Dr Fiona Larner takes a closer look at the research and analysis released by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) at the end of October — reflecting on what it means for evaluators, policymakers and anyone interested in how evidence informs better decisions.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) released the research and analysis brief The value of public R&D on October 30th, announcing a net economic return of 8:1.
This announcement is highly relevant to many evaluation professionals yet also highlights some of the challenges faced when a single reference number is put out there for a whole sector. DSIT have been careful to emphasise the context within which this economic return is valid: averaging large, diverse research and development portfolios over the long term. It is essential that this is remembered and applied correctly by policymakers, evaluators and everyone else in between.
The Average of Large, Diverse Portfolios
Why are these six words so important to keep in mind? An average can have any distribution, from narrow to broad, and in this context that means (i) not all R&D investments will deliver an 8:1 monetisable return, and (ii) some will deliver even more. R&D is a very diverse ecosystem – it needs all its constituent parts to flourish and deliver maximum value to society, including discovery research, applied research and commercialisation across the breadth of academic disciplines, from SHAPE to STEM, and the (sometimes) intangible networks that intertwine these. It is important to recognise, as it has been by DSIT, that the whole should be considered, and the 8:1 value should not be applied to individual programmes, nor larger, but specific portfolios.
At the portfolio level, government R&D is diverse, including research to boost health outcomes, grow businesses, improve the environment, bolster security, and pursue ideas that lead to transformational discoveries. The £8 estimate is based on robust and representative evidence about the diverse government R&D portfolio which includes all these research areas. From The value of public R&D, 2025.
Over the Long Term
Timeframe is one of the most important factors to consider in R&D: outputs, outcomes and impacts all arise at varying time points for different investment types. This can mean that attribution of an outcome can be hard to determine, due to extended timeframes for benefit realisation and contribution from various parts of the ecosystem over that time. But it can also mean that impact – both economic and social – is not captured if monitoring and evaluation is not timed to account for it.
This acknowledgement of time to impact for many areas of R&D echoes the DSIT and UKRI evaluation strategies, which emphasise the importance of early lessons—learned activities to inform policy where possible in a timely manner, but also commissioning evaluations at the sweet spot when many outcomes and impacts have arisen and the undocumented and intrinsic knowledge of staff involved is still retained by the organisation.
It's not (just) about the money
The DSIT report focuses on the economics of public R&D, and whilst celebrating the monetizable return, it is important to recognise the vast social benefits public R&D investment delivers that are either harder to monetise, or not suited to this methodology at all.
More work is needed to capture all the significant and diverse impacts from R&D programmes. From The value of public R&D, 2025.
One question for the evaluation community is how can we serve the public R&D sector best? Do we continue to develop monetisation methods for harder to capture outcomes? Focus on ensuring non-monetisable societal benefits can be captured and presented such that their value is recognised alongside quantifiable outcomes? Spoiler: Probably a bit of both.
But the money - A back of the envelope calculation
DSIT is investing £55 billion in public R&D between 2026/27 and 2029/30. Whilst an 8:1 average return anticipates £440 billion of economic value, evaluation-informed programme improvements could increase this return further. The potential for improvement is very much investment dependent, however an average 5% increase in programme effectiveness could return an additional £22 billion across the portfolio, alongside increased (non-monetisable) social benefits.
Evaluation has a long history in trying to find the best way to get evidence utilised in decision-making and is an area the Evaluation Task Force and DSIT, among many others, are committed to improving.
The UK Evaluation Society Conference 2026 in Sheffield Bridging the gap: evaluation to action is focused on ensuring evaluation leads to real-world change, including how to make sure the investments that government departments such as DSIT are making with public funds are not just evaluated, but that this evidence is used to increase value for money.
Final thoughts…
Evaluation professionals have a great contribution to make across the R&D sector to maximise value for public investments, but are we making the most of it? Do we need to rethink when we evaluate public R&D to capture the best impact? Are better data systems that retain knowledge in a workforce transient relative to impact timeframes under-exploited? Would the presence of evaluation professionals in more senior leadership positions better facilitate the uptake of evidence into policymaking and programme improvement? What barriers to success would you remove to bridge the gap?
Author bio - Dr Fiona Larner
Fiona is the Head of Monitoring and Evaluation at The British Academy, the UK’s National Academy for humanities and social science. Originally an interdisciplinary academic in analytical biomedicine at Imperial College and the University of Oxford, Fiona transitioned to public policy evaluation in 2019.
Fiona’s evaluation focus is currently the publicly funded research and development sector, with expertise in research infrastructure, talent, STEM and SHAPE evidence base development. Her passion is ensuring evaluations actively support public sector decision making. Alongside her role as Vice Chair, Fiona is currently the UK Evaluation Society Conference Chair.