As Brown & Schubert (2000) claim, currently science is a “place of contestation” (p. 3): in one hand policy makers appeal to more useful research with growth impact in economic development, emphasizing scientific knowledge utility for public policies and the "business aspects of research” (Ozga, Seddon, & Popkewitz, 2006); on the other, researchers seek to preserve scientific autonomy and research agendas. For some authors, this is the result of new modes of knowledge production (Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Trow, & Scott, 1994), while others consider them a threat to the autonomy and quality of scientific work (Bourdieu, 2004). These phenomena can be also conceived as science policy new regulation modes, which are not exclusive of the scientific system but are present in most of the public policies orientations, cross-sectors and cross-national contexts and represent a transition to post-bureaucratic regulation modes (see KnowandPol, 2008). In scientific systems, these new regulation modes include the introduction of mechanisms of accountability and evaluation based on bibliometric criteria, competitive indicators of performance, indirect financial provisions and by performance-based research funding.

In this paper I will present a theoretical framework and an empirical research strategy design to capture the complexity and controversy of science policy, trying to capture the attempts to control and regulate scientific production and the uphold efforts to assure scientific autonomy.

Using public action approach (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007), science policy is conceived not just focusing on the State’s action and on its administration, but also emphasis the role of the researchers and their interests in defining a science policy. With this conceptual framework in mind, I used the key concept of regulation to analyse science policy as the blended result of institutional regulation, or control, and autonomous regulation (Reynaud, 1989) and looked to the case of educational research in Portugal and designed a research strategy centred on the combined effect of the regulation of control – of the structures and contexts of institutional regulation – and local regulation – of researchers’ strategies and networks.

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