a stronger emphasis on getting products to market for short term financial returns. At the same time, corporate research started to be geared more towards interactions with R&D and business outside the mother company. Partnerships, licensing and internal venture activities became increasingly important (Chesbrough, 2003).
The growing importance of R&D for commercial opportunity also affected publicly funded organizations. With the growth in the venture capital sector in the 1970s university science could be commercialized directly, without the need to transfer a new technology first to a company. Research became a business opportunity for the researchers. Universities were encouraged to make use of this development through legislation that made it possible to assert IPRs for the output of their researchers (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Buttel, 2005). International organizations, such as the OECD and the EU, set up projects in collaboration with national authorities and researchers, to develop a new approach to policy in the fields of science and technology (Miettinen, 2002). The establishment of university-industry networks and the commercialization of university research was promoted by governments in a number of countries in NAE and university research was increasingly seen as an important contributor to regional and national economic competitiveness (Cooke and Morgan, 1998). The focus had shifted from basic research to a stronger emphasis on research that can be commercialized (Schienstock, 2004).
Another aspect in the recent history of the organization of scientific research is the emphasis on value creation and accountability. Since the 1960s, the growth of public research funding in Western Europe and the US has been largely in form of competitive grants rather than budget funding for universities or research institutes. The overall share of external grants has increased. Although funding systems vary from country to country within NAE, there has been a general trend to include peer review as part of the funding decision. The aim of peer review for the assessment of grant applications is to allocate the limited funds to the best projects and that investments produce scientific value. A further development arose in the 1990s as the funding of universities, research institutes, departments, groups and individual employees became increasingly based on performance according to quantitative measures such as the number of articles in journals with a high citation index, the number of citations of one's work, the number of degrees awarded and so on. Managerial systems were also introduced, in some countries, to monitor the activities of individual scientists and to create incentives for scholarly activity. The British Research Assessment Exercise is a well-known and much-debated example.6
The gender imbalance in science has also received increasing attention since the 1970s. Although considerable progress has been made, women are still underrepresented (Box 4-1; Figure 4-1; Table 4-1).
The organization of scientific knowledge production has thus undergone constant change. The sites of knowledge generation have become more diverse, with an increas-
6 http://www.rae.ac.uk/. |
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Box 4-1. Women in science in NAE.
The presence of women in science has increased in NAE since the Second World War but they are still under-represented (ETAN, 2000). In the US women in academia began to make considerable progress in the 1970s through concerted protests, appropriate legislation and class action suits. Canada has also devoted considerable attention to the issue (ETAN, 2000). In Europe the issue of under-representation of women in science was taken up first in the Nordic countries in the early 1980s, particularly in Finland and Sweden (ETAN, 2000). More attention was paid to this issue at EU level in the late 1980s. For example, the European Parliament's Resolution on Women and Research from 1988 stated that "the under-representation of women in academic life is a highly topical problem and calls for practical incentives" and called on Member States to "promote positive measures to further the presence of women at the highest levels in universities and research institutes" (ETAN, 2000). However, although women now constitute about half the undergraduate population they still play a minor role in decision-making concerning scientific policies and priorities in many NAE countries (Table 4-1, Figure 4-1) (ETAN, 2000). The proportion of women in senior scientific positions is small as there is a continuous drop in the numbers of women at each level of the academic ladder and many highly trained women are lost to science. In 2004, the proportions of females in the highest senior grade in some AKST-relevant fields of science in EU25 were 15% in agricultural sciences, 11% in natural sciences and 17% in social sciences (European Commission, 2006).
Working patterns of women vary between NAE countries. While career breaks and part-time working are common in some Northern European countries such as the UK and the Netherlands, in other parts of Europe, for example in Spain, France and Italy, women are much more likely to work full-time and throughout their adult lives. Systems of support and cultural expectations reflect and partly create these differences (ETAN, 2000).
Source: ETAN, 2000.
ing role for civil society organizations as they have become more professional, with increasing capacities for knowledge generation and policy input. In addition, the emphasis on the application context of research has increased (Gibbons et al., 1994). The problem oriented nature of research has led to a crossing of disciplinary boundaries in academia (in industry they were never respected) and multi- and interdisciplinary research is becoming increasingly common (Klein, 1996). Research is also more and more collective in nature. The number of copublications has increased in virtually all fields and in some areas experiments can involve tens or even hundreds of researchers (Galison and Hevly, 1992). For most industries, science provides an important stock of knowledge and basis for innovations (Klevorick et al., |