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In recent years the term frontier research was introduced into the debate on excellence and competitiveness of future European research (European Commission 2005). Frontier research is said to be research that overcomes the traditional distinction between basic and applied research. The impetus of this endeavour is to more closely relate the generation of fundamentally new knowledge with the provision of knowledge useful for societal progress (e.g. in the area of technological innovations). Frontier research is conceived as research that transcends disciplinary boundaries by departing from the originality of the problem to be tackled and not from the interior logic of disciplinary scientific progress.

Now perhaps more than any other field of research, research for sustainable development has to be conceived as frontier research by its very nature. Its advancement along with the demand for problem-oriented, cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration belongs to the declared objectives of EU research policy at the latest since the fifth Framework Programme. In spite of the recognition that strengthening frontier research is crucial for maintaining the capacity to shape a desirable future, the reality of research funding and research practice in Europe largely lags behind preambular rhetoric. Reasons for this deficit can be found in the only weakly adaptive structures of research organisation, in the traditionally divided research communities and in the lack of quality criteria and peers for cross-disciplinary research.

 

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