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Liz Morrish¡¯s article on ¡°forgotten professors¡± highlights important issues (¡°Remembering the ¡®forgotten professors¡¯¡±, Opinion, 17 September). The phenomenon of ever-decreasing autonomy afforded to UK academics is not only demeaning and demoralising but also deeply destructive of the otherwise much vaunted ¡°creativity, productivity and impact¡± that the high priests of human resources and their administrative acolytes go on about.

A second very particular concern identified by the article is that of ¡°legacy¡±. Not only research teams themselves (carefully assembled and nurtured over many years) but also a vast amount of research ¡°product¡± are neglected or in effect discarded when senior research-intensive academics leave the institution. This is both ethically and professionally scandalous: very often these research outcomes represent vast amounts of publicly funded work ¨C the ¡°payloads¡± of the research grants that scholars are constantly exhorted to acquire ¨C and any respectable research-orientated institution should be bound to preserve these and continue to make them available to the scholarly community, as well as the general public.

Richard Beacham
Professor emeritus
King¡¯s College London

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