To celebrate the unique achievement of Dr Tommaso Ciarli and Dr Ismael Rafols, winners of the Elsevier Atlas Award for their paper ‘The relation between research priorities and societal demand: the case of rice’, an online (to accommodate lockdown) award ceremony took place last week. The ceremony was followed by a thought-provoking panel discussion with the discussion focusing on the challenge of aligning research funders’ priorities, when selecting and funding scientific research, to societal needs.

At the award ceremony, Dr Andrew Plume, Senior Director of Research Evaluation at Elsevier noted that the Atlas award was launched in early 2015 to help recognize and promote the best research with societal impact published in Elsevier journals, as a means to bring wider attention to this research and enable successful implementation which will significantly impact people’s lives around the world. The winning paper was selected from recently published articles across Elsevier’s 3,800 journals by the Atlas Advisory Board as the most important to society.

Professor Paul Nightingale, Research Policy’s Editor and Chair of the ceremony, noted that ‘the nature of this research, the questions that were asked, the methods that have been employed, its ability to combine both empirical work, qualitative work, and theoretical work make this study very important’. He invited Professors Seb Oliver, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research);  Constantin Blome,  Associate Dean for Research at the University of Sussex Business School; Jeremy Kent Hall, Director of the Science Policy Research Unit; and Ed Steinmueller, Editor of the Special Issue of Research Policy, to mark SPRU’s 50th anniversary, who remarked that the research builds on and SPRU’s core academic traditions of problem focused, multidisciplinary, empirical and critically analysed research with policy relevance, to achieve real impact in the world, which is a core University-wide strategic aim.

In receiving their trophy (virtually), the two authors expressed their gratitude for this award, acknowledging that the paper is a first step, highlighting the possible misalignment between the research which is produced and funded, and the research which might be needed to attain the Global Goals. Their research provides statistical evidence  that is necessary to understand the imbalances between research demand and supply and how this can be measured.

These questions were discussed during the subsequent Panel Discussion, chaired by Andrew Stirling, Professor, Science and Technology Policy, with a distinguished panel of speakers:

• Professor Joanna Chataway, Head of Department of Science Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP), University College London
• Dr Tommaso Ciarli, Senior Research Fellow, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
• Dr Jude Fransman, Research Fellow, Institute of Educational Technology, Co-Convener of the Rethinking Research Collaborative, The Open University
• Dr Alessandra Galiè, Senior Scientist- Gender, International Livestock Research Institute
• Professor Jeremy Kent Hall, Director, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
• Professor Ben Martin, Science and Technology Policy Studies, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
• Professor Steve McGuire, Dean, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex
• Professor Paul Nightingale Director of Strategy and Operations, ESRC, Professor of Strategy, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
• Dr Andrew Plume, Senior Director, Research Evaluation, Elsevier
• Professor Ed Steinmueller, Information & Communication Technology Policy, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
• Professor Andrew Stirling, Science and Technology Policy, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
• Professor Paul Struik, Crop Systems Biology, Centre for Crop Systems Analysis, Wageningen University & Research

At the panel, the focus moved to the definition of societal demands and their interplay with the existing set of global research priorities. Paul Nightingale kicked off the discussion by accepting that there are multiple layers of bias in defining societal needs and, many times, even wider participation is not representative of these. Alessandra Galiè agreed that bottom-up approaches on societal demands still involve bias, and it is not enough to just address people’s needs but we need to look at how to fulfil people’s aspirations and that we need research with impact on the most marginal parts of society, highlighting the complexities on the ground.

Jude Fransman argued that we need to open up science to diverse groups, industries, relocating science to global knowledge ecosystems and asked how can we learn in academia from different (broader) ecosystems, while Joanna Chataway expressed that there is a bridge between curiosity driven and applied research, but again asked how can we integrate these, bring together different types of knowledge and datasets? In his intervention Paul Struik suggested that we need diversity in research and that we need to rethink the role of research, the researcher, and science for sustainability.

Tommaso Ciarli highlighted that there is a lack of coordination in the public and private sectors’ incentives, an imbalance in the redistribution at the end, and that we need to rebalance and redistribute funding. As Ismael Rafols noted, we need to understand the visions of the world. Andy Stirling agreed that diversity is important and it is in the messiness that you may find integration, while Paul Nightingale ultimately called for the need to allow for academics to do research, and be reflexive, honest, and to open up to people outside of academia.

Watch the recording of the event: