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Paper long abstract:

Governments generally but particularly in the UK now emphasize the importance of stronger scientific evidence to support policy. In the UK, this commitment is partly reaction to high profile policy debacles where departments were unprepared for significant events that had serious economic, social and political consequences. Recently, calls for the creation of larger scale government supported programmes in the mould of the Apollo Program and Manhattan Project have been made to address new, complex scientifico-social issues. In the EU, large scale programmes aimed at "grand challenges" are underway, directed at large scale socio-technical problems with global public good characteristics. This paper considers how two major government departments in the UK engage with science to generate evidence for policy. We use newly available bibliometric data from the Web of Knowledge to investigate for the first time publicly identified science supporting the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and Department for Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Specifically, we examine characteristics of the knowledge generating communities that support policy in these two departments, to show where research is being carried out and by whom, the extent of simultaneous funding by other funding bodies, and the extent to which policy knowledge results from international participation and the permanency of such communities. Surprisingly, we observe that much policy relevant research funded by DEFRA is highly international in terms of the collaborations that undertake it. Publicly acknowledged MOD research, while less international in terms of performance and simultaneous funding, is also more international than might be expected.