ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies 9th January 2014
Professor Paul Boyle, Chief Executive, ESRC
Annual Meeting With Learned
Societies-Agenda
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Welcome and Introductions
Spending Review Outcome and Implications
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
Big Data
Horizon 2020 and Social Science
Open Access Update
Any Other Business
ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies-Spending Review
Spending Review
▶ One year Spending Review 2015-16 for “resource” spend on
research and training (outcome not yet known for individual
Research Councils)
– We know: Science “capital” funding to increase by £500m in 2015-16 to
£1.1 billion
– We know: Science and Innovation Strategy will be published with the
2014 Autumn Statement, outlining the Government’s ‘roadmap’ for
science capital (target of keeping the overall science capital budget in
line with inflation to 2020-21)
– We know: New £400m over 5 years from 2014-15 to improve the
research and innovation capacity of Emerging Powers and build research
partnerships for the UK
Resource Funding and ESRC
▶ £150 m currently allocated to three broadly
equal resource budgets:
– Training and skills
– Responsive research
– Strategic and collaborative research
Resource Funding and ESRC
▶ For 15/16 considerations for February Council include:
virement from capital not allowed, extra resource money
unlikely, we are already committed
– Training and skills-students starting this autumn incur full spend in
15/16
– Responsive research-for new Grants in 15/16 success rates
currently 13% (but 100% for top rated proposals)
– Strategic and collaborative research-26 shortlisted Centres and
Large Grants, with successful applications to start full year spend
in 15/16
▶ Council will confirm actual allocations when outcome
known
Capital Funding and ESRC
▶ Chancellor’s Autumn Statement 2012 included £600m
for science, research and innovation, £484m for
RCUK
– Funds to support the development of innovative
technologies across eight areas, including ‘big data’
– Draws from RCUK Strategic Framework for Capital
Investment (published Nov 2012)
– ESRC earmarked £64m to support packages of activity
within the ‘big data’ theme in 2013 to 2015
Capital Funding and ESRC
▶ £64 m Autumn Statement 2012 allocated to:
– Administrative Data (ADRN awards announced; Local govt
imminent)
– Business (award announcement imminent)
– Understanding Populations (Enhancing longitudinal studies
e.g. bio-medical data for Millennium Cohort Study; ethnic
minority boost for Understanding Society)
▶ Social Media – call now later in 2014
▶ Third sector data – not a centre but focused
activities on specific needs in 2014
ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies-Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ The Strategic Plan is:
– A periodic statement of the Council’s long term aims and
priorities
– Frames subsequent CSR related Delivery Plans and Capital
Funding opportunities BUT is not itself about detailed
programmes, objectives and costings
– Prepared in consultation – n.b. today is not the only
opportunity to input – council takes its ‘first reading’ in
February
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Council intends to use this Strategic Plan to set out its
leadership role in the likely RCUK continuing context of
an emphasis on excellence with impact AND a financial
context of capital opportunities, medium term resource
constraints and a continued reduction in administration
▶ A leadership role could include all of : strategic and
collaborative research, responsive research (!), training,
skills, methods, knowledge exchange, international
activities and relations with institutions
▶ But financial context suggests a premium on leadership
that joins up and focuses Council activities with an even
leaner administration
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Question to Societies: in the context of
excellence with impact and the likely financial
context:
– Which areas of the ESRC Leadership role are most
critical (and which least)?
– Where might that leadership role most effectively
join up and focus Council activities?
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Leadership role examples:
– Strategic and collaborative research-the role of ESRC
Centres, and Programmes?; the extent of partnered
investments with business, government and civil society?;
engagement in RCUK programmes?
– Responsive research- (more data soon) should ESRC go
further with demand management? expectation of internal
peer review? further action on Transformative research? use
of highlights by method, data sources or cross-disciplinarity?
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Leadership role examples:
– Training and skills-(current DTC evaluation, new REF data,
decision on future Jan 2015)-more/less DTCs? social science
thematic CDTs? More attention to knowledge exchange?
What is the role of ESRC in developing skills alongside
employers and researchers themselves? More Q step like
investments?
– Methods- should ESRC do more to prevent the increasing
availability of big data outstripping analytical capability? What
role should ESRC play in development of qualitative
methods?
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Leadership role examples:
– Knowledge exchange-should the Council’s role in
initiatives like What Works be enhanced? Should
the ESRC increase expectations of Impact
Acceleration across Institutions?
– International- which places offer the best new
opportunities for excellent research partnerships?
What role should ESRC play in development of
European provision for social science?
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Leadership role examples:
– Relations with institutions- could be argued that
beginning with DTCs and now Impact Acceleration
Accounts ESRC is devolving responsibilities to
institutions while internal ESRC staff numbers fall
– Should the Council go further and more
strategically in this direction?
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Leadership role examples:
–Informing major public debates e.g. Future of
the UK and Scotland; UK in a Changing
Europe
–Should the Council go further and more
strategically in this direction?
Input to ESRC Strategic Plan
▶ Question to Societies, in the context of
excellence with impact and the likely financial
context:
– Which areas of the ESRC Leadership role are most
critical (and which least)?
– Where might that leadership role most effectively
join up and focus Council activities?
ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies-Big Data
Big Data-like data only more of it?
▶ As described above and as an example of its
leadership role, ESRC is investing £64m of capital in
administrative, local, business, civil society and social
media big data and augmenting survey data. The
capital consultation suggests more capital might be
available
▶ But the Council may only want to go further if
convinced of the case….
Big Data-a case for further investment?
▶ Big Data is still a term where definitions contend. But
those definitions typically embrace volume (an
organisation may have a stock of 100,000
gigabytes…) velocity (global society generates
trillions of gigabytes every day…) and variety
(transactional, relational, structured and
unstructured)
▶ The scientific potential for new insight from big data
for astronomy, medicine, climatology, oceanography is
clear
Big Data-a case for further investment?
▶ The scientific context of Big Data for social science is
especially interesting:
– Social science (indeed ESRC funded research) was there at
the start of what is now considered Big Data with
geographic information systems, and sociologists began
social network analysis before that
– Contemporary social scientists from management,
economics, criminology and many more disciplines are using
approaches grounded in Big Data but…
Big Data-some challenges for social
science
▶ Big Data can mean a paradigm shift to data discovery
science from hypothesis testing science. Implications for
refereeing in grants and journals?
▶ For some social scientists, new inter-disciplinary
opportunities arise from Big Data e.g. at the interface
between social and medical science – ESRC is developing
a vision for bio-social research
▶ For other social scientists, Big Data seems to threaten
and marginalise qualitative social science. But in could be
contended that it is precisely the insights of qualitative
social science that are needed to identify meaning from
the correlations observed in Big Data
Big Data-some questions for societies
▶ To what extent have Learned Societies own internal
debates featured Big Data issues to date?
▶ Have Learned Societies outside of social science
made approaches (or been contacted) to explore
issues of mutual concern?
▶ Do Societies see there are specific further steps the
ESRC should take in the Big Data area?
ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies-Horizon 2020 and Social Science
Horizon 2020-opportunities for social
science
▶ Nearly €80 billion over seven years, 2014-2020
▶ First calls: 11 December 2013
▶ Will cover funding previously provided through
Framework Programme Seven (FP7) and
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework
Programme (CIP) and European Institute of
Innovation and Technology (EIT)
▶ Should be worth £30m pa for UK social science…
Horizon 2020-opportunities for social
science
▶ Excellent Science:
– European Research Council - Frontier research by the
best individual led teams €13,800m
– Marie Curie Actions-Opportunities for training and
career development €5,600m
– Research infrastructures (including einfrastructures) Ensuring access to world-class facilities
€2,500m
Horizon 2020-opportunities for social
science
▶ Societal Challenges: €30,500m
– Health, demographic change & wellbeing €8,000m
– Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine
and maritime and inland water research and the
bioeconomy €4,000m
– Secure, clean and efficient energy €5,800m
– Smart, green and integrated transport €6,800m
– Climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials
€3,200m
– Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies €1,200m
– Secure and innovative societies €1500m
Horizon 2020-opportunities for social
science
▶ Secure, clean and efficient energy
– Socioeconomic research on energy efficiency
– The human factor in the energy system
▶ Smart, green and integrated transport
– Transport societal drivers
– User behaviour and mobility patterns in the
context of major societal trends
Horizon 2020-opportunities for social
science
▶ Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies
– New ideas, strategies and governance for Europe
– The young generation in an innovative
– Inclusive and sustainable Europe
– Europe as a global actor
– New forms of innovation
▶ But social science issues can become ICT centric!
▶ Horizontal measures pushed into this Challenge
▶ Sam Riches at ESRC represents UK on governance
Other international challenges /
opportunities
▶ EU Data Protection Regulation
– Need to safeguard exemption for research
▶ Political attack on NSF social science
– Requirement that all political science projects will benefit
national security or US economic interests
▶ NSF / RCUK SBE Lead Agency agreement
– Allows US and UK researchers to submit a single
collaborative proposal with a single review process
▶ Emerging Powers opportunities
ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies-Open Access update
Open Access update-RCUK policy
▶ “Free and open access to publicly-funded research offers
significant social and economic benefits. The Government,
in line with its overarching commitment to transparency
and open data, is committed to ensuring that such
research should be freely accessible. As major bodies
charged with investing public money in research, the
Research Councils take very seriously their
responsibilities in making the outputs from this research
publicly available – not just to other researchers, but also
to potential users in business, charitable and public
sectors, and to the general public”.
Open Access update-RCUK policy
▶ Journey to full Open Access is a process and not a
single event; compliance will grow over next five
years
▶ Comprehensive review of the effectiveness and
impact of its Open Access policy in 2014, 16, 18
▶ Mindful that the impact varies by discipline – hence
the different embargo periods across the disciplines
supported by the Research Councils
Open Access RCUK policy
▶ RCUK-funded research papers must be Open Access
▶ Gold
– Immediate and unrestricted access to the final published version of the
paper using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence
– May involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC)
▶ Green
– Deposit final Accepted Manuscript in a repository, without restriction
on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period (no APC)
– Delay of no more than 6months between on-line publication and the
final Accepted Manuscript becoming Open Access (12 months HASS
– Where funding for APCs is unavailable to an author during the transition
period, longer embargo periods will be allowable
Open Access update-policy issues
▶ Working with the AcSS to map the activities of social science
Learned Societies and begin to ascribe value (just reported)
– Phase 2 could look at the potential impact of OA on these activities
▶ ESRC represented on HEFCE OA Monograph Working Group
– Gathering evidence to inform how monographs might be treated
▶ RCUK is monitoring the international position
– US is mainly green
– EU has balanced support for both Green and Gold
– Netherlands has followed RCUK line with preference for Gold
▶ No evidence that institutional allocations are not being made
available to social scientists?
ESRC Annual Meeting with Learned
Societies-Any Other Business?