The UK’s research map is broader than it looks

The government has backed research and innovation with a record settlement: UKRI will invest £38.6 billion over the next four years, rising to nearly £10 billion a year by 2029–30.

Ian Chapman, UKRI’s Chief Executive, has called it a “remarkable vote of confidence” – and he is right.

That confidence comes with a clear sense of purpose. The Prime Minister has pledged good growth in every postcode. And last year’s Post-16 education and skills white paper asked universities to help drive this by building on their strengths, with research funding reforms aiming to reward specialisation and enable greater collaboration.

Universities share the government’s ambition to drive growth, locally, regionally and nationally, and to make the most of the research and innovation ecosystem’s strength in every part of the UK. The question now is how to get the most out of this investment. Answering that properly starts with understanding how research activity is spread across universities and places. That is why Universities UK (UUK) commissioned Clarivate to analyse 25 years of UK research publications, drawing on the Web of Science.

The analysis compares each university and region’s research profile with the UK as a whole to see how specialist or generalist it is, and how that has changed since 2001. It also looks at whether the most cited research follows the same pattern. We are publishing the first phase of the work today, providing new insights into how universities’ complementary strengths support a range of excellent research.

Same strengths, built differently

Clarivate’s analysis shows that at the level of the UK’s nations and major regions – such as Wales, North West England, and London – the profile is generalist: while some parts of the UK might have particular strengths, every part nevertheless supports research across a wide range of disciplines, and none is narrowly concentrated.

This shows us that public funding bodies’ commitment to rewarding excellence wherever it is found has produced a strong foundation, with broad research capability right across the country.

If we look at a more local level, the picture becomes much richer. Some places mirror the national profile; others are built around a small number of distinctive strengths. This is the scale at which structures such as mayoral strategic authorities and local growth plans now operate, and where universities will work with business and local government to support each other’s strengths.

The analysis also shows another type of variation: among those areas that maintain a broader research capability, many do so through different routes. In Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, breadth owes a great deal to the scale of one exceptionally broad university. In East Central Scotland and South East Wales, it appears to come more from institutions with distinct, complementary strengths, with the report’s analysis of institutional similarity allowing us to quantify this.

Inner London West takes this further, bringing together institutions with a generalist research portfolio (for example, University College London) and a range of specialised institutions with complementary areas of expertise (for example, the Royal Veterinary College, the Royal College of Music, and London Business School), resulting in a notably broad research portfolio.

This shows us that similar headline outcomes can be built on very different foundations. Government investment will therefore have the greatest impact if it is informed by a clear understanding of how capacity is organised across places. Individual decisions to specialise may collectively create gaps in subjects or regions, but there is currently no way to track where capability is being lost. As funding and cost pressures reshape institutional priorities, UKRI should monitor losses as well as gains. This is especially important as devolution increases the focus on local needs, making UK-wide coordination essential to support national priorities without unnecessary duplication.

Breadth and excellence

There is an assumption that excellence needs focus, with the best research thought to come from institutions doing fewer things, more intensively.

The evidence in this report does not support that. The UK’s most highly cited research is only slightly more concentrated within institutions than their research overall, and that gap has narrowed over the last 25 years. Institutions that broadened their research also broadened their highest impact research, and over the same period the UK’s citation impact also rose significantly.

None of this diminishes the value of specialist institutions or universities deciding to focus their research portfolio for other reasons. Where a university holds a focused mission, it often holds expertise found nowhere else in the sector. The point this research draws out is that specialisation, breadth, and excellence are compatible features of a strong research system rather than competing objectives.

What does 25 years’ worth of data tell us?

Twenty-five years of data reveal a research system that is more interconnected, complementary, and locally distinctive than simple measures of specialisation suggest.

As policymakers look to translate record investment into economic and social impact, the lesson is clear: the UK’s strength lies not in choosing between specialisation and breadth, but in understanding how both work together. Getting the most from the next decade of investment will depend on finding ways of recognising, supporting, and coordinating those complementary strengths across the whole country.