rural research

This article tells us

“The government has welcomed calls from academics and one of the world’s biggest research charities for results of public and charity-funded scientific research to be made available as widely as possible in the public domain.

The Wellcome Trust, which spends more than £600m on scientific research a year and is the largest non-governmental funder of medical research after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said this week it planned to adopt a more robust approach with the scientists it funds, to ensure scientific results are freely available within six months of first publication.

“We will watch the Wellcome Trust’s new initiatives with interest,” said the coalition’s minister for universities and science, David Willetts. “There are some real potential benefits from improving access to academic research. They include spreading knowledge, encouraging collaboration and facilitating technology transfer.”

Government Departments, Regional Development Agencies, Local Government and now LEPs are all serial commissioners of research, much of it about fundamental issues like rural affordable housing, rural employment, the impact of the demographic timebomb on rural areas – this list could go on an on. I would suggest that it is time that it was not just all made available, but that we stood back and wondered, in the light of all this research, about why we still have no certainty about some things. Things like, how to address challenges like the impact of the recession on the sustainability of rural communities, or why we are still arguing about the role of planning in delivering rural economic development.