partly helped by the English language. While the UK benefits from that, participants were challenged to consider reform of global research governance to better reflect the new geography of research.

Some participants expressed concern about UK research becoming increasingly inward-looking, in response to pressures from politicians to concentrate on particular research areas related to Government priorities.

It was noted that the UK conveys mixed messages around attracting talent from overseas. Other countries make clear they want to be global research players; UK politicians, appealing to anti-immigration sentiment, are more ambivalent. And while the EU presents the only research bloc big enough to compete with China and America, the UK is barely in it.

Some pointed out that the UK is unusually reliant on its universities since it lacks independent research institutes. Others highlighted the country’s problems with scaling up spin outs.

What about potential solutions?

One speaker suggested that while having lots of exciting science happening around the world was wonderful, it threatened what in the UK had become an industry. Perhaps it was therefore time to make more of a case for higher education not as an industry but as a public good.

Another suggested learning from other countries about how to work in more equitable and meaningful partnerships with partners around the world and how to conduct research in different – and perhaps more cost effective – ways.

One warned that higher income countries often fell into the trap of seeing partnerships with lower income countries in terms of offering aid. Collaborations should instead involve both sides recognising each other’s strengths and both benefitting in an equal way.

Similarly, when it comes to attracting overseas students, the UK should think in terms of how its own students benefit from the arrangement, said another. Curricula may also need to be re-assessed to make them more suitable to the different world future researchers will face.

One suggestion was to identify where the UK is particularly strong and to become more competitive by developing those specialisms. Another participant pointed out that it was important not only to identify specialisms that others do not have, but to identify areas where others are also strong and where collaboration can therefore be especially productive.

Work is needed to put in place facilities and mechanisms to enable those researchers who would benefit from working together to find each other, said one participant. Another said it was important to ensure a balance between a centralised system for identifying potential collaborations and allowing individual researchers and departments to find their own partners.

It is not just about strategies led from the top, one speaker stressed. Those working across global borders need a rich understanding of the context in which institutions in other countries operate and how collaborations are conducted on the ground.

Researchers also need to be aware that the current world is a hugely unstable one and to be prepared to meet that challenge with equal partners.

The kind of challenges involved was made clear by one speaker who pointed out that America has recently turned off satellite climate data, which had been free for low and middle income countries to use, and has withdrawn from Antarctica its last ice-breaker ship, which monitored the melting of ice shelves threatening coastal cities.

The result of this loss of data could affect not only individual countries of all income levels around the world but the very planet they occupy.

Elsevier’s have produced a useful briefing paper on these issues: The changing geography of research.

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December 21, 2025
How 2025 Changed Research and What’s Ahead

Ask just about any federally funded researcher to describe 2025, and they use words like chaotic, demoralizing, confusing, destabilizing and transformational.

“It’s been a very destabilizing year [that’s made] people question the nation’s commitment to research,” Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges, told Inside Higher Ed.

She expects 2026 to be a year of rebuilding and standard setting.

Speaking of the National Institutes of Health, which calls itself the world’s largest public biomedical research funder, Pierce said the research community is expecting more major regulation and written policy changes in 2026, which will shed more light on how grants will be funded, how much the federal government will invest in the research enterprise and what priorities will emerge from this administration.

If the administration’s attacks on federally funded research in 2025 are any indication, the federal government of 2026 will likely be just as willing to advance its conservative ideological agenda by controlling universities through the nation’s research enterprise. And while the administration may not let up in the new year, courts stymied some of its most sweeping changes in 2025 and may continue to be an obstacle in the new year.

Soon after President Donald Trump started his second term in January, the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education and numerous other federal agencies that collectively send billions in research dollars to universities, began freezing and terminating hundreds of grants. Many of the targeted grants—including projects focused on vaccines, climate change, and health and education disparities among women, LGBTQ+ and minority communities—were caught in the crossfire of Trump’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and so-called woke gender ideology.

Not only would the terminations lead to the loss of jobs, staff and income, a lawsuit filed by a group of NIH-funded researchers in April predicted that “scientific advancement will be delayed, treatments will go undiscovered, human health will be compromised, and lives will be lost.”

The true damage comes from the betrayal, the sense of uncertainty and the loss of trust researchers have—or had—vis-à-vis with the federal government. That’s really hard to quantify.”

Scott Delaney, cofounder of Grant Witness

Terminated federal grants encompassed a wide range of research projects. Some of the casualties included funding to study the erosion of democracy, the effectiveness of work study, dementia, COVID-19, cancer and misinformation. Others supported teacher-training programs and initiatives designed to attract more underrepresented students into STEM fields.

“The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities,” read a letter the NIH sent to numerous researchers back in March, terminating their active grants. “[R]esearch programs based primarily on artificial and nonscientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

But it didn’t stop there.

The Trump administration also temporarily froze billions more dollars in federal research grants at a handful of the nation’s wealthiest, most selective institutions, including Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of California at Los Angeles, for allegedly failing to address antisemitism on campus and ignoring the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, among other allegations. (Most of the universities got their money back after cutting deals with the administration or via court orders.)

Faculty in the University of California system successfully fought the administration’s funding cuts, winning court orders to restore the money.

Justin Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images

And because the NIH, NSF, ED and several other federal agencies also laid off thousands of workers, researchers with questions had far fewer resources to help them navigate changes to application and award processes.

By some estimates, the government disrupted upward of $17 billion in NIH grants alone this year, according to Scott Delaney, a former lawyer and Harvard University epidemiologist who the university laid off as a result of grant terminations.

Earlier this year, he cofounded Grant Witness, a website that has been tracking grant cancellations at the NIH, NSF and the Environmental Protection Agency. While both the NIH and NSF have since restored thousands of grants, Delaney said those and other restorations won’t be enough to repair the now-fractured relationship between faculty and federal funding agencies.

“The true damage comes from the betrayal, the sense of uncertainty and the loss of trust researchers have—or had—vis-à-vis with the federal government. That’s really hard to quantify,” he told Inside Higher Ed this month. “In the years ahead, there will be folks who don’t want to plan long-term research projects because they don’t know if their funds are going to get summarily yanked out from underneath them; folks who don’t want to continue their careers in academic research or train in academic research; trainees who would have had training grant support who don’t now and go do something else. And some researchers will just leave the country.”

In addition, some of the Trump administration’s research funding proposals have stoked worry this year about the long-term sustainability of the nation’s academic research enterprise.

Numerous agencies—including NIH, NSF and Department of Energy—have attempted to cut university reimbursement rates for indirect research costs. Higher education and science advocates characterized such policies as “shortsighted and dangerous,” and said it would hamper university budgets, hurt the economy and stymie scientific progress. Although federal courts have since blocked the rate caps, the mere anticipation of such policy changes led some universities—including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University—to freeze hiring and, in some cases, graduate admissions.

But by September, the NIH said it was on track to spend its full $47 billion budget by the end of the fiscal year that month.

However, the NIH awarded 3,500 fewer competitive grants this year with the biggest declines at the Institutes of minority health, nursing, human genome, alcohol abuse and alcoholism and mental health, according to The New York Times. Those changes are part of the White House’s plan to streamline scientific funding by eliminating wasteful spending and cutting “woke programs” that “poison the minds of Americans.”

The cuts to federal agencies and research spurred protests in the spring.

As 2025 fades into 2026, the federal research funding picture isn’t looking as bleak—at least not on the surface.

A flurry of litigation from universities, individual researchers, trade associations and labor unions prompted several federal agencies to reinstate some research grants.

All things considered, 2025 “could have been worse, but it was still awful,” Delaney said, noting that there are still thousands of grants in limbo at the NSF, DOE and numerous other agencies beyond the NIH.

“So many people fought so hard—some of them sacrificed their jobs inside these federal agencies—and they succeeded in many ways. To tell a story that doesn’t include both their sacrifice and their success discredits what was a Herculean and heroic effort for scientists, many who have never spoken up in a political way before this year,” he added. “But it’s also important to emphasize that this fight isn’t over, and we need to keep fighting. It can get worse.”

‘Not Insulated From Politics’

Katie Edwards, a social work professor at the University of Michigan, is one of the researchers who sued the NIH. In March, the agency canceled six grants she was using to research mental health and violence prevention among marginalized young people, including Indigenous and LGBTQ+ youth. Valued at $10 million, the grants supported roughly 50 staff, community collaborators and trainees and put them all at risk of losing their jobs.

“For many trainees—especially those who are LGBTQ+ or people of color—the message they internalized was painful: that research on their communities is ‘ideological’ or expendable,” Edwards wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “The emotional toll of fighting for and protecting staff, reassuring community partners, and trying to navigate a constantly shifting federal landscape has been immense.”

Fighting for Public Health Research

April: A group of NIH researchers, a public health advocacy organization and a union representing more than 120,000 higher education workers sued the NIH for terminating more than $2.4 billion in grants.

June: A federal judge ordered the agency to reinstate the grants immediately and said the government’s actions amounted to a policy of “racial discrimination” guided by “homogeneity, inequity and exclusion.”

August: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 5 to 4 that any legal challenges to the grant terminations should be litigated in the Court of Federal Claims, not the federal district court system they’ve been moving through for months.

Edwards

University of Michigan

Although her grants have since been reinstated—albeit some with reduced dollar amounts, administrative delays and anti-DEI language in the notice of award—and her team has resumed their work, this year has forever changed her perspective on research.

“This year made clear that science is not insulated from politics—and that researchers must be prepared to defend not only their projects, but the people those projects exist to serve,” Edwards said. “Federally funded research with marginalized communities requires constant vigilance, strong partnerships, and collective resistance. We cannot simply adjust our science to political winds when real communities rely on this work.”

But not every researcher who appealed a grant termination got their money back.

In March, the Education Department informed Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, that it was cancelling her six-year grant to examine the impact of receiving federal work-study funding on enrollment and persistence among low-income students four and a half years into the grant.

Teachers College appealed the decision in April, but the government rejected it in September, stating that Education Department grants were specifically excluded from Columbia University’s settlement with the Trump administration. Support from a private foundation allowed Scott-Clayton and her team to resume their research this November, but she told Inside Higher Ed that the disruptions to research have been “extremely unsettling and demoralizing.”

And she’s not certain that 2026 will be any better.

“Even though I believe in the value of what I do, self-doubt can flare up when an authority as significant as the federal government formally declares your work to be a waste of resources,” she said. “I am not sure what the future of our field looks like if our federal government no longer values research evidence. And I am not sure what our society looks like if the federal government can make decisions so arbitrarily without any consequences or constraints.”

New Year, Old Concerns

This year is ending with unresolved questions about what the Trump administration’s research policies will ultimately be, and how much the federal government will fund research. Pierce at the Association of American Medical Colleges said she expects next year will provide answers.

Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said “I think the [the Energy Department’s] Genesis mission and the prioritization of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies is going to be a key driver in—I guess you could say—filling in the cracks of the foundation of the research enterprise that has been kind of hit by this earthquake in the past year.”

The National Institutes of Health has cut staff and is eyeing other changes to how it funds research.

Wesley Lapointe/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The continuing resolution that ended the historically long federal government shutdown in November expires Jan. 30, and Congress is leaving town for the holidays without passing funding bills for some major science funding agencies, including the NIH, NSF and Energy.

Trump proposed slashing about $5.2 billion from the NSF. But House appropriators have suggested cutting $2.1 billion, while senators only put forth axing $60 million, according to an appropriations debate tracker from the AAAS. And while the president proposed cutting nearly 40 percent from the NIH—$18.1 billion—the House and Senate have instead suggested increasing its funding by roughly $1 billion, the tracker shows. That pushback from Congress is promising, advocates say.

And colleges and universities are still waiting for federal research funding agencies to set indirect cost reimbursement caps, after litigation blocked their plans to set the limit at 15 percent. The forthcoming OMB guidance setting those caps is also supposed to help agencies implement Trump’s controversial August executive order directing “senior appointees” to take charge of awarding, denying, reviewing and terminating new and already awarded grants. Among other changes, that order also said grants can’t “promote” racial preferences or “the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic,” and that they “should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players.”

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya took over the National Institutes of Health and has pledged to support what the administration calls “gold standard science.” He’s become a vocal supporter of the Make America Healthy Again agenda, which focuses more on chronic diseases.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Further, the NIH is eyeing ways to reduce how much of its grant dollars researchers can use to pay scientific journals to publish their work. The proposed options ranged from limiting how much could be spent per publication or capping the percentage of a grant that can go toward publishing fees overall, to no longer funding publication costs whatsoever. The NIH said in the summer that it planned to make whatever policy it chose effective early next year, but it only recently released the public comments, and an agency spokesperson said he couldn’t provide a definitive implementation timeline.

Just this week, Science published a memo showing that NSF is scaling back its reviews of grant proposals, citing its “significantly reduced” workforce and a need to expedite approvals and denials to address a “significant backlog of unreviewed proposals and canceled review panels” from the government shutdown. The memo also said NSF program officers are “expected to maximize their use of available automated merit review tools, especially tools that identify proposals that should be returned without review.”

And the NIH ordered staff last Friday to start using a “computational text analysis tool” to scan current and new grants for words and phrases that may mean they’re misaligned with NIH priorities. Staff were told to look out for terms such as “health equity” and “structural racism.” How this and the NSF policy changes will work in practice remains to be seen.

The educational improvement research field also awaits word on the future of the congressionally required Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which the administration gutted early this year amid its ongoing push to dismantle the larger Education Department. IES is the federal government’s central education data collection and research funding agency. Education secretary Linda McMahon hired a special adviser to “re-envision” it, but the plan hasn’t been released.

Overall, Pierce said 2026 “will continue to be a challenging year, especially for those researchers, institutions and trainees that have seen their grants terminated.” But she noted medical research is marked by passion for improving the nation’s health.

“It’s an incredibly resilient field,” she said.

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December 19, 2025
A new model moves research in a more democratic direction – It could be faster and fairer too

Research quality is the dark matter of the university sector. It is hard enough to assess research after it has been done, research funders must find some way to evaluate proposals for projects which don’t exist yet. The established model for this is external expert review, combined with a panel stage where proposals, and their reviews are discussed, and hard choices made.

UK researchers will be familiar with this via our own UKRI, and everyone who has had a funding application rejected will recognise that the reviews received may be partial or mis-directed. This speaks to the idiosyncrasy and variability in individual judgments of what makes a good project, and has downstream consequences for what ultimately gets funded.

Research from the Dutch research council published last year showed what everyone suspected – two panels making the decision about the same proposals would end up funding different projects. The results were better than complete random selection, but not by much.

The capriciousness in funding awards has even led some to propose selecting by lottery among proposals judged to be eligible – a procedure known as partial randomisation and currently being trialled by a number of funders, including the British Academy.

Pressure

Issues with grant review aren’t limited to variability between individual reviewers. The pressure on researchers to win funding is driving an increased number of applications, at the same time as funders report it being harder and harder to identify and recruit reviewers. One major UK funder privately reports that they have to send around 10 invitations to obtain one review. Once received, quality of reviews can be variable. Ideally the reviewer is both disinterested and expert in the topic of the proposal (two factors which are inherently in tension), but scarcity of reviewers often leaves funders forced to rely on a minority of willing reviewers. At the same time many researchers are submitting applications for funding without reciprocating by providing reviews. These same issues of peer review are similar to those that beset journal publishing, but in research funding the individual outcomes are far more consequential for careers (and budgets).

A model of funding evaluation which promises to address at least some of these issues is distributed peer review (DPR). Under DPR, applicants for a funding scheme review each other’s proposals. It’s an idea that originated in the astronomy community, where proposals are evaluated to allocate scarce telescope time (rather than scarce funding), and it is also common for conference papers, particularly in computer science, but the application to evaluating proposals for funding is still in its infancy.

At the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) we have a mission to support funders to become more experimental in their approach – to both use strong evidence on what can work in the funding system, but also to run experiments to generate that evidence themselves. A core member of the international consortium of 19 funders which funds RoRI is the Volkswagen Foundation, a private German funder (and completely independent of the car manufacturer).

When they decided to trial distributed peer review, running a parallel comparison of DPR and their standard process of external review and decision by an expert panel, we were able to partner with them to provide independent scientific support for the experiment. The result is a side by side comparison of how the two processes unfolded, how long they took, how they were experienced by applicants and which proposals got funded.

Positive expectations

Our analysis showed that before they took part, applicants mostly had positive expectations of the process. Each proposal was assessed by both methods, and eligible to be funded if selected by either method. When the results came in, we saw some overlap between the proposals funded under DPR and by the standard panel processes. The greater number of reviews per proposal also allowed the foundation to give considerable feedback to applicants, and allowed us greater statistical insight into proposal scoring. Our analysis showed that no number of reviews would make the DPR process completely consistent (meaning we should expect different proposals to be funded if it was run again, or if it was compared to the panel process). Many applicants enjoyed the insight reviewing other proposals gave them into the funding processes, and appreciated the feedback they got (although, as you would expect this was not universal, and applicants who ended up being awarded funding were happier with the process than those who weren’t). From the foundation’s perspective it seems DPR is feasible to run, and – if run without the parallel panel stage – would allow a large reduction in the time between the application deadline and the funding award.

It’s an incredibly rich data set, and we are delighted the foundation has committed to running – and evaluating – the DPR process over a second round. This will allow us to compare across different rounds, as well between the evaluation by DPR and by the panel process.

DPR represents an innovation for funding evaluation, but one that builds on the fundamental principle of peer review by researchers. The innovation is to move funding evaluation in a more democratic direction, away from the ‘gatekeeping’ model of review by a small number of senior researchers who are privileged to sit on funder’s review panels. It ensures an equal distribution of reviewing work – everyone who applies has to review, and as a consequence widens and diversifies the pool of people who are reviewing funding applications. The Foundation’s experience shows that DPR can be deployed by a funder, and the risks and complaints – of unfair reviews, unfair scoring behaviour and extra work required of applicants – managed.

Flaws and comparisons

Ultimately, the judgement of DPR must be on how it performs against other funding evaluation processes, not on whether it is free of potential flaws. There definitely are issues with DPR, which we have tried to make clear in our short guide for funders who are interested in adopting the procedure. These include if, and how, DPR can be applied to calls of different sizes and if proposals require specialist review which is beyond the expertise of the cohort applying. A benefit of DPR is that it scales naturally (when there are more applications there are, by definition, more available applicant-reviewers). The issue of how appropriate DPR is for schemes where proposals cover very different topics is a more pressing one. It may not be right for all schemes, but DPR is a promising tool in the funding evaluation toolkit.

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December 18, 2025
How business school research can power inclusive and sustainable regional growth

This blog was kindly authored by Jack Harrington, CEO, Emma Parry, Chair and Katy Mason, President, British Academy of Management.

Chartered ABS recently published its Business Schools as Engines of Growth report. This work provides a much needed look at the social and economic value of Business Schools. It paves the way for likely changes in the policy landscape.

Here, we focus on why Business Schools are so well placed to deliver on so many policy priorities. Among other things, Business Schools are a channel through which social science research can change lives for the better.

Business Schools across the UK are situated in very different kinds of regional economy. At a time of immense disruption – from climate shocks to technological transformation – our business schools must reimagine their role in helping shape the future of regional economies. The ‘Business Schools as Engines of Growth, Opportunity and Innovation’ report, published as a supplement to Universities UK’s 2024 Blueprint for Change, rightly positions business schools as more than excellent educators. Crucially, they are also strategic collaborators in place-based transformation, driving a new kind of socio-economic growth.

The report calls to deepen research partnerships between business schools, local businesses, and policymakers. This is not just a question of economic necessity (though the productivity gap between UK regions remains stark). It is, most importantly, a question of social responsibility. We must place people and planet at the heart of our research agendas, building new understandings of inclusive, sustainable growth that reflect the urgent challenges of our time.

From knowledge to impact: research that makes a difference

Business and management research is often undervalued in national Research & Development debates. This is surprising, given it plays such a pivotal role in enabling the adoption and use of technical innovations as viable, scalable, and ethical elements of our everyday organisational practices and social lives. Research insights from UK business schools are already helping local firms adopt digital tools, improve leadership, decarbonise operations, and engage communities more inclusively.

Programmes such as the Help to Grow: Management course, delivered by Small Business Charter-accredited schools, demonstrate how research-informed education can empower SME leaders to drive digital adoption and productivity. IPSOS evaluation shows 91% of participants report improved leadership and growth capabilities.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Research conducted through Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), place-based innovation catalysts, accelerator and labs offers a roadmap for changing the way business schools can act as “anchor institutions” in their regions to drive positive change.

A new narrative for business research

If we are serious about creating a fairer economy and a more inclusive society, then the UK’s business schools and their research must be seen as essential infrastructure for inclusive and sustainable regional development.

Fortunately, this is largely a matter of valuing what we already have. As the white paper shows, Business Schools often provide the most visible way in which the social sciences inform decision-making and operational life in organisations across the UK. Business Schools offer the networks, the expertise, and the commitment to act as coordinators between science, society, and markets, and the skills to drive the co-production of new kinds of knowledge and imaginaries for a better future.

There is still more that business schools can do. We need to be much better at enabling and valuing interdisciplinary, engaged research that supports public and private sector leaders navigating complexity. We need to help early-career researchers to collaborate beyond the academy. And we need to rethink impact, not just as ‘REF returns’, but in terms of supporting the development of better jobs, fairer systems, and stronger communities.At a time when the Higher Education is in financial crisis, and the economy is struggling to grow, investment has never been so urgent.

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December 17, 2025
2025 sets new record for attempts to silence student speech, FIRE research finds

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 16, 2025 — The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression reports a record number of campus incidents involving attempts to investigate, censor, or otherwise punish students for protected expression in 2025.

FIRE has documented 273 efforts — so far — this year in which students and student groups were targeted for their constitutionally protected expression. This breaks the previous record of 252 set back in 2020, the first year of the Students Under Fire database, during the unrest prompted by Covid-19 lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd.

“These findings paint a campus culture in which student expression is increasingly policed and controversial ideas are not tolerated,” said FIRE Senior Researcher Logan Dougherty. “College is supposed to be a place where ideas are freely shared, not where students should be concerned about whether their comments will be subject to university scrutiny.”

Some especially grievous incidents include the arrest of Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil; Indiana University’s censorship of its student newspaper (and firing of the director of student media) over an editorial dispute; the University of Alabama’s decision to shutter two student outlets because they supposedly ran afoul of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s guidance about D.E.I. programs; and, for good measure, a student at Weber State University in Utah who was directed to censor a presentation — about censorship.

FIRE’s Students Under Fire tracking relies on publicly available information to document various details about these controversies, including but not limited to the source calling for punishment, the speech topic of controversy, and the political direction of the attempt in relation to the targeted speech. Consistent with other FIRE research, the Students Under Fire database observed an uptick in attempts by the political right to silence speech in 2025.

The database is unprecedented both in type and scale, offering the most detailed collection of campus controversies involving students’ protected speech to date.

FIRE also noticed another troubling trend in 2025: A surge in attempts by government officials to influence how universities respond to student speech — especially following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Some recent examples include:

We also saw executive orders at the state and federal level used as justification to impose system-wide bans on student-organized drag shows, cancel student film festivals, and outright disband numerous student groups.

In all these cases, students were targeted or punished not because their speech was unlawful — but because it caused controversy.

“Aside from the harm on the individual students involved in these incidents, such actions could have the effect of chilling speech across an entire campus — and across an entire generation,” Dougherty said. “What kind of lesson is that? That the safest move in college is to keep your head down and your mouth shut?”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.

Karl de Vries, Director of Media Relations, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

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December 16, 2025
Sick of Doomscrolling? Join This New Research Paper Collective Instead

Anuja Uppuluri used to spend a lot of time scrolling social media apps dictated by algorithms designed to keep users glued to their screens no matter how mind-numbing the content.

“I always had something else that I could be doing or wanted to be doing, but I was choosing to watch TikTok videos for five hours,” said Uppuluri, who completed a bachelor’s degree in information systems at Carnegie Mellon University in May. “And then by the end of it I couldn’t remember anything that I had watched.”

Uppuluri, who now works as a machine learning engineer for Anthropic, sought to become more intentional about the information she consumes and has since scaled back her social media usage. Rather than scroll aimlessly, she wanted to fill her time digesting more research related to her career field, especially about the inner workings and implications of increasingly prevalent generative artificial intelligence tools.

She discovered all types of academic papers, articles and blog posts she wanted to read, but it wasn’t easy to keep organized. “I didn’t know where to put all of this stuff, because there’s no central location for it,” Uppuluri told Inside Higher Ed. “I started thinking about how I want to use my research and what I want to see from other people’s research.”

So Uppuluri developed Paper Trails, which she described as “Goodreads for academic papers” in an X post announcing the website’s launch last week. “I built it because I wanted a place where engaging with research felt fun, beautiful, and personal to you.”

Similar to the book-focused website Goodreads, Paper Trails is designed to help users discover new research and ideas, though it’s not powered by an AI algorithm. It’s a crowd-sourced platform where users can post links to papers from any field, peruse summaries of those papers, create shelves (public reading lists), and comment, review or rate papers.

In the week since its public debut, Paper Trails has grown its users from 10 to 2,200; the number of articles available on the site has increased from 20 to 3,100.

Inside Higher Ed spoke with Uppuluri to hear more about her vision for Paper Trails.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: What sparked your interest in reading more academic research, especially about computer science and AI?

A: I always thought of a computer scientist as someone who writes code, builds infrastructure and makes sure systems are built to scale. But AI is blurring the line between research and engineering. Every new discovery that comes out of a large language model (LLM) lab is research-oriented.

Understanding why the technology is the way it is can be done by reading papers and understanding the research about large language models. These models are like black boxes—you can’t entirely understand what’s going on inside it—and that’s created all of the research subfields. For example, a subfield called interpretability is about trying to interpret what the models are doing. The more you do with these models, the more you have to read to understand how they work to gain context on how to build things better.

Q: How did your previous experiences reading and writing research papers inform the creation of Paper Trails?

A: A research paper to me used to mean something related to medicine, chemistry or biology. I didn’t understand or realize that it had a place in computer science until a few months before I wrote the only research paper I did in college. For that paper, I wrote the methodology and code, but my co-author, who was doing his Ph.D., helped me structure the paper, write the references and get it through the formatting process. It felt like a high barrier to entry for doing and reading research, which I associated with work instead of fun.

I thought having some type of casual thing like [Paper Trails] to organize research papers would maybe help me read more. But other existing websites I experimented with looked so dated and used software I had to learn. It looked complicated and didn’t seem fun. I also didn’t want to organize my research in a big Google Doc that has 50 links on it that I’m never going to touch again—that looks ugly.

So, I knew I could probably make my own site that looks nice and is easy to use.

At its core, Paper Trails is a tool to put papers and other reading material together in a way that’s pretty and fun. Sometimes that’s what you need to make something feel more like a hobby rather than more work you have to do.

Q: What went into developing the Paper Trails website and how does it work?

A: I coded most of it from scratch, with the exception of pasting in a few codes to fix some bugs.

When I first launched, there were only around 20 papers on the site. Now, there’s around 3,000 just from more people being on the site and adding the things that they want to read.

I chose not to mass import a bunch of stuff at the outset because if people look at it and it’s not something they’re interested in, it’s still there. It’s kind of cool to look at every single paper and know that it’s there because it’s something on someone else’s reading list.

Everything on the main page is organized by publication date. You can also use keywords to search or just click some buttons to see what people are logging. There is no personalized algorithm for users. While there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with a recommendation assistant, it’s also nice when there’s nothing telling you what to look at.

Q: What is the value of Paper Trails for its users?

A: There’s a lot of people who would like to get into research or just reading more. And if you want to spend your time in that way, having a tool to help you do it and encourage you to do makes it a lot easier to follow through on.

There’s also value coming from all the people that make it a collaborative thing. It allows people to explore, kind of like going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. You can just keep clicking on random links and reading. You don’t know what you’re going to learn at the start of your session but, if you’re interested in it, you can read it.

Q: Now that people are showing interest, what are the next steps for Paper Trails?

A: I was thinking about sending it to some of my old professors, especially if they have Ph.D. students who may be interested in working on it.

There are even more elements that I could add that would improve the user experience. A lot of people have papers that are already saved on another site, so being able to bulk import would be helpful. Or allowing a few people to edit a shelf rather than just one person could make collaboration a little bit better. Or being able to clone somebody’s shelf so that another user can add some of their own stuff to it.

I don’t know exactly what growth looks like. But to me, success means the people using it are happy.

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December 16, 2025
Canada launches CAD$1.7bn investment to recruit 1,000 global researchers

The Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative will fund new research chairs, early-career posts, and infrastructure upgrades across universities to draw in leading academics from overseas and Canadian researchers currently working abroad.

“[The] investment is about securing Canada’s place at the forefront of discovery and innovation and leveraging our strength in science to support our future well-being and prosperity for generations to come,” said Canadian minister of industry Melanie Joly, announcing the program.

Through recruiting top talent, the program aims to “deliver direct economic, societal and health benefits for Canadians,” she stated.

The U15 group of Canada’s leading research-intensive universities welcomed the details of the investment, which was initially put forward in the government’s 2026-28 Immigration Levels Plan last month.

Robert Asselin, U15’s CEO, described the initiative as a “call to action” to make Canada a world-leading hub for research and innovation.

“This is a significant step which recognises that Canada’s security and economic success depend on supporting highly qualified talent with the ideas and expertise to deliver bold new discoveries,” he said.

Policymakers said the initiative was one of the largest recruitment programs of its kind in the world, with minister of health Majorie Michel emphasising the tangible benefits to Canada’s healthcare system.

“Better healthcare begins with better research. And in Canada, we believe in science. We value our scientists.”

“These investments will attract the best and brightest in the world, including Francophone researchers. This is the exact talent we need to drive better healthcare outcomes for Canadians and grow the Canadian economy,” Michel declared.

This is the exact talent we need to drive better healthcare outcomes for Canadians and grow the Canadian economy

Majorie Michel, Canadian Minister of Health

The investment will be split across four funding streams. The Canada Impact+ Research Chairs program has been allocated the bulk of the investment and is set to receive CAD$1bn over 12 years to help universities attract world-leading international researchers.

Meanwhile, the Canada Impact+ Emerging Leaders program will use CAD$120 million over 12 years to bring international early-career researchers to the country and expand the research talent pool with “fresh ideas and diverse perspectives”.

Two additional funds of CAD$400m and CAD$130m respectively, will be used to strengthen research infrastructure and provide training to support doctoral students and researchers relocating to Canada.

Recruitment will focus on fields such as artificial intelligence, health, clean technology, quantum science, environmental resilience, democratic resilience, manufacturing, defence, and cybersecurity.

Karim Bardeesy, parliamentary secretary to the minister of industry, said at the announcement: “We need to invite the best and brightest from around the world and those Canadians abroad to come and do that work here in Canada.”

The initiative comes as Canada plans to reduce new international study permits by more than 50% in 2026, driven by wider federal efforts to reduce Canada’s temporary resident population to less than 5% of the total by the end of 2027.

Delivering Canada’s 2025 budget in November, finance minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the measures were designed to give the government greater control over the immigration system and bring immigration back to “sustainable levels”.

The government has said immigration measures will be targeted to specifically boost the scientific benefits for Canada, such as through increasing the country’s supply of doctors as part of a new International Talent Attraction Strategy and Action Plan.

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December 12, 2025
Re-thinking research support for English universities: Research England’s programme of work during the REF 2029 pause
In September, Science Minister Lord Vallance announced a pause to developing REF 2029 to allow REF and the funding bodies to take stock. Today, REF 2029 work resumes with a refreshed focus to support a UK research system that delivers knowledge and innovation with impact, improving lives and creating growth across the country.

Research England has undertaken a parallel programme of work during the pause, intended to deliver outcomes that align with Government’s priorities and vision for higher education as outlined in the recently published Post-16 Education and Skills white paper. Calling this a pause doesn’t reflect the complexity, pace and challenge faced in delivering the programme over the last three months.

Since September, we have:
- explored the option of baseline performance in research culture being a condition of funding
- considered how our funding allocation mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality, as part of our ongoing review of Strategic Institutional Research Funding (SIRF)
- fast-tracked existing activity related to the allocation of mainstream quality-related research funding (QR).
- developed our plans to consider the future of research assessment.
Over the last three months to progress this work, we’ve engaged thoughtfully with groups across the English higher education and research sector, as well as with the devolved funding bodies, to help us understand the wider context and refine our approaches. Let me outline where we’ve got to – and where we’re going next – with the work we’ve been doing.

Setting a baseline for research cultures

Each university, department and team are unique. They have their own values, priorities and ways of working. I therefore like to think of ‘research cultures and environments’, using the term in plural, to reflect this diversity. The report of the REF People, Culture and Environment pilot, also published today, confirms that there is excellent practice in this area across the higher education sector. REF 2029 offers an opportunity to recognise and reward those institutions and units that are creating the open, inclusive and collaborative environments that enable excellent research and researchers to thrive.

At the same time, we think there are some minimum standards that should be expected of all providers in receipt of public funding. To promote these standards, we will be strengthening the terms and conditions of Research England funding related to research culture. In the first instance, this will mean a shift from expecting certain standards to be met, to requiring institutions to meet them.

We are very conscious not to increase burden on the sector or create unnecessary bureaucracy. This will only succeed by engaging closely with the sector to understand how this can work effectively in practice. To this end, we will be engaging with groups in early 2026 to establish rigorous standards that are relevant across the diversity of English institutions. As far as possible, we will use existing reporting mechanisms such as the annual assurance report provided by signatories to the Research Integrity Concordat. While meeting the conditions will not be optional, we will support institutions that don’t yet meet all the requirements, working together and utilising additional reporting to help with and monitor improvements. And because research cultures aren’t static, we will evolve our conditions over time to reflect changes in the sector.

This will lead to sector-wide improvements that we can all get behind:
- support for everyone who contributes to excellent and impactful research: researchers, technicians and others in vital research-enabling roles, across all career stages
- ensuring research in England continues to be done with integrity
- ensuring that is also done openly
- strengthening responsible research assessment.
Our next steps are to engage with the sector and relevant groups as part of the process of making changes to our terms and conditions of funding, and to establish low-burden assurance mechanisms. For example, working as part of the Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, we will collectively streamline and strengthen the concordat, making it easier for institutions to implement this important cross-sectoral agreement.

These changes will complement the assessment of excellent research environments in the REF and the inspiring practice we see across the sector. Championing vibrant research cultures and environments is a mission that transcends the REF — it’s the foundation for maintaining and enhancing the UK’s world-leading research, and we will continue to work with the devolved funding bodies to fulfil the mission.

Modelling funding mechanisms

The formula-based, flexible research funding Research England distributes to English universities is crucial to underpinning the HE research landscape, and supporting the

financial sustainability of the sector. We are aware that that this funding is increasingly being spread more thinly.

As part of the review of strategic institutional research funding (SIRF), we are working to understand the wider effectiveness of our funding approaches and consider alternative allocation mechanisms. Work on this review is continuing at speed. We will provide an update to the sector next year on progress, as well as the publication of the independent evaluation of SIRF, anticipated in early 2026.

Building on this, we have been considering how our existing mechanisms in England could be modified to better reward quality of research. This work looks at how different strands of SIRF – from mainstream QR to specialist provider funding – overlap, and how that affects university finances across English regions and across institution types. We are continuing to explore options for refining our mainstream QR formula and considering the consequences of those different options. This is a complex piece of work, requiring greater time and attention, and we expect next year to be a key period of engagement with the sector.

The journey ahead

While it may seem early to start thinking about assessment after REF 2029, approaches to research assessment are evolving rapidly and it is important that we are able to embrace the opportunities offered by new technologies and data sources when the moment comes. We have heard loud and clear that early clarity on guidance reduces burden for institutions and we want to be ready to offer that clarity. A programme of work that maximises the opportunity offered by REF 2029 to shape the foundation for future frameworks will be commencing in spring 2026.

Another priority will be to consider how Research England as the funding body for England, and as part of UKRI, can support the government’s aim to encourage a greater focus on areas of strength in the English higher education sector, drawing on the excellence within all our institutions. As I said at the ARMA conference earlier in the year, there is a real opportunity for universities to identify and focus on the unique contributions they make in research.

The end of the year will provide the sector (and my colleagues in Research England and the REF teams) with some much-needed rest. January 2026 will see us pick back up a reinvigorated SIRF review, informed by the REF pause activity. We will continue to refine our research funding and policy to – as UKRI’s new mission so deftly puts it – advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.
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December 10, 2025