(Yicai Global) Oct. 20 -- Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences are the first batch of research institutes to be awarded long-term, stable, significant and hands-off financial support in order to foster basic innovative research that will drive the transformation of the city into a global science and innovation center.

The chosen institutions will be given five-year subsidies and be granted full autonomy in their choice of topic, schedules and use of funds, the municipal government said yesterday. The funding amounts were given.

This hands-off approach will allow researchers to focus on their work and not spend half their time applying for permissions or accounting for their actions, said Zhu Qigao, deputy director of the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee.

The aim is to get researchers to make zero-to-one, or fundamental, breakthroughs, Hu Jinbo, director of the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Yicai Global. “This is very challenging. Doing basic research is much more difficult than building on an existing body of work, and the probability of success is lower.”

The value of fundamental research cannot be determined by conventional evaluation methods, said Hu. Most researchers can publish 10 articles a year, but those doing basic research might only be able to publish one article every five years, but this one article may be far more influential than 50 follow-up articles, he added.

The city is prepared to spend 4.5 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development by 2025, 12 percent of which will be on basic research, the municipality said earlier. Last year, Shanghai spent 4.1 percent of its GDP on R&D, some CNY160 billion (USD25 billion).

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor