A new vocabulary is sneaking into the science departments of universities around the world. Scientists are being encouraged to use previously dirty words like ‘commercialization’ and ‘technology transfer’. To be labeled an entrepreneur is no longer to be cast out of academic society. There may not be a universal buy-in to the idea, but there is a drive to make more commercial use of the research generated in our universities. In the UK, this movement is being supported by the government who, like other technology transfer champions, is turning to the US for inspiration. What can we learn from looking west?It is an oft-heard complaint that the UK generates some of the best science in the world, but does not reap the full reward. Hard data to verify this are difficult to come by, but at a recent talk in Oxford [1], Lord Robert May, president of the Royal Society and former chief scientific advisor to the UK government, tried to quantify the issue. The number of scientific papers published annually is more or less equally divided between the US, Europe, and the rest of the world [2]. In the league table of publications per capita [3], Table 1, European countries do extremely well, pushing the US into 11th place. May also pointed out that the US government spends 0.82% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on research, while the EU spends 0.76%. Putting this in context, Japan allocates just 0.64% of GDP and the only countries that budget a higher proportion of GDP than the US are France and Finland [4]. The UK budgets just under 0.70% of GDP but, taking the somewhat ruthless gauge of cost per paper, comes out top. While these are, perhaps, crude measures, the figures confirm the view that scientific research in Europe is extremely competitive.

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DOI: 10.1016/S1369-7021(03)00634-5