This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Manager
The Biochemical Society, in partnership with the Society of Biology, is appointing a new full-time Science Policy Officer. It’s a one year, full time position, with the possibility of extension. You can find full details here.
Closing date: 09:00, 4 March
This does, sadly, indicate that I am leaving Charles Darwin House at the start of April. I will be taking up a newly created position in the Equality Challenge Unit team (the coordinators of the Athena SWAN Charter). Until then, please do continue to contact me on science policy issues – I’ll update this page with the details of my successor when they start!
Update: 4 April – Catherine Ball has been appointed and is working across the two societies. You can contact her at catherineball@societyofbiology.org or catherine.ball@biochemistry.org
Staying connected
10/09/2012
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
Following some interesting feedback we received from a survey of our members on gender equality issues and what the Society should be doing to support and celebrate women in science, coupled with discussions amongst our staff and Meetings Board and suggestions I have picked up during my long-running interest in gender equality in science, the Society has just launched a new grant scheme. The Stay Connected Bursaries will support the attendance of scientists with young children at our conferences from the start of next year – including those on parental leave, and those who require the attendance of a partner to look after a young child. We hope that this small step will go part way to overcoming one of the many challenges that scientists face in balancing a career with having a family; helping them to keep up to date with current research and maintain and develop contacts.
The introduction of this scheme follows the recent changes to our conference proposal guidelines (Focused Meeting proposal linked as an example), which now state that we aspire to a 40% female speaker representation, and that at least 25% of the invited speakers should always be women. This should also help to boost opportunities for newer investigators, amongst whom women are more readily represented.
Celebrating women in science
Our ability to bring these issues to the forefront of our policy considerations has been helped by top-level buy-in. This is widely recognised – not just in scientific organisations – as being a vital component of achieving sustainable change. Next year is the 100th anniversary of the admittance of the Society’s first female members and throughout the year the Society is organizing a variety of events, activities and initiatives to celebrate women in biochemistry and across science. Most of these have been informed by the survey These activities will take place across our departments, so keep an eye on our website over the next few months and into 2013.
Whilst I’m on the subject of celebration, Ada Lovelace Day is fast approaching, this year to be held in conjunction with the Women’s Engineering Society. Featuring performances from Helen Arney, Dr Suzie Sheehy, Gia Milinovich, Dr Helen Scales, Helen Keen, Dr Alice Bell, Sarah Angliss and Sydney Padua, the Institution of Engineering and Technology will host this celebration of the achievements of women in STEM on October 16. It should be a fun night and bring inspiring role models to the fore, a simple solution which still plays an important part in encouraging women to stay in science. The organisers are also using a crowdsourcing site to raise money in order to create a charitable organisation, securing the long-term future of the event and expanding the group’s activities. You can find out more about Ada Lovelace Day at the Finding Ada blog.
Brief thoughts on the Finch Report
19/06/2012
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
We have released a statement on the Finch Report, the report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (known to all as the Finch Group). I am in no doubt that the scientific community and public want open access. But, working at a learned society, to me it has been interesting to see how the debate over the more technical details have played out over recent months, given that we:
a.) represent a significant community of scientists (we recently passed 6000 members)
b.) generate a significant amount of our revenue from publishing.
Economically, publishing is already important for our economy – as David Willetts said himself (admittedly when addressing the Publishers Association AGM) – and open access publishing could be too. The opportunities and potential of the wider ‘open science’ movement is huge, especially when other possibilities such as data mining are taken into account. But there are risks involved, and learned societies face a challenging transitional period. The whole research ecosystem will need to be on board, particularly funders.
The transition is already taking place and the open publishing world is developing quickly. In 2008, a survey showedthat the landscape was very unclear and that none of the member societies of the Biosciences Federation (a fore-runner of the Society of Biology) offered a fully open access journal. Now, Portland Press Ltd (our publishing subsidiary) alone publishes two: Bioscience Reports and ASN NEURO (on behalf of the American Society for Neurochemistry).
The shift to open access is, to my mind, undoubtedly a good thing, as long as it can be done sustainably and any charges do not exclude people from being published. That would be completely self-defeating, which is why we all need to work together for the benefit of researchers and the public.
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
Yesterday, Valerie Vaz, MP for Walsall South, organised an adjournment debate on women in science [transcript here]. I recommend you read it. She set out clearly what many others fail to do: that the matter of equality and diversity is not only a social justice issue, but also of vital importance to our competitiveness, and the government needs to do more about it.
Ms Vaz, a Biochemistry graduate, referred to a recent survey run by the Biochemical Society, which sought to bring to light the main problems facing our members, and some solutions to these. Issues associated with having a family – including childcare and the detrimental effects of taking maternity leave or working flexibly/part time within the traditional academic career and funding structures, featured highly in the responses. Furthermore, more female than male academic staff are on fixed-term contracts, and Ms Vaz reported that the gap is increasing.
Such issues are a considerable problem at an individual level, but also pose a great risk to our competitiveness, as diversity in research (as well as a well-motivated community) is benficial for research and innovation. Within academia, some universities and departments are doing a lot to address these imbalances, as I was recently exposed to when I joined an Athena SWAN judging panel for the first time. However, I also realised that some don’t “get it”.
Accountability
If we are to be an ‘innovation leader’ and secure the future strength of our science base, we need action now. I hope to raise this at Monday’s Science Question Time event on science and growth. Mr Willetts has shown signs that he buys into his role in solving the problems (attending the debate was a good sign), and said yesterday that he is to be accountable for mainstreaming the expertise developed by the UKRC, which used to be funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Willetts points to his direction to the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering to instigate a new diversity programme (the subject of the last Policy Lunchbox event). However, as the Royal Society of Chemistry points out, the funding for these programmes is relatively small. He needs to be doing more to promote change, and develop clear targets and a strategy. But I, and others, aren’t sure he gets the whole picture.
@jlush2 thank you. I think you are right.
—
Meg Munn (@MegMunnMP) June 14, 2012Final note
Mr Willetts took the opportunity the debate presented to draw attention to BIS support for Vitae, which provides careers support for researchers. He highlighted its role in helping postdoctoral researchers, that oft-neglected community, and his acknowledgement of their need for support is welcome. However, Vitae itself may be heading the way of the UKRC, as the latest Research Fortnight cover story reports: ‘Funding councils throw Vitae £3m lifeline – But careers body still loses more than half its core funding’. Indeed, one of the activities that will lose core funding, RF reports, is the GRADschools programme for postgraduate researchers. Maybe not something to be shouting about then.
Further reading: MPs debate women in STEM (Campaign for Science and Engineering blog)
This is an edited version of a post which first appeared at the British Ecological Society’s blog
Equality and diversity in science was the focus of last week’s Policy Lunchbox, run at Charles Darwin House by the Biochemical Society and British Ecological Society.
Sarah Hawkes, Head of Scientific Engagement at the Royal Society (RS), gave a presentation about her work on the Society’s new four-year programme (scroll down), which focuses on removing the barriers to increasing diversity in the scientific workforce.
The science sector in the UK – and the RS itself – have been the subject of criticism for the notable lack of women amongst their ranks, particularly in more senior positions. In the UK, men are six times more likely than women to work in science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) subjects, and of the 46 Fellows appointed at the RS in 2012, only two were women.
The RS’s new programme, funded by the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, aims to address this gender imbalance – as well as tackling other issues of diversity incorporating ethnicity, disability and socio-economic status – across both academia and industry. The idea is to learn from and build upon the number of equality initiatives which already exist to work towards three objectives:
- Defining and understanding the scientific workforce;
- Identifying barriers to entry and progression within the scientific work force, which a view to removing them, and;
- In the long-term, increasing the diversity of the scientific workforce.
The programme will involve data gathering and a large scale policy study, significant work to engage with the scientific community, organising diversity events and activities, and engaging with the Athena SWAN initiative (which the Biochemical Society co-funds) and actors within education.
The scheme has strong backing from Sir Paul Nurse, PRS, who made a statement recently saying that “we must have an environment in which all scientists, including those from previously underrepresented groups, have an equal chance to excel”.
Much of the work so far has been to establish the programme and begin to embed it within the RS’s work. An initial scoping study has been carried out to identify existing data on the diversity of the scientific workforce and knowledge gaps that need to be filled. As part of this work, the programme is exploring the possibility of joining up existing datasets to reveal long-term trends, which may indicate whether the suggestion of some commentators – that it is ‘just a matter of time’ before equality will come about in science anyway – is true (I would propose that it certainly won’t any time soon, without more significant intervention).
A consultation and engagement conference held at the end of March also provided vital feedback from the scientific community, identifying the barriers and issues people working in the field experience. Areas including careers guidance, career trajectories, improving awareness of STEM careers, the importance of role models and widening Athena SWAN were suggested and will be used to shape the RS programme’s work. Further consultation and a large scale policy study this summer will also investigate whether the diversity issues in science are replicated in other sectors and help identify evidence to make a ‘business case’ for improving diversity. This is an increasing focus in Europe too, as the recent Gendera conference brought to light.
Consideration will also be given to different measures of ‘excellence’ within science, as women are particularly affected by the challenge of maintaining a reputation through publications. This is due to factors including maternity leave and the potential loss of association with a publication record if names are changed in marriage.
The programme will focus initially on the academic sector but, building on Sarah’s previous experience working on the Athena SWAN Charter, it is hoped the RS programme will collaborate with the Charter to broaden its scope beyond universities to pilot work in research institutes and, perhaps in the future, industry. This will also help any best practices from industry be absorbed more widely. Unilever, for example, drew praise at the 2011 European Gender Summit for its active approach to diversity.
Of course, in addition to reaching out to pursue diversity externally, the RS must address the significant gender imbalance within its own Fellowship which, in the last 10 years, has elected only 43 women as Fellows out of a total of 438 (at the Biochemical Society, we acknowledge a similar problem with our awards, which we are working to address). Although low, this is an improvement compared to previous decades and now with the significant support of Sir Paul, Sarah feels progress will be made faster. A major barrier to overcome is the fact that Fellows are elected based on nominations by existing Fellows, which means the demographic is likely to perpetuate without interventions.
Sarah suggested that Learned Societies can help the RS programme, and more broadly make progress with addressing diversity issues, by participating in satellite expert groups which the programme is hoping to establish and informing Sarah of their own diversity initiatives, or providing examples of role models and case studies. There may also be the opportunity to work collaboratively, to run joint mentoring schemes for example, and the RS may provide some funding for this. This is definitely worth keeping an eye out for.
More details of the RS’s work on equality and diversity are available on their website. Our thanks again to Sarah for giving such an interesting presentation, which is available here, and for dealing with all of our questions, especially the toughies from me!
Listen again to Voice of the Future and Science Question Time (along with 100,000 others)
22/03/2012
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
I was in Stuttgart on Tuesday (discussing gender equality in science) when I had an email from Imran Khan, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering and a collaborator on Science Question Time. Apparantly our recording of last Thursday’s SciQT Nuclear Debate had gone viral, with over 30,000 listens at SoundCloud. We knew it had been an interesting and provocative policy debate, but the evident public appetite was surprising, to me at least. It was not entirely unaided though, and we must thank the good people of Boing Boing for promoting our debate to their audience, and helping us to reach 117,000 (as of now…)
Last week also saw Voice of the Future take place in the House of Commons, with many young scientists – including some sixth form students – having the opportunity to ask difficult questions of David Willetts MP, Chi Onwurah MP and members of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology (with several of them making their debut appearances). The recording of this event (with full video) is available here. In all, it was a good week for biology in the House, as Monday saw student Nicholas Love (University of Manchester) take home first prize from SET for Britain, held in the Commons Terrace Marquee, having won the Biological and Biomedical Science category and then taking the gong ahead of the winners of Physical Sciences (Chemistry and Physics), and Engineering. Both of these events were primarily organised by the Scoiety of Biology, with support from various Member Organisations including the Biochemical Society.
Excuse the brevity of this post, but there’s lots of info in the embedded links above!
Policy events and news at the Society
22/02/2012
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
It’s an exciting time in policy and public affairs at the Biochemical Society (I always feel as though ‘Policy Officer’ isn’t quite inclusive enough as my job title). A lot is going on! Here’s a quick run-down of our upcoming activities…
The Society has reserved six spaces at ‘Voice of the Future 2012‘ – an opportunity for young scientists to put their science policy related questions to the Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts MP; Shadow Minister for Innovation and Science, Chi Onwurah MP; and members of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology. The event will be held on Wednesday 14 March at the House of Commons and has been organised by the Society of Biology, with the support of several organisations including ourselves.
The next Science Question Time – one of our regular collaborations with the Campaign for Science and Engineering and Dr Alice Bell – will focus on the Nuclear Debate and be held on Thursday 15 March at the Institute of Physics, London. Further details on the event, including how to submit questions and sign up, are available on the Science Question Time website.
Talkfest is back too, with an event on ‘Sounds of Science’ to be held on Wednesday 29 February at our Charles Darwin House base. You can listen to past Science Question Time and Talkfest events on our new Podcasts page. And, as always, we have Policy Lunchbox events lined up, with an announcement of May’s event expected soon.
The deadline for the Gender Equality in Science Grant Scheme is at the end of next month, which should give us some interesting and exciting projects to fund ahead of next year’s 100th anniversary of the Society admitting female members.
Sense About Science are holding a ‘Standing up for Science’ media workshop in Manchester on Friday 23 March. As partners, the Society has been assigned five priority places for our early career researchers.
The Society is partnering with the Society for Experimental Biology and the British Ecological Society to organize a unique bioscience communication training workshop for doctoral research students and postdoctoral research staff. The workshop, to be held in London on 7 June, will enhance participants’ skills and help to demonstrate the impact and benefits of their research. Further announcements will be made as we finalise the plans.
We’re also looking ahead to responding to the Higher Education Commission inquiry examining the future of postgraduate education, and thinking about our activities for the years ahead, now that my feet are well and truly under the desk. Watch this space!
Policy Lunchbox welcomes back Beck Smith
12/01/2012
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
The Biochemical Society will welcome Beck Smith, Assistant Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), to speak at Policy Lunchbox on 6 March. Beck was Head of Policy at the Society for several years, before moving on to her exciting new venture at CaSE in September last year.
Spaces are going fast, but if you would like to attend please email me at James.Lush@biochemistry.org
If you’d like to be first to find out about the latest Policy Lunchbox events, please join the mailing list here.
Policy Lunchbox is a joint initiative with the British Ecological Society.
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
Policy Lunchbox was privileged on Friday to host the first presentation on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ (BIS) new Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth since its launch last Thursday. Grant Peggie, Head of Innovation and Investment at BIS, gave a run down of the key points to the assembled members of the Policy Lunchbox community over mince pies and mulled wine. Here’s a summary of what he had to say.
Whilst the UK is host to world class researchers and punches above its weight in terms of pure research output, we are not as good at encouraging and developing strategic partnerships with the rest of the ‘innovation ecosystem’ – compared to near neighbours such as France, Germany and Sweden, and also other countries like the USA, said Grant. As well as places where research takes place, business, finance and bodies such as standards offices must all work together to support ‘innovation for growth’. Grant also emphasised that policy makers need to understand that it is important for innovation to take place in all sectors – not just in traditional areas like high-tech industry – including fields like utilities and construction.
The Strategy document sets out medium and long term mechanisms through which the government intends to support innovation for growth, having identified it as something we need to exploit. The timescale (as laid out in a section at the end of the document) for instigating all the projects goes no further than 2015, as the government has been unwilling to commit to longer term plans during this lasting period of austerity. However, Grant was reassuring when questioned about short-termism, stating that the announced Technology Strategy Board (TSB) focus areas – such as graphene development – would have lasting legacies. For example, the Graphene Global Research and Innovation Hub (possibly to be established in Manchester, although the location decision rests with the TSB and Research Councils in accordance with the Haldane principle) should be operational within four years, by which time some of the other policies laid out in the document should help support its long-term activity. The Government has committed £50m to graphene research through the spending review period and has pinned hopes on profitable applications being developed in the UK.
On the other strategic areas highlighted, we heard that the location of a new ‘Cell Therapy Catapult Centre’ (the less said about this moniker the better) in London would be decided next year, although there was pressure to land it in East London. This will also be the home of the Open Data Institute, to be founded in Shoreditch and led by Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. People will notice that this isn’t actually a new announcement, and indeed Grant admitted that not much of the chapter from which this announcement and several others can be found (entitled ‘Knowledge and Innovation’) is actually new, but sets out what the Government has committed to since this spring/summer. How the Institute will fit in with the opening up of NHS data announced by David Cameron as part of the new Strategy for UK Life Sciences remains to be seen. The datasets to be prioritised have been named as transport, weather and health.
Concerning the Research Councils, changes are afoot. Multi-institutional bids for funding will be allowed according to a framework to be published in February, providing new opportunities for consortia such as the N8 group (the Universities of Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York) to apply for funding together. Furthermore, groups such as charities not based within Universities will also be able to apply for funding. This means that there will be more funding streams, although there won’t be more money up for grabs. Particularly regarding the new rules on consortia, this could lead to very large funding awards being made, with one potential knock-on effect being the restriction of traditional award recipients even further – in what are already straitened times. Grant agreed that this was a risk, although this policy did come out of consultation with universities. Another outcome could be on the institutional and geographical spread of awards, which are already a contentious issue. On the other side, it is hoped that larger, consortia based funding could lead to more matched funding bids from pharmaceutical companies. These changes will certainly need to be follow closely next year. The Research Councils have also agreed to invest £2 million in the development of a UK ‘Gateway to Research’. Plans remain sketchy, but should allow open access to Research Council funded research data and other information by 2013. The scheme aims to be flexible and allow for non-Research Council research to be catalogued here too. This has the potential to be a really exciting and useful resource – if they get it right regarding the usability of data – especially for publicising research which could be commercialised. Smaller companies without extensive access to horizon-scanning resources could have greatly improved access and more business relationships may arise.
The bottom line, what else is new, and forthcoming work
In total, according to BIS figures, we heard that £610 million has been committed to capital in science since January. The headline announcements new to this Statement are highlighted in the BIS press release. However, as already alluded to, there is no ’10 year plan’ or similar long-term vision as the science community would like to see, representing a real long-term commitment to science as a driver of growth. We may expect reassessments to be made towards the end of the spending review period (ending in 2015).
Some of the other plans we received a run-down of are:
- The Economics Paper published alongside the main strategy document focuses on innovation (and is the first to do so since the mid ‘90s) and Grant revealed that a separate analysis of science would be published next year.
- As well as Cell Therapy, the other Catapult Centres will be High Value Manufacturing and Offshore Renewable Energy, with three more to be confirmed.
- The previously announced Biomedical Catalyst Fund will total £180 million, half each from the TSB and the Medical Research Council (MRC). This fund will be focussed on commercial medicine and proof of concept research. The TSB investment was newly announced in the Strategy for UK Life Sciences released earlier in the week.
- There will be an extra £75 million for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) through the resurrected Smart scheme – to come from the TSB – as first announced in the Autumn Statement. The TSB will also implement a new innovation voucher programme to support collaboration between SMEs and external knowledge providers. The first vouchers will be awarded next year.
- The Launchpad initiative will be extended – providing intensive support for specific sectoral clusters in chosen locations, with the aim of attracting follow-up ‘angel investment’. Grant hinted that a life science Launchpad was being considered for the Scottish central belt.
- The Red Tape Challenge will be extended, investigating the bureaucratic barriers that inhibit innovation – including those set by government. Further challenges identified are the barriers posed by procurement methods.
- Tax credits to incentivise research and development in the UK will be introduced in Budget 2013.
- The TSB will gain more staff to make sure we can leverage as much EU funding as possible in the future.
- We are going to embark on a joint research agreement with China, funding bi-lateral projects. Joint research calls with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology are expected during 2012.
The delivery plan makes it clear that all the policies must be followed through, although the mechanisms have not yet been decided.
Naturally, Grant wanted to highlight all the positives of the Strategy, but as he said, having RCUK and the CBI saying good things is a good sign that they seem to have hit several right notes. And, whilst the Strategy certainly emphasises innovation rather than research, Grant explained that the rationale for this was two-fold: firstly that there was no desire to “throw research up in the air again”; and secondly that whilst research is a vital strength of the UK, innovation is in greater need of attention, particularly concerning commercial exploitation.
Last word – still no commitment on postgraduates
Grant was candid when asked about the lack of focus on post-graduates in recent government publications, acknowledging this point but regrettably not revealing any firm intention for anything to be done. However, he reported strong awareness that this is a live issue, citing the influence of Twitter as a significant pressure for a concerted effort from BIS in this area. The strategy is also noticably silent on visa restrictions for talented science graduates.
Related reading
Innovation and Research Strategy, and Economics Paper: http://www.bis.gov.uk/innovatingforgrowth
Strategy for UK Life Sciences: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/s/11-1429-strategy-for-uk-life-sciences
Autumn Statement: http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/autumn_statement.pdf
Welcome to the new Talking Post blog
15/11/2011
This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer
Hi readers,
The eagle eyed will notice that this blog was previously located at https://becksmith.wordpress.com/
If you have been redirected here, welcome to the new blog and I hope you like it! If you were a subscriber at the old page, you may have to resubscribe here (I am not technically gifted enough to know). Thanks for continuing to read posts at the Talking Post! All the old posts can now be found here too.
If there are any issues, please email me at James.Lush@biochemistry.org or send me a tweet.
Happy reading,
James
