The Centre for Business Research (CBR) and the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~IRC) have released a new report, The Dual Funding Structure for Research in the UK: Research Council and Funding Council Allocation Methods and the Pathways to Impact of UK Academics.
The report, commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), analyses the links between research performance, research funding models and the knowledge exchange activities and research motivation of academics in the UK. It looks at the UK system of dual funding support in which university research funding is provided by both institutional block grants from the Funding Councils based on quality assessment exercises and by funding through peer reviewed competition from the Research Councils.
The report provides a statistical analysis of the dual funding system and how it has changed since the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).
The report also looks at the constraints that UK academics face when engaging with organisations outside their universities. It provides a detailed statistical analysis of the pattern of impact pathways of UK academics.