The Royal Society says separate funding streams are unnecessary

In a statement, the society claims the current "dual support" system places an unnecessary burden of bureaucracy on university research departments.

Universities currently secure grants via two streams of funding. The statement says these could be unified.

But the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, admits any major change could take years to implement.

Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society, said the time had come to "stop rearranging the deck chairs on two entirely different ships which ultimately have the same direction".

Money distribution

One strand of dual support funding for science and engineering research lets individual researchers compete for project funding. These funds are distributed by the research councils.

The second strand of dual support provides funds for infrastructure and indirect costs such as payment for principal investigators.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) is responsible for distributing these funds.

Hefce conducts a periodic Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), to distribute public funds to those university research units that carry out the best research.

The RAE is roundly criticised in the report. Lord May said it had been "perverted" into a "one-dimensional totem" of a university department's prestige, overshadowing equally important performance measures like teaching quality.

Pure science

Lord May also said it promoted behaviour in universities that played "to the rules of the game" and that this behaviour sometimes differed from that which promoted excellence in research.

A spokesman for Hefce told BBC News Online: "Getting rid of the dual support mechanism would seriously damage the UK research effort. It would remove much of the stability and vitality which sustains it.

"The quality-related funding that Hefce provides, gives institutions and researchers the ability to pursue curiosity-driven research. This freedom is an essential component of a dynamic research culture."

The Royal Society welcomed recommendations made in the recent Roberts' report into the supply of science and engineering skills in the UK, which proposed other methods of assessing quality. But these did not go far enough to reduce bureaucracy, it said.

Lord May said a review would have widespread support from university researchers.

New models

A spokeswoman for Universities UK, the university vice-chancellors' organisation, said: "We agree, to a certain extent, that there needs to be a full-scale review. While we support the dual support system, we question the way research assessment has been carried out."

In 2000-01, about 24% of funds for university science and engineering research came from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Office of Science and Technology (OST) via the research councils.

Around 35% came from the Hefce. Charities were another major funder, contributing about 15% of the UK science base.

The Royal Society statement did not propose any alternative models for funding, but said this should not stop early studies being carried out.

A spokesperson for the DTI said the position of ministers on dual support had been set out very clearly over the last 18 months, starting with Investing in Innovation and subsequently the Higher Education White Paper.

"Responses to the two recent consultation exercises on the Research Assessment Exercise and on research sustainability showed overwhelming support for the dual support system," the spokesperson said.

"Responses to the consultation are currently being evaluated and once completed further announcements will be made."