FORGET about research being a quest for knowledge — academics will have to prove that their ideas have legs, economically speaking, if they want to get funding.
Experts in “economic importance” will sit alongside academic referees when grant applications are assessed, if proposals being considered by the research councils get the go-ahead.
But some academics fear that the plans will kill off groundbreaking work. “Researchers cannot usually predict what they will find,” says Janet Lewis, the former research director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in The Times Higher Education Supplement (Sept 1).
A THES leader says that assessors should not lose sight of the academic merit of research.