paris

Claude Allègre, France's minister of national education, research and technology, last week set the target of doubling the impact of French publications in the international scientific literature within four years. He also wants to triple the number of international patents held by French scientists, and to create several hundred stable high-technology companies.

Allègre set these benchmarks following an interministerial meeting on research, chaired by Lionel Jospin, the prime minister. Allègre reiterated the strategy of his ministry, which is to support investigator-driven fundamental research, while exerting control over research with socioeconomic goals.

A National Science Council will be created to advise the government on research strategy. It will be composed of 20 or so eminent scientists and chaired by Allègre. Further advice will be solicited from the Academy of Sciences and other committees (see Nature 394, 9; 1998).

Allègre restated that the emphasis of evaluation procedures should shift away from evaluations of laboratories by commissions towards a system based on competitive proposals from individual research groups. More foreign researchers will be involved in conducting evaluations.

To help direct research towards wealth creation, Allègre confirmed the creation of a National Network of Technological Research, which will regroup laboratories working in key economic sectors.

Allègre rejected creating a full-blown postdoctoral system for French fundamental research scientists, and defended France's life tenure system. He said the bigger question was whether scientists should be full-time researchers for the whole of their careers or switch in later years to teaching, for example.

Some scientists say they hoped to see more concrete measures, but a ministry official refutes this criticism, arguing that the government has opened various avenues and that implementing change takes time.

Henri-Edouard Audier, a member of the board of the national union of scientific researchers, gives Allègre the benefit of the doubt, as the ministry now seems more willing to consult interested parties.

But many doubt the government's ability to meet its targets. French research publications have an impact score of 0.9, according to the Paris-based Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques. Doubling this means overtaking the United States (1.4) and Switzerland (1.5) at the top of the world league. Allègre's claims are “totally unrealistic”, says one specialist in scientific indicators.