The future for science post-Brexit

The immediate reaction among the scientific community was shock, since the majority of scientists (including Steven Hawking) did not want to leave the EU. According to a poll by Nature, 83% of UK researchers indicated that they would want the UK to remain in the EU, and 77% of EU researchers also voted this way. Comparing this to the poll results for the general UK population, however, the result was very different; only 44% of the UK population wanted to remain. Implications for funding and research grants For UK researchers, around 16% of their research grants are from EU funding sources, and the UK has received around €8 billion from the EU over the past decade; about €1billion per year. There are fears among researchers that the UK will lose access to funding, such as Horizon 2020, which is the EU’s €70 billion programme of research grants. The UK currently receives more EU grants from the European Research Council than any other member state, and scientists are concerned that there would be difficulties in obtaining funding after the UK leave the EU, particularly with restrictions on movement. Switzerland, for example, were initially able to obtain funding from the Horizon 2020 programme, but were removed due to their restrictions on movement in 2014. They have, however, been able to access some EU schemes and remain within the European research network. Other non-EU countries, such as Norway, Israel and Turkey, have also done this and EU funding and collaboratio...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs