Pawel Szczesny at Freelancing Science has a post about the concept of research-as-a-service, a take-off on the better-known SaaS (software as a service) model. "It recently occurred to me, that investments (or maybe I should call these partnerships) of biotech and pharma companies in academic research institutions are good examples of RaaS," he writes. He goes on to envision something along the lines of a contract research organization that would be staffed by scientists from a range of different backgrounds.