6.3 Recommendations - InterAcademy Council

A Global Institutional Fund should be established to provide 'soft funding' over a period of 5 to 10 years to some 20 centers of excellence of a national or regional character (operating by themselves or in developing-country networks). This funding would not be program-specific; it would be used instead to allow centers to promote the values of science and engineering and to create an atmosphere in which the practice of high-quality research can flourish. Specifically, the money would help each center to develop its programs, cultivate its management, and build its long-term funding base. Donors would meet in a consultative mode to review proposals resulting from an open call for competitive submissions, and they would select the centers according to clearly established evaluation criteria.
A Global Program Fund, creating new partnerships with advanced research institutes, should be established as a competitive grants system - for support of research groups in centers of excellence in developing nations - in which international referees would review the quality of the projects being proposed. Preference would be given to proposals that involve groups in several local and regional institutions. However, bilateral proposals - from one recipient center in cooperation with a research institute in an S&T-advanced or S&T-proficient country - would be perfectly acceptable, given the benefits of their one-on-one focus and the relative simplicity of their objectives (together with the greater likelihood of meeting them).
Both funding programs should draw on the experience of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). However, reflecting the need for updating policies that have worked for CGIAR in the past, the funding programs should differ from the CGIAR model in two important ways:
- The centers receiving support from the institutional fund should not be international institutes but local and regional entities situated in the developing nations. Their numbers could change over time, and they would not necessarily be guaranteed complete coverage of all their needs.
- The program funds may not be mingled with institutional funds, and the ensemble of recipients from each would often not be the same.