In a step towards output-targeted university funding, the Italian Ministry of Research has elected a special advisory board to monitor all national research projects. Historically, the use of public funds by universities has never been subjected to rigorous examination-a factor that has contributed to improper use of those funds. The 42-member advisory board, with three individuals dedicated to each research discipline, met for the first time in mid-October to outline appropriate assessment criteria. In the field of medicine and biology, guidelines will focus on the relationship between results and the declared aims of a project, whether or not materials and methods used are state-of-the-art, the effectiveness of inter-university collaborations and publication output. Enrico Solcia, Pavia University, and Mario Sangiorgi, Tor Vergata University, Rome, are both members of the new medicine advisory boards and claim, "[T]his strongly signals that Italy is ready to adopt an investment-oriented culture as the engine of scientific progress in its academic community." Modena University's Fabio Benfenati, who has been appointed to the biology board, adds, "the Research Ministry's decision to implement sound control over spending represents a significant change in the way national funding priorities in biomedicine are defined." The move is believed to go far beyond the reforms launched in 1997 (Nature 387, 538; 1997). "Since the beginning of the reform, the budget for national research projects has increased three-fold," says Jacopo Meldolesi, director of DIBIT, the research institute of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, head of the biology medicine funding distribution committee. Furthermore, officials from the Research Ministry told Nature Medicine that a large infrastructure fund will also be made available by the end of the year to reward the universities that have been most efficient in spending public money.
