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An external evaluation committee has urged Germany's two main basic research organizations to stop living on past glories and to embark on reforms that will make them more responsive to modern research needs. Federal and regional governments, says the committee, should help by relaxing restrictive employment laws.

The committee was set up in 1997 by the Bund-Länder Kommission (BLK) — the body that coordinates regional and federal research policies — to assess the procedures of the Max Planck Society (MPS) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany's university funding agency.

Ten non-German scientists and science-policy experts were asked to consider whether the bodies' organizations allowed them to support the best research and respond quickly to new research areas.

The committee's report, submitted to the BLK last week, includes few surprises. The two research organizations, however, say it will provide moral support for important reforms that are already partly under way. But they stress that not all the recommendations are likely to be implemented; only those compatible with their fundamental principles — in particular, their political autonomy — will see the light of day.

The report highlights many well-known problems in German science, including inadequate academic career opportunities for young researchers, restrictive employment laws that prevent organizations from offering competitive salaries to top researchers, and working conditions that hamper the progress of women.

MPS's Markl, left, and DFG's Winnacker: keen to improve the lot of Germany's young researchers. Credit: MPG/FILSER/QUERBACH

A general problem in both universities and MPS institutes is the time and effort needed to establish a research career. The report says that Habilitation — the German postdoctoral teaching and research qualification required by most universities for faculty membership — should be abandoned, because it delays careers unnecessarily. More funding, it says, should be available for junior independent research groups.

Such comments are music to the ears of Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker and Hubert Markl, respective presidents of the DFG and MPS. Both are champions of young scientists, and both have created programmes to support independent young-scientist research groups in the past few years.

But other comments in the report are more difficult for them to swallow. The DFG was criticized for its “tendency towards a conservative approach” to science funding. The report says the agency should “not only respond to long-term developments, but should actively influence them”, acknowledging the DFG's success in funding mainstream research, but criticizing its record in funding interdisciplinary research and work in new areas.

The report also says that the DFG's peer-review system needs to be more responsive to new ideas. In response, Winnacker says he is aware that the DFG needs to break out of its self-reproducing peer-review system, and says mechanisms for this are in place.

The DFG's core of about 500 referees is elected by German academics from the nominations of the country's scientific societies, and organized into 37 committees (Fachausschüsse) divided according to discipline. This core, which is dominated by older, more established scientists, is supplemented by three times as many outside referees.

These outside referees may be called upon more often in the future, says Winnacker, saying that “in the past few years we have managed to reduce the average age of the members of our selection committees by ten years”. But he adds that there are limits to how far DFG staff can go in selecting referees.

The DFG prides itself on being an organization run by and for researchers. Many scientists believe that most of its decisions should only be made by representatives elected by the community. “We will need to discuss the issue in depth,” says Winnacker.

Winnacker is also uncomfortable with the evaluation committee's call for the DFG to develop ‘strategic’ research programmes,

making it more than an organization that simply reacts to ideas from the community. He argues that a ‘top-down’ role for the DFG may be incompatible with its autonomy, a characteristic much acclaimed in the report.

Although the DFG does not oppose the principle of creating new programmes, Winnacker says “it is important that these are selected either by the research community itself, or in an interplay between DFG staff and the research community”.

The report recognizes that the work of the DFG has grown enormously over the past decade, increasing the burden on DFG staff and their referees, and it recommends that the number of elected referees be increased by a quarter.

This suggestion, which is already being implemented by the DFG, is particularly welcome, says Klaus-Peter Hoffmann, professor of zoology and neurobiology at the University of Bochum, and a biology referee for the DFG for 25 years. Hoffmann receives 300 grants to review every year, and says the pressure crushes creativity. “When overburdened, one tends to shy away from risk, and this is one reason we have tended to avoid entering new territory,” he says.

The MPS, while praised for the quality of its research, comes in for criticism for being “isolated from the university system” and for sticking too closely to the ‘Harnack principle’ on which it is based. This principle causes research to be concentrated in institutes headed by directors selected for their scientific stature rather than their research area.

Directors are appointed for life, receive generous support for their research and have complete freedom to choose the direction of their research. But the report says that this could hamstring the society by tying up too many resources in a single person for decades.

The report also calls for “International Max Planck Research Schools” to be created at universities to allow graduates to benefit from the expertise of local Max Planck institutes. It says that time-limited Max Planck research units should be created at universities. Both measures, it says, would help bring the MPS and universities into closer contact.

Although Markl supports cooperation with universities, he questions whether the committee, who did not review university research, was aware of the close cooperation that already exists in some places. He points out, for example, that “ten per cent of MPS directors now have university chairs”.

But Axel Ullrich, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, near Munich, says that the current links are patchy and dependent on personal contacts. Ullrich has not been made a university professor, because most of his career was spent in the United States, “so I was not established in academic circles in Munich”. He welcomes closer contact between the two institutions.

Brook: backs ‘top-down’ guidance. Credit: Ral Photoservices

Markl is in favour of international research schools. But he is “not yet sure” of the value of creating Max Planck groups in universities, as this moves away from the Harnack principle and, he says, could stretch resources too thinly.

Markl says that reforms will have to be paid for out of the five per cent annual budget increase promised by the German government for the next few years. “My first priority is to complete our plans for building up MPS activities in East Germany,” he says. Future reforms will depend on whether the MPS can afford them.

Richard Brook, head of Britain's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and chair of the committee, says that the MPS and DFG need to become more accessible to young scientists and women — “we were shocked to realize that only three per cent of MPS directors are women”. Brook also says that the DFG should not necessarily be afraid of giving ‘top-down’ guidance.