Switzerland’s entire science policy arena has been undergoing a change in direction for some years now. In concrete terms, this means that the Academy’s role no longer centres on the distribution of funding to scientific groups but involves the provision of science policy services while simultaneously engaging in the repositioning of the organisation with an adapted service profile within the changing third-level education landscape.

The variety of the institutions already active in a similar area, i.e. the three sister academies (SAGW, SAMW and SATW), Science et Cité, TA-Swiss and the Swiss Science and Technology Council, is a clear indicator of the need to focus the available resources – a demand also being made at political level. Thus, the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) began to engage with these changes two years ago as this is the only way that it can play an active role in the design of the new science policy arena.

SCNAT has been growing continuously over the years. Its members already include over 25 Expert Associations and 29 Cantonal and Regional Associations. Thus, the creation of a clearly identifiable and uniform profile presents quite a challenge. In the course of the reform it became increasingly clear that SCNAT’s many wide-ranging organisations would have to be amalgamated into larger bodies, first to combine forces and resources and, second, to structure the scientific network in clearly identifiable bodies.

The SCNAT and its members took a major step in this direction in 2006: the statutes of the almost 200-year-old institution were fully revised and adapted to the challenges of the 21st century. The comprehensive, and in part controversial, debates on the aims and tasks of the organisation finally reached a conclusion: the Academy’s (Academies’) new focus on the core tasks of foresight, ethics and dialogue and the central basic task of the promotion of the sciences as a cultural asset are now enshrined in the statutes. The grouping of the organizational instances in so-called platforms, each with its own Presidency and professional office, is already taking shape.