Smart investment requires more data for Evaluation and decision-making

"Lean times = Lean research. But no one can do less research. We have to do more, with less, and the key tools to help us deal with this will be around data and analytics. More data will be needed for evaluation and decision-making at every level of the academic institution."

Jay Katzen of Elsevier hit the nail on the head yesterday:

LiveSerials: Data Analysis Will Drive Decision-Making in Research – Jay Katzen, Elsevier

Pointing out that while world leaders such as Gordon Brown (innovation is the way out of the economic crisis) are making grand statements about continuing to invest in R&D he notes the leaner times are here: hiring freezes at most universities in the USA (e.g. Harvard); there is a drop in funding levels (Stanford is basing their budget on a 5% decrease); and private institutions such as the Wellcome Trust plan to decrease their endowments.

And the lean future has already hit UK Universitites. The UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008 analysis reveals there are fourteen universities in the UK getting less investment than the previous year, and forty institutions receiving funding that is below inflation. So there are more than fifty UK universities that have had to begin making cutbacks somewhere. These include University College London, Kings College, Imperial College, and University of Cambridge.

The solution is complex yet simple. "...More data will be needed for evaluation and decision-making"