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A review of research spending in British universities to make them more accountable is to start this year in a series of pilot institutions. The so-called ‘transparency review’ will be extended to the top research universities by the end of next year.

Taylor: focusing on identifying costs.

The move was announced last week by John Taylor, the new director-general of the research councils. Taylor was speaking before the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee in his first major policy statement since taking office six weeks ago.

He also indicated that he questioned the need at this time for a new government white paper (policy document) on science — an idea floated at a recent meeting of politicians and scientists in Downing Street (see Nature 396, 714; 1998). “There are no immediate issues staring us in the face,” he said.

The transparency review was a condition attached to increases in research spending allocated to universities following the government'srecent comprehensive spending review (see Nature 394, 209; 1998 ). The review will be overseen by the Science and Engineering Base Co-ordinating Committee, chaired by the government'schief scientific adviser, Sir Robert May.

The main aim of the exercise is to make universities more accountable for research spending and to oblige them to better identify research costs — this is ‘activity based costing’.

At the moment, the universities receive core funding from the higher-education funding councils and project funding from the research councils, under what is known as the dual-support system.

But in a surprise move, Taylor also said that the review will include an assessment of whether current funding arrangements are “sufficiently selective”, with the distribution of funding resulting in the “identification and maintenance of centres of excellence”. The review will also consider whether these two streams of government research funding are “complementary and coherent”.

The transparency review will initially focus on the complex administrative issue of introducing an activity-costing methodology to universities. Taylor told the committee that final specifications for this should be available by June. It would then be implemented in volunteer universities as early as the start of the next academic year and extended to all the top research universities towards the end of 2000.

Taylor explained to members of parliament that he had “pushed hard” to move the transparency review this far forward in the six weeks he had been director-general. He warned the committee that it would not be possible to bring it any further forward, saying: “You have to keep the aeroplane running while you change the engine.” The review, he said, would bring “information that will help us better run dual support, and triple support if we have a third leg of funding. We are going to get a better understanding of whether there really is a funding gap.” Under the present arrangements, universities do not receive the full costs for the research they undertake.

Taylor spelt out as a priority for his term in office the interface between the research councils and how well they coordinate their activities on key topics and interdisciplinary issues. He warned the committee that the excitement over genome research should not be allowed to lead to neglect of other areas of research, such as information technology and communications, which he predicted would dwarf other fields in terms of economic returns over the coming decade.