Who is paid to read?

Two weeks ago the Seventh Research Framework Program in the European Union was presented. More than 72 Billion Euros or nearly 100 Billion dollars will go to different prioritated research areas. A significant increase compared to the Sixth program.

In Sweden our Governments research proposition was presented a couple of weeks earlier, also anything but peanuts, although the research communities never have had enough.

But, with hope of not being regarded as research hostile I just wonder how much good are these programs giving us? Or to put it this way: The European Union pays 100 Billion dollars to produce and write research texts. But who is payed to read them?

As far as I have experienced, only researchers are paid to read. Try it yourself, stay at your desk and read a research report. It can be one about new marketing ideas, about entrepreneurship, communication, a technical innovation, a new drug. How long will it take before you are interupted? Not very long -Hey, he is only reading, let's go ask him!

How many research reports are out there without having been read by anybody else then the writer? Quite many is my guess. This Spring three MIT graduate students produced a computer program to generate research papers complete with "context-free grammar," charts and diagrams. Two of the
randomly assembled papers were sent to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.

They qualified. Obviously not even paper reviewers do bother about reading.

I have been at several research conferences and presentations. It can be lonely sitting in the audience. Because the people who need the research don't have the time to listen. They don't have the time to read.

Still the solution always is more, more, more.

What may then be the solution?

Well, one way is of course to budget more money for diffusion of the research. But from a society point of view, we could as much pay companies to read. Or even better, initiate research programs that are built upon interaction between the industry, society and researchers.

The real solution I think is "real-time research". Research where both the researcher and the potential user can give and take. There are some great examples. The Swedish program "IT in the manufacturing industry" (Swedish only) is one of them. This was a program I entered only in the final year which made it pretty hard to work with the diffusion process as the interest and enthusiasm of the researchers was rapidly decreasing. Only after a while I realised, the diffusion is actually already happening by researchers working close with industry. And the results that was hard to disseminate to a wider audience were in fact used in the target industry, reinvented and then disseminated by people making career or sharing with their colleages. They were not paid to read, but to work together.

Let's do some more of that stuff.