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In the media
Selected public comment by Professor David Price
Open Access funding insufficient
Ministers last week pledged an additional £10 million after vocal disquiet from some Russell Group institutions about the potential cost to them of author-pays open-access publishing. … David Price, vice-provost for research at UCL, said that researchers should not be “deluded" into thinking that £10 million would resolve the “systemic weaknesses" in the original case made by the Finch report. “University research budgets will have to fill the funding gap - meaning less research," he said. – Times Higher Education, 13 September 2012
‘There’s scope to grow humanities and social sciences’
Why is it so important to have a broad portfolio and what other particular areas do you want to grow?
"I think a multi-faculty comprehensive university is a place where you can actually find solutions to the world’s problems, which would require you to tension technology development with social sciences. Our entire research strategy is based on the importance of how you impact the research being done; it can only be done through really social science and humanities filters. I think there’s scope to grow humanities and social sciences because we’ve got excellent people but the numbers there aren’t quite as large as they might be. Also, engineering is growing very strongly and there’s strong development in biomedical engineering and high-performance computing. So those are all areas in which the institution is strategically putting efforts." – Research Fortnight Today, 14 September 2012
Detailed response to Open Access report
Implementation of the Finch Report on Open Access would "cripple university systems
with extra expense. … National licences are the preferred way forward in
the immediate future for many Russell Group Universities. They exist in other
European countries. For an agreed amount, publishers allow access to their
content by all sectors in society. UCL sees this as a transition step to full
Open Access. Initial discussions suggest that the cost of national licensing
would be cheaper than the Gold OA Finch is recommending." – Richard Ponder blog, 19 June 2012
Calls to thin RCUK ranks point to coordinated benefits of slimline solutions
[Professor Price said] there was a danger that in times of scarcity, distinct
research councils would concentrate their funding on "what they perceive
to be their core business", leaving less for the "key areas" at the
boundaries. – Times Higher Education, 19 April 2012
Renaissance man's word to the wise
Another key concept in the research strategy is "leadership", which Professor Price distinguished from excellence on the grounds that it was active rather than passive. As well as being eminent researchers, their leadership obligations would also require senior UCL academics to "be putting back into their discipline by doing professional service, and into the institution by managing and developing strategic areas in their own departments and leading career development of younger colleagues. – Times Higher Education, 26 January 2012
Bright young things with time to shine
Fellowships should not be "a temporary life-boat in a sink-or-swim career structure", but "an integral component of a system that supports and nurtures exceptional research talent". – Times Higher Education, 3 November 2011
Research 'treadmill' under attack
In a letter to Vince Cable, business secretary, UCL vice-provosts David Price and Stephen Caddick propose that less money should be disbursed as competitive grants and contracts for which universities are required to bid. Instead, they say, more research should be funded by block grants – stable funds that are awarded annually and without conditions on the basis of a five-yearly assessment of each university’s research output. The two professors call for an end to the “treadmill so that leading researchers spend less time writing grant applications ... and more time undertaking research”. – Financial Times, 23 September 2011
The secret to saving our universities
We at UCL have adopted what we call the "Wisdom Agenda". This involves drawing on the breadth of our collective expertise: bringing a range of discipline-specific data, perspectives and methodologies to bear on complex problems. Exploiting our differences adds value to our insights; our collective expertise can exceed the sum of its parts. We define the outcomes of this work as "impact", one word among a host of terms that universities must reclaim. – Times Higher Education, 14 July 2011
Research funding should reward excellence
We need universities that are world-leading in research. It is these leading universities that underpin the UK's ability to continue to punch above its weight in a global research landscape, and to both compete and collaborate with global peers, as well as delivering considerable economic and social benefit to the UK. – Guardian Higher Education Network, 24 May 2011
The case for research collaboration
Pursuing more collaboration between institutions, and in particular between research-intensive ‘hubs’ and smaller ‘islands of excellence’ in other institutions, would mean that researchers from the ‘islands’ could work with larger research groups and access a high-quality research environment. Such collaboration would allow funds to be invested in concentrations of excellence whilst making the most of all of the UK’s research talent and ensuring that new and emerging areas of research can be supported. – UCL News, 25 March 2011
Wise approach to 'Grand Challenges' takes UCL up the chart
The secret of [UCL's] success, according to David Price, UCL's vice-provost for research, is its concerted drive to "create wisdom out of the knowledge we're generating". – Times Higher Education, 8 October 2009
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