All change for funding of medical research in the United Kingdom

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7548.994

BMJ 2006;332:994 (29 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7548.994

News

All change for funding of medical research in the United Kingdom

Susan Mayor

London

Researchers have long wanted a simpler method for allocatingresearch funds in the UK. A new distribution process is in theoffing—though precise details are lacking, Susan Mayorreports

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Far reaching changes to the funding of academic medical researchin the United Kingdom are on the horizon, with two new initiativesannounced by the chancellor in his recent prebudget speech.

Firstly, the budgets from the two existing streams for the publicfunding of medical research, the Medical Research Council andNHS Research, will be merged. And secondly, the current systemfor allocating research funding to UK universities—theresearch assessment exercise (RAE)—is being scrapped afterthe 2008 exercise.

The current system is based on a peer review process, intendedto direct limited research funds go to centres of excellence.In its place, a simpler "metrics based" system is being proposed—onethat would be based on readily available figures. This mightbe a university's total research income from non-governmentsources, such as research councils, industry, and charities,which has previously been shown to correlate with research fundingallocated by the RAE.

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