What is the role of basic research in Europe’s future?

Members Area

In April 2009 the international conference “Role of Basic Research in the Process of Structuring ERA (European Research Area)” (http://www.era2009.cz/en/era/), was held in Prague, Czech Republic. Two representatives of the Euroscience Governing Board took part in this conference: Dr. Georges Waysand (as an “observer”) and Dr. Nelli Didenko (as a key speaker). This conference was organised under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in the framework of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Participants were from the European and international community of research stakeholders – research organisations, science foundations, European Commission and other relevant policy makers. There were about 150 highly ranked participants from all EU Member States.

The formation of ERA is a political goal drawn up by the European Union at the beginning of the 21st century. The vision is being refined periodically through various analyses and/or recommendations, e.g. the Commission´s Green Paper on “The ERA: New Perspectives”.

The recently launched Ljubljana process identified five initiatives for underpinning ERA. They concern researchers’ careers and mobility, research infrastructures, knowledge sharing, joint programming and international science and technology cooperation. At the end of 2008 all these initiatives were encompassed by the “Vision 2020 for the ERA” which underlines the importance of the creation of an area of freedom and exchange for researchers, enabling them to contribute to a “Europe without barriers”. The ERA2009 conference in April contributed to the discussion on these new perspectives for the European Research Area, with a particular focus on basic research and its future role and importance.

The themes of the conference sessions were of relevance to Euroscience and its aims and some in particular were pertinent: the location of infrastructures in ERA; the situation for young European scientists; and coordinating and connecting research efforts. The rest of this article discusses these topics and reports on how they were dealt with at the conference.

The Location of infrastructures in ERA
What is at issue? Jiří Drahoš, President of the Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, made it clear in his opening remarks. He emphasised that the motto of the Czech EU Council Presidency is “Europe without barriers”, aiming at the creation of a competitive and open Europe. During the period of the Czech Presidency the Academy of Sciences, along with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, has concentrated mainly on two topics, namely, large research infrastructures and the mobility of young researchers. As the construction and modernisation of research infrastructures is considered to be one of the main pillars of the ERA development, the development of a geographically balanced network of research infrastructures will play a key role in this process.

“Only a regionally balanced network can have the potential to secure a balanced mobility of researchers among Member States. In the event of imbalance in terms of regional distribution of research infrastructures, the so-called “rich man effect” will cause a brain-drain from less advanced Member States with only negative consequences for the future development of the ERA”, Drahoš said.

It is necessary to remember that the best science is highly competitive and co-operation as such cannot be considered as the goal of the ERA process. “It should be ensured that research infrastructures are allocated proportionally in all EU regions. Instruments supporting mobility of researchers around Europe should also be well advised not to cause a one-way ”Intra-European South-North, East-West brain-drain”. Equal distribution of research infrastructures and the presence of highly qualified researchers, who can move freely throughout Europe, are necessary prerequisites for the effectiveness of the ERA.

The European Commission’s information shows that more than half of the ESFRI facilities are of distributed nature, giving opportunities for regions, small and less research intensive countries to participate in (international research) projects. Speaking about influence of network-driven management of existing European Research Infrastructures (RIs) at Hervé Pero, (Directorate-General for Research, European Commission) emphasised that network-driven management gives an opportunity to increase involvement of researchers from new Member States and to make improvements in RIs in these states. Access to the best RIs for more than 7000 user groups provides for mobility of researchers (more than 30.000 people) and helps the training of science community users.

Young researchers in ERA
“There is a knowledge paradox”, says Norbert Kroo, from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a member of the European Research Council, “in that the significance of science increases while the interest of the young generation decreases”.

Funding, a perennial issue for research, is critically important for young researchers trying to establish their careers. Wilhelm Krull, from the funder Volkswagen Stiftung, discussed state-of-the-art research in EU and its challenges and perspectives. He emphasised that though the EU is the world’s largest producer of peer reviewed scientific articles, it lags behind the US in terms of citation impact of its scientific output. “Moreover, the rapid growth of scientific output in Asia-Pacific nations is in stark contrast to slow growth in Europe and stagnation in the US. Thirty years ago, European scientists dominated the Nobel Prize lists; today, prestigious awards are won mainly by scientists working in the USA. Data on the world distribution of researchers in 2004 show that researchers in the EU amount to 25% of the world’s total compared to 27% in the US and 10% in the Russian Federation. Research is still not supported sufficiently in Europe, particularly with respect to risky, open-ended ‘frontier research’.

“In comparison to the US, foundations in Europe have played a less prominent role until now”, he said, though “in recent years the importance of foundations has significantly grown”. According to the latest comparative statistics in Italy and Germany, around 50% of registered foundations emerged since 1990, while other countries such as Belgium, Finland, France and Sweden report between 19% and 29% increases in the number of foundations in that period.

The importance of interdisciplinary research
Kroo’s view is that key instruments in achieving the aims of ERA are interdisciplinary research, raising incentives towards quality and aspirations of individual researchers and research at the frontiers (characterised by an absence of disciplinary boundaries). One of the aims of funders is to overcome disciplinary boundaries and to foster transformative research.

Krull developed the discussion, saying that young researchers should be trained not only in special disciplines, but also in intellectual property, science ethics, history of the discipline, interpersonal communication and media skills. And as a result of such training young researchers should be required and able to explain what their research is about, how they are conducting it and especially why they are doing it.

Coordinating and connecting research effort
The overall vision and objectives were summed up by Ian Halliday, president of the European Science Foundation, who spoke about the necessity of coordinating basic research programmes in ERA and increasing the competition between scientists, universities and national systems. He also highlighted the necessity to increase societal benefit from research, something that national governments, too, are moving up their science policy agendas.

There are many significant players in the research community that need to be more effectively linked up. These include: the universities, where most of the basic research goes on; joint research organizations, where collaborative work cross-border work is carried out on a large scale; industry, where the innovation layer primarily resides; and society as a whole which benefits from good research. Moreover, the linking needs to be not just of the scale of ERA but of a larger scale altogether.

David Livesey, from the League of European Research Universities spoke about the role of universities in research and innovation and about networking the business community with universities. He gave examples that have worked from the UK and Dutch experience, emphasising the role of universities in the innovation process and providing examples of supporting infrastructures for knowledge economy nodes around universities.

Supporting infrastructures of another kind are also important for development of ERA. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) has a major role in structuring ERA’s future. The JRC consists of 7 large institutes in 5 Member States. Roland Schenkel, from the European Commission highlighted the fact that the JRC has many unique laboratories and research facilities open to co-operations between groups, some with dedicated training programmes for young researchers. This view was echoed by Izo Abram from CNRS, who called for formal links to be established between European institutions, perhaps under the model employed by CNRS, to help coordinate science strategy across Europe and to embed science more effectively in society.

The US science diplomacy initiative
Alan Leshner, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was compelling in talking about strengthening science diplomacy. Having analysed the globalisation of science using bibliographic services to show from which countries articles are published, he made the following points:
•    Science is more and more being done everywhere in the world
•    International/global science is becoming common
•    It has become harder to collaborate with US science
•    The official US stance on science is changing. There are new attitudes that will affect the position of the US as global science collaborator

What should the global science community be doing together? It is necessary to continue collaborations (individual projects and building shared resources/infrastructure), to work on global issues and problems, to integrate the global scientific community and to invigorate science diplomacy. Integrating the global scientific community is a prerequisite for developing global standards (scientific ethics and intellectual property), helping to develop scientific communities, deal with varied national science policies, better coordinate funding policies, and streamline diverse bureaucracies.

Science diplomacy is not just a US strategy. To invigorate science diplomacy, the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy was established in July 2008. The goal of the Center is to provide a forum for scientists, policy analysts and policymakers through which they can share information and explore collaborative opportunities. The focus of activities of the Center is concentrated on analysing current and past science diplomacy efforts and identifying the major barriers to successful science diplomacy (educational and human resource issues, funding problems, attitudinal issues and building new partnerships with appropriate stakeholders in both the scientific and the international affairs communities.) AAAS and Europe have wonderfully close ties and opportunities to collaborate in advancing the progress of science, serving the globalisation of science, promoting the worldwide science-society nexus, and developing joint programs in science diplomacy. It is clear that there is an important role for Euroscience to play in this process of science diplomacy and integrating the global science community.

Russia’s role in European and world science
The role and place of Russia in the vision for science in the ERA needs also to be explored. The twin issues of competitiveness and cooperation are to the fore here. Michael Ugrumov from the Russian Academy of Sciences described the human and financial resources for basic research in Russia and made comparative analyses of the efficiency of the Russian Academy of Sciences, CNRS and other ERA research organisations. His main findings were that although the human and financial resources of the RAS were many times lower than similar organisations in ERA, individual funding for scientists in the RAS is three times as high. With respect to the FP6 programme, although total funding of projects with Russian participation was 2.8 billion euros, total funding of Russian participants in FP6 was equal only 50 million euros. Ugrumov argued that with respect to the prospect of Russia becoming an associate member of FP7 it is necessary to resolve several issues: the amount annual registration fee for Russia, right of potential Russian members to sit on the executive committees of FP7, and relations with ERC and the FP7 programme “IDEAS”.

My own presentation was the last one at the conference. In my presentation I focused attention on the development of the group of ‘New Russian scientists’ in the process of globalisation and the role of Euroscience.

For the last ten years, due to the processes of globalisation, the human potential of science has been changed qualitatively. A new international scientific class (group) has emerged – scientists whose research work does not belong to one country because in the course of their scientific career they have forged contacts with foreign colleagues and had practical experience in scientific collectives of different countries and continents. Such groups of ‘new scientists’ have appeared in all countries of the NIS (Newly Independent States) and in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The community of researchers in Russia comprises about 400000 persons (10% of world researchers), having shown a gradual decline over the decade to 2006. Women represent about 40% of all researchers in Russia. Reform in the institutions of the Russian academy of Sciences in last three years, grant programs for young researchers, and financial support of scientists from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) were described, along with the international competitions of RFBR, including bilateral seminars and research projects. Now, learning from the experience of FP6, we need to identify the optimal way of involving Russian scientists in EU projects.

Euroscience has been active in Russia from the very beginning of its existence. In 1997, two Russian scientists working at SPASS, the automated theorem prover at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, took part in inauguration of Euroscience. In 1998, the St. Petersburg Technology Transfer Group of Euroscience was created. And in 2003, the Euroscience Regional Section in Russia was established by a decision of the Euroscience Governing Board. This Section was based on the St. Petersburg Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy Sciences (SPbSC RAS), in cooperation with SPASS. Professor Irina Eliseeva, President of the Euroscience Cooperation Centre in St. Petersburg, is a Corresponding Member of RAS. In 2008, a grass-root initiative saw two new Euroscience Regional Sections (in the South and in the Central Russia) created. Two international conferences with the active participation of Euroscience were held in Russia during this time and two books of scientific articles were published by the Euroscience Regional Section in Russia.

The importance of ESOF (held in 2004, 2006, 2008, and next in 2010), with participation of several thousands of persons from about 60 countries, cannot be overestimated. Russian scientists will be part of this story. In spite of complex problems in Russian science there is now a possibility for increased cooperation with European colleagues in new European projects and scientific activity for a better quality of life. The role of Euroscience in facilitating and nurturing this cooperation will be very important.

Dr. Nelli Didenko
Member, Euroscience Governing Board; Coordinator, Euroscience Regional Section in Russia

[Editor’s note: Slides from all the presentations at the conference are available from the conference website at http://www.era2009.cz/en/program/ ]

Keywords

Site by