Public funding for research should increase by 10 per cent in real terms over the next five years, says a report from the UK's Campaign for Social Science.
In its report The Business of People report, published on 24 February, the campaign recommends that the additional money be spent on interdisciplinary research that brings together perspectives of the physical and life sciences with those from social science, the arts and humanities. It says that growth and prosperity will falter without insights into human behaviour and public attitudes.
“Growth, health, security and wellbeing all depend on knowing how markets, organisations, individuals and households work, making investment in social science a critical component of the government’s strategy for science and innovation,” said James Wilsdon, the campaign’s chairman, in a statement.
The 10 per cent rise proposed by the campaign is much smaller than the doubling of the budget that representatives of the national academies called for on 10 February. Wilsdon was one academic who criticised the academies for such a bold target.
The campaign praises the Economic and Social Research Council as successfully responding to national challenges and priorities while respecting the autonomy of researchers. For example, it notes the council’s funding of a major research programme about Scotland’s relationship to the UK during and after the independence referendum in 2014. The report says this is an example of the agility the government’s Science and Innovation Strategy calls for. The campaign’s report says: “The ESRC deserves praise for the speed with which it launched a programme of research and dissemination to inform thinking about the future of the UK and Europe, and its swift response in initiating projects on consumer and business data.”
Despite these successes, the report says, the UK’s prowess in social science is in jeopardy because of the flat cash budget of the ESRC. It says the ESRC receives just 6 per cent of the funding given to research councils, and calls for this share to “better reflect [the ESRC’s] value for money”.
Jane Elliott, ESRC chief executive, is supportive of the campaign’s report and said in a statement that the UK’s world-class social research brought better understanding of communities, institutions and economy and that its impact was extremely valuable in both human and economic terms.
The campaign is also calling for: priority for interdisciplinary projects including social science to be supported with the Newton Fund; academics to be allowed to submit to more than one panel under the next Research Excellence Framework as a way of recognising interdisciplinarity; and Paul Nurse’s review of the research councils to recognise how “indispensible” the social sciences are.
It wants to see substantial changes in Whitehall’s use of social science, most notably repeating its own earlier calls for the appointment of a chief social scientist.“We urge more Whitehall departments to appoint candidates from social science backgrounds as their chief scientific advisers and correspondingly encourage more social science researchers and practitioners to put themselves forward for appointment,” the report says.
The campaign also wants public agencies and authorities to review their use and commissioning of social science evidence.
Chaired by Wilsdon, the report’s working group included: Claire Callender, professor of higher education policy at Birkbeck and the University College London Institute of Education; Heather Laurie, director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex; Ziyad Marar, global publishing director at academic publisher SAGE; Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society; and David Walker, head of policy at the Academy of Social Sciences.
“At the election and during the spending review that will follow, the campaign has a robust case to make to the Treasury, ministers, MPs and policymakers,” said Wilsdon. “Support for research, data collection and education and training in social science are vital if we are to secure the benefits of innovation and productivity growth. Without more investment in social science, the UK will lose out.”