Promotions and Commotions – part one: APM staff

King Louie, from ‘The Jungle Book’ (1967)

This is the first part of a three part series about promotions and careers in UK universities. This first post focuses on “administrative, professional, and managerial” (APM) staff, although I touch issues related to other job families, especially research and teaching. A second blogpost will have more to say about academic promotions, and a third with some thoughts on possible changes and reforms, and a few things I’ve learned over the years. I’ve not written the second or third yet, but I’m going to publish the first in the hope it motivates me to write the others faster.

Opportunities for career progression and promotion and the level of fairness and transparency and consistency (or lack thereof) is inevitably a hot topic in every sector. However, I have a theory that the situation in universities can be particularly problematic because of mutual envy and incomprehension between academic and non-academic promotions.

To a non-academic like me, academic promotions are odd. Sorry, but they are. It’s hard to think of many professions where it’s possible to be doing largely the same job – teaching, research, administration/management – while still having the potential for advancement from Assistant to Associate to full Prof, and then potentially up the various Professorial pay bandings.

Of course, that’s not entirely fair – the level of performance and expertise and expectations and responsibilities in those three core areas increases up the academic payscale. Or at least they should. I guess medical doctors are a good parallel case. And professional footballers.

APM staff – by which I mean “administrative, professional, and managerial” staff – careers work very differently. I’d note in passing that every institution seems to believe that its own chosen nomenclature for grades and job families (APM4, APM5, APM6) is universal and understood sector wide, when it’s only the pay spine that’s common, not the grade boundaries.

Re-grading of APM jobs is not really a thing


For APM staff, it’s almost impossible to be promoted in-post. For a job to be re-graded. I found this out the hard way. Instead, APM staff need to apply for an entirely new role. This didn’t always used to be the case. When I started what I laughably call my career, I knew some APM staff who started as something like ‘School Secretary’ and finished as ‘School Manager’ without a single competitive interview process. But I think that’s very much in the past now. We now have open competition for roles – apart from some specific cases during restructures – and that’s a Good Thing.

APM staff feel of level of promotion-envy because, as I said, job re-grading is rare. Because it’s not about how good you are at your job but about the requirements and remit of that job. No amount of over-performance makes the job bigger than it is on paper and in the organogram. This happened to me at a previous institution.

In hindsight I can see it’s because I was doing things that not only weren’t in my job description but also that weren’t envisaged (or indeed a requirement) for the role as originally set out. But I had an additional Very Specific Set of Skills. I was supposed to a Centre Administrator. I was not supposed to be writing marketing materials, finding opportunities for income-generating professional development programmes etc and therefore could not be rewarded or recognised for having done so. A similar thing happened to a friend working in the NHS, where what he actually did was completely different from his actual job description.

My sense is that institutions hate having to re-grade jobs, because it risks Setting a Precedent, and we all know how much management hates that. Re-grading one job has the potential to disrupt entire structures. It also raises the uncomfortable question of whether an ‘upgraded’ role could or should go to the existing postholder, or whether there should be a recruitment process. Again, I’ve known people have their jobs re-graded upwards and then deemed unappointable to the new role after interview or passed over for someone else.

King Louie syndrome

I’m posting the live action version of this song, because… well… Christopher Walken.


No, not any of the legion of French monarchs, but the character in the Jungle Book. (“I’ve reached the top and had to stop, and that’s what’s botherin’ me”). I’m hardly a ‘Jungle VIP’ and anyone who accuses me of being ‘King of the Swingers’ will be hearing from my lawyers.

But I have long since reached the top of my payband, which is the summit of what any organisation is realistically prepared to pay me for the role I currently have. It’s a tricky place to be… although the employers’ attempts to spin increments as counting towards cost-of-living pay rises are obvious and disingenuous nonsense, it’s certainly true that inflation bites more as a result of not getting an annual increment any more. Add to that the fact that pay increases tend to be targeted at lower spine points, which is fair enough in and of itself. But rinse and repeat often enough and pay differentials start to reduce and the premium for experience is lower and lower.

[To be fair, my own institution did add extra points onto the top of grades, allowing another increment for one year. Kudos, and sincere thanks for that. It still meant another substantial year-on-year real terms pay cut, but less bad that it could have been.]

It’s nice to move up an increment because it feels like progress, even apart from the extra cash. Not moving up an increment feels like stagnation and it can start to feel like failure. Even though it isn’t.

I suspect there are a lot of ‘King Louies’ in universities. Partly because university roles tend to be quite specialised, perhaps with no direct private sector equivalent. In some parts of the country there are groupings of institutions that are reasonably close together and which permit a bit of an internal market. In others, not so much. Where universities are very close, they’re usually very different – an ‘old’ university and a post-92. Given that, staff mobility doesn’t tend to be very high, which can limit internal promotion opportunities.

There’s another big issue which I’ll return to in a later post because I think it affects academics too. That’s that much of the sector is structured very much like a monopsony. A monopoly is when the is one seller… a monopsony is when there is one buyer. Or at least one pay spine. I’ll say more about common pay spines in part 3.

Many pay scales have what’s known as a “super-maximum”. There’s a top end of each pay grade, where progression to further increments is much harder. But my sense (and I could be wrong) is that progression into the super-maximum used to be more common and easier than it is now.

Does your institution include statements in job ads like “progression beyond this salary range is subject to performance”? And if so, is that actually true? At mine, it is true… technically… but until I started doing a bit of research for this article, I didn’t know that it was, and I certainly didn’t know the process. It’s never been raised with me, and I’ve never been invited to make that case for an extra increment. And when I did raise it, no-one seemed to know how it works in practice or even what “exceptional performance” looks in my kind of role. Would I be wasting my time? What was the benchmark to hit? No-one could offer advice. Felt like the response was just to shrug it out until the deadline passed for the year, or I stopped asking.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, we do have an employee reward scheme of which I am a proud beneficiary. I’m grateful for the John Lewis voucher and the towels I bought with them are lovely, but it’s no consolidated increment into the supermaximum, is it?

What to do, what to think

Leonard Rossiter as Reggie Perrin, in ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, (BBC, 1976-1979)


At this point there are four options for King Louie, and I’ve experimented with four at various points and I still have no settled view.

  • Make your peace. The higher the grade, the fewer the roles, the steeper the slopes, the greater the competition, the harder to get evidence for ability to perform at a higher grade, and the harder to progress. Anyway… your pay isn’t bad, do you really want a lot more stress for a little more money? If you’re good at what you do, enjoy it (on the whole), and have tolerable colleagues and humane line management, what are you complaining about? We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. Universities talk a good game on career progression, as if that’s infinite, as if we’ll all get promoted. We won’t. Accept it, count your blessings, work to live, not live to work.
  • Up, up, up the ziggurat. Lickety-split”. Stalk jobs.ac, stalk Research Professional… lordy, even stalk the job pages of those rankers at Times Higher if things have really got that bad. Get across every possible opportunity, have a Career Plan, work out what you need to get to the next rung, and do it. Do, or do not. There is no try. Registrar before I’m 50 or bust! Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of your line reports!
  • Bit from column A, bit from column B. Eyes open for opportunities, but think carefully before leaping. How much more money would it take to induce me to have a longer commute? How much £££ would it take to apply for a role in a Faculty/institution that everyone tells me is an Unhappy Ship? How much £££ to move from oop north to dahn sarf, where the higher costs of living (and especially housing) will quickly gobble up your pay bump?  How do I measure the amount of time and effort it takes to write some of these bloody excruciating applications against the actual probability of landing the job?
  • Don’t derive all your validation and esteem from your day job. Develop a social media presence, write blogs, develop a professional network, visibility outside your organisation, and eventually a small side-line in external work made of up journalism and consultancy. And start running marathons, or some other classic midlife crisis behaviour. It’s worked for me. Kinda.

There’s a fifth option too, and I advise very strongly against it, because it’s an outstanding way to make yourself bitter and twisted. It’s…

  • Combine being discontented with your current role/salary/opportunities with not doing anything about it. That’s letting opportunities pass you by because they’re not perfect, or because you don’t want to step out of your comfort zone. Whether that comfort zone is your role, your institution, your colleagues, your line manager. That’s wanting promotion/more money/greater status, but not being willing to do what it takes to compete for those opportunities.

We must pay the price of the life we choose to live – if we choose comfort and familiarity and the known, we can’t expect more money and status. If we choose to chase promotion and reward and challenge, we can’t expect stability and comfort. At least not for a while.

At one point in my career, I turned down a promising opportunity to apply for a role at another institution that would have required either moving house or commuting. It would have been a perfectly normal, manageable commute, but it would have been significantly longer and more expensive than my commute at the time. It would have cost me money in the short term.

I decided that I valued the extra time saved by not commuting more than the extra cash/challenge/opportunity. Fine. My choice. I’m not saying I’d have got the role, ‘cos I know it attracted some great candidates. But I can’t then rail against my fate. I had an opportunity. I decided against pursuing it. I pay the price of the life I choose to live. I can’t then complain about a lack of opportunities. And if you made the same decisions, you can’t either.

Why your salary can’t keep going up forever

Bit of a thought experiment. Imagine someone appointed at a young age to an administrative role that’s fairly routine in nature. They come in, and inside x years, work their way up to the top of their pay scale. Let’s further imagine that every year they get better at their job – they know more people, understand the institution better, know the systems better. That improvement may well continue even after the increments have stopped. A classic example is a receptionist who’s been in post for years and knows everything and everyone. They know where the bodies are buried, who hid them there and why, and the dark web contact details of the hired killers should a similar the issue arise again.

Tim (Martin Freeman) and Dawn (Lucy Davis), ‘The Office’ (BBC) (2001-2003)

Now, we can have meaningful discussion about the importance of that kind of experienced receptionist to the operation of the unit and (more importantly) its culture and atmosphere. We could have a discussion about what fair rate of pay would be, and the value of the person who manages all of the birthday/retirement/leaving cards and collections. Right there with you on being appalled at discovering what grade some key APM colleagues were on.

But I think few people would argue that their pay could just keep going up an increment at a time indefinitely. We’d then potentially have a very experienced receptionist paid a lot more than his line manager, and a lot more than his newer colleagues doing what’s basically the same role. On one level, it’s an obvious point to make, but it’s what some people seem to expect because they see it (or think they see it) in academic staff.

Ultimately, should a receptionist be paid the same as (or more than) someone with a lot more responsibilities and a rarer skillset like a contract specialist or a financial manager or a librarian? I mean, maybe there’s a case for parity, but if you think that, then your problem is with Late Capitalism, not universities. What some people seem to want – perhaps without knowing it – is an indefinite (or at least vastly extended payscale) that’ll pay them more and more for doing more or less the same thing.

The reality is that all our jobs have a maximum salary, which we can pretend is solely determined by market forces, even though that’s not entirely the case. In the absence of unicorns, when we reach that increment limit it’s a case of (try to) step up, or put up.

This is all pretty obvious when you think about it, but I think a lot of people don’t. Especially when there’s the example of academic promotions, where it can look from the outside like salaries can just keep going up and up. Of course, in reality it’s not as simple as that, but it can appear that way.

What about academics?


Yeah, what about academics? Well… I think some of what I said is relevant – the preceding two sections apply partially to academics too. At least in the sense of attitude to feeling stuck at the top of your grade. Make your peace with it, look for another job/go all out for internal promotion, take up running, or a bit of all of it. But don’t do the railing against it/doing nothing about it thing. Please.

I said that academic promotions set a bad example to APM staff, and vice versa. I think some academics envy APM staff – being able to “just apply for another job”, perhaps not understanding how scarce/competitive they are. One complaint I regularly hear from academics is about the absurdity of it being easier to apply for promotion via a new role elsewhere than via your own institution.

But I don’t think that’s a bug. I think that’s a feature. And I’ll try to explain why in the second post.

Postdoc Fellowships: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in March 2022 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Is relocation always advisable for a postdoc fellowship, and what if it’s not possible?

Most postdoctoral fellowship programmes encourage potential applicants to move institutions, though the strength of that steer and the importance placed on researcher mobility varies from scheme to scheme. At the extreme end, in Europe, the Marie Curie Fellowships programme (not exclusively a postdoc scheme) requires international mobility for eligibility.

“Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home…”

In the UK, most schemes have softened their steer over recent years. Where once staying at your current institution required ‘exceptional justification’ or some similar phrasing, there’s now an increasing awareness that researcher mobility doesn’t make sense for everyone and enforcing it has negative ramifications for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). It’s much harder and more disruptive for researchers with family commitments to move institutions, and harder for those with partners who are tied to a particular location for family or job reasons. There will be other researchers who are already in the best environment for their research, and so any move would be a backward step. It’s now common for application forms to allow space for both (a) personal/EDI reasons why moving institutions is not possible; and (b) intellectual/research reasons for not wanting to move.

However, there is still a fear that whatever the guidance notes may say, the reality is that reviewers still expect researchers to move for a postdoc fellowship. Or that competitive pressures and limited funds may make it harder for non-mobile proposals to be scored high enough to cross the threshold. It’s not obvious that an exceptional researcher with an exceptional project in a mediocre environment (for whatever reason) could be competitive against rivals who were judged exceptional across all three categories (person, project, place). Even if that researcher had very sound EDI-related reasons for not moving. It’s a tricky issue and there’s no obvious solution, other than a lot more money for fellowships.

It’s worth noting in passing that just because a reviewer has said something, doesn’t mean that the panel paid it any heed. A reviewer may think mobility ought to be compulsory, but the panel will ignore them if that’s not the scheme rule.

Well, there are worse earworms to have…

Why move?

Why do funders want researcher mobility? Funders will say that it’s a good thing, but the reasons are rarely fully articulated. I think there are at least four reasons to look to move:

  • It will grow your network. You already have your contacts and collaborators at your current institution, and any from any previous institutions. Moving institution will lead to an introduction to new research groups with different facilities. You can grow your network from one place, but it’s hard to replicate the dramatic network expansion from moving.
  • It will expose you to a different culture and way of working. Even if some things will be better, some worse, it all contributes to intellectual and professional enrichment. If you’ve not moved, it’s easy to think that there are no alternative ways of working when a problem arises.
  • It will allow you to reinvent yourself. If you’re working with researchers who remember you as a PhD student, or even an undergraduate, it’s difficult for colleagues not to continue to see you that way. I know of a few people who’ve been ‘lifers’ at a single institution and experienced a huge rise in their status in the new institution after moving, because their new colleagues have only ever seen them as a dynamic young researcher.
  • It will boost your progression towards independence. Sitting in the same lab with the same people, it’ll be very hard to move out of their shadow. Especially if they’re very senior.

Should I move?

The world’s greatest ever TV theme tune, folks.

Probably yes. Unless you have personal reasons that make moving difficult or impossible, or you’re confident that you’re already in the best place to undertake your research. One factor to consider is how mobile you’ve already been between undergraduate studies and now. The less you’ve moved, the greater the benefits to move now.

Don’t feel disloyal about moving. Good researchers and mentors know that mobility is a good thing for your development, and that your move could potentially strengthen their links with your target institution and boost collaboration. What’s more, your institution is talking to PhDs and postdocs from other institutions about fellowships. This is how things work.

Hopefully you’ll already know people who work at your target institution, and they’ll be able to point you in the right direction. If you don’t, that makes life harder. You could ask colleagues for an introduction and a recommendation, or send your CV and a proposal to the research group you’d like to work with. Copy in a research manager or administrator. They can only say no. Or not reply at all.  But good research groups will be delighted to hear from talented researchers who work in a relevant area who are willing to apply for a fellowship.

It’s important to make contact early. You’re not going to get a warm reception if you contact the institution a few weeks before the deadline. They will want to help you shape and improve your proposal, and there will be costings and approvals to agree. Your current host institution can’t help you apply elsewhere; the responsibility is all with the new host.

What if I can’t—or justifiably don’t want to—move?

A few Google searches might tell you how many successful candidates in the fellowship scheme’s last round moved, and how many stayed where they were. If not, you could ask a friendly neighbourhood research development manager if anyone has looked at this before.

If there are at least some successes, you should attempt to address the non-mobility question throughout the application, not just in the boxes where you’re specifically asked about it. If there’s a presumption in favour of moving, and you’re not moving, you need to show that you’ve got a solid plan to achieve as many of the benefits of mobility as possible.

  • Have you moved already? If so, look for a way to stress this and explain how you’ve benefited. Don’t just rely on reviewers seeing it in your career history (that’s often a section that’s skim-read).
  • Can you be mobile within an institution? If you’re moving to a new research group, or your work bridges your old group and new one, you can present that as both a form of mobility and evidence of your pathway towards independence. On that note, no-one is saying that you’re never allowed to speak to your old mentor/supervisor again. But can you put some (physical, intellectual, organisational) distance between the two of you in the application? Can you foreground the collaborations you’ve built, the talented researchers who’ve worked specifically with you?
  • Make a positive case for your current research environment. If it has the right equipment, resources, facilities, collaborators, say so. Don’t merely make the ‘negative’ case for why mobility is difficult or impossible for you. Reviewers don’t need persuading that you’re telling the truth there. Instead, persuade them that your current research environment is outstanding.
  • Can you visit other institutions as part of your fellowship? The factors that make moving institutions difficult presumably also make extended visits difficult too. But could you spend a month (or longer) at another research group (maybe even internationally) to, for example, learn a new technique or expand a new collaboration? Even micro-visits can be useful.
  • Have a plan to expand your (academic and non-academic) networks. This could be conference attendance (real or virtual), it could be greater visibility on social media or other channels of communication. It could be volunteering to organise your School’s seminar series. These are all ways of ensuring that you get at least some of the network-expanding benefits of changing institution without actually changing institution.

Better research culture: Some thoughts on the role of Research Development Managers

The Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) held their annual conference back in November 2022. I was lucky enough to have a submission for an on-demand webinar accepted on the topic of research culture, and in particular on the role of Research Development Managers.

The talk covers ways in which Research Managers (and those in similar roles) can improve research culture, first through our own policies and practices, and second, through positively influencing others. I also (briefly) discuss writing ‘research culture’ into funding applications, before making some final predictions about what might the future might hold as regards research culture.

The recording – it’s about half an hour or so of your life that you won’t get back. Because that’s how time works.

The recording features me making a mess of trying to describe myself (not having had to do that before), and includes a few brief references to the broader conference. In my presentation, I assume that copies of my slides will be circulated, but I’ve no idea if they ever were, and if you’re watching now, you certainly won’t have them. That being so, here are the key links from the session.

Legal eagles

[I’m delighted to be able to publish the first guest post on the blog, written by Stephanie Harris, Contracts Manager at City, University of London. Look out for more of Stephanie’s work over the next weeks and months. Where my posts focus mainly on pre-award, Stephanie’s work in post-award brings important insights – once the funding has been won, what happens next? If anyone else is interested in writing guests posts/having their work hosted on my blog, I’d be delighted to hear from you. Unless you’re one of those affiliate/SEO spammers, in which case I won’t be – AG]

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in February 2022 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Don’t fear university contracts officers—they’re here to help

Of all the inhabitants of a university research office, the contracts officers are perhaps the least well-known.

As an academic, you know where you are with pre-award support staff: they are there to help you win awards by providing project costings, explaining funder guidelines, and generally burnishing your application to a brilliant shine. Next, once the project has been awarded, the finance team will give you the budget code that allows you to start hiring staff, spending, and generally getting stuck into the research.

Then, like some tedious gate-crasher, the contracts officer suddenly starts waffling on about how she needs to review the terms and conditions and make sure they’re acceptable to the university. And everything grinds to a screeching halt.

So, who are the university contracts officers and what do we want with your project? Is it true that we take a perverse delight in stretching everything out as though we bill by the hour? And are we really just trying to embarrass you/the university in front of your research partners?

Sorry to disappoint, but the answer to those last two questions is “no”. The answer to the first is a bit longer and I’m going to try to answer it here, along with a smattering of information

Contract essentials

There are several reasons why universities enter into contracts for research projects. The main ones are: to comply with legislation; to comply with funder or partner requirements; to comply with the university’s own policies and procedures. Of these three, two are outside universities’ control and the first seems to get more complex each year.

For example, just as we were all getting used to the GDPR, we now have to understand the UK GDPR and what that means for working with partners in the EU and around the world. As contracts officers we will work closely with the data protection team to ensure that the contract is an accurate reflection of any data processing that will be part of the project and also that the university is meeting its legal requirements as set out in data protection legislation.

Universities also enter into research contracts because our funders require them—both with them as funders and with any partner organisations. Back in the day, all an aspiring artist or scientist needed was to find a noble patron and the money would flow. Now, any award comes with a lengthy set of terms and conditions that places obligations both on the university and the individual academics undertaking the project, with potentially serious consequences for breaking them. Even the most straightforward of funders, such as UK Research and Innovation, have several pages of terms and conditions, which then link to multiple policies that we need to read and understand.

Alongside the more esoteric legal terminology such as jurisdiction (actually important!) and warranties (also very important!) contracts contain instructions on how to manage the award, how to deal with any intellectual property that might come out of the project (what we call Arising IP), how to invoice, and publication requirements.

When working with a medical charity, for example, it is not simply a case of taking the money and saying thank-you-very-much, we must follow strict procedures on what we do with the Arising IP, particularly where there is any intention to do further research or to commercialise.

If we think there is a possibility of making money out of that IP, then we may need to go back and enter into a new contract with the charity that will allow some of that revenue to flow back to them. The contracts officer will check through any previous agreements with other organisations to make sure that there won’t be any problems further down the line, just when you want to publish or patent.

What researchers need to know

Even when they are not absolutely mandatory, it is still a good idea to set up a contract rather than simply relying on the warm and fuzzy feelings of academic collegiality. Sure, you may be BFFs with Professor Eminent at the University of Peer Review now, but things change, memories fade, and relationships can break down.

If there is a dispute as to what a partner’s role is in a project and whether they have actually delivered what was promised, the contract is one of the first things that people look at. If we have done our job well, then it’s all there in black and white and the argument becomes much easier to win.

Colleagues can sometimes find it embarrassing when a contracts officer gets involved and starts asking awkward questions about project aims and deliverables. It can seem as though we are trampling all over that careful relationship of trust and mutual understanding that has built up over the preceding weeks or months while the project was developed.

I understand the thinking: “Why don’t we just sign what was sent to us? A dynamic company would never behave like this. Typical university bureaucracy!” Yet in a decade of negotiating contracts only once has my counterpart reacted with surprise (and yes, indignation) that I had dared to comment on the terms they sent through. I can assure you that the people on the other side do not consider it unprofessional for someone to negotiate a contract, even when part of that negotiation means that we have to say that the university is unable to agree to certain wording results in the university saying they are unable to agree to an element.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the opposite party will simply shrug and have the offending wording taken out. Indeed, they might feel very strongly that a clause must stay in. This is where academics and contracts officers work best when we know that we are on the same team. And suddenly all that question-asking and pedantry makes sense, because it turns out that the contract doesn’t allow the principal investigator the freedom to publish the results of her research and that the company wants a veto right on any publication if they think that the results of the research might make them look bad. And I’m not willing to let that happen.

In the end, we all have the same goal: to encourage research to flourish in the best possible circumstances. A phrase I’ve been hearing lately is that academic research must be allowed to fail. I don’t want you to fail, but just in case, I’ve included a research waiver in the contract to account for it. So don’t fear the contracts officer as your next bid comes to fruition; we’re on your side.

Stephanie Harris is a contracts manager at City, University of London. She is writing in a personal capacity.

So you’re new to… UK research funding

A very brief tour of the UK research funding landscape.

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in November 2021 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com.

Originally published in two parts, I’ve merged them into one and lightly edited to update and (in the case of EU funding) to try to future-proof!

Paddington (2014)

This article is intended for researchers who have moved to UK academia recently (welcome!) and for UK researchers in the very early stages of their careers. My aim is to give a very brief tour of the UK research funding landscape and help you get to grips with some of the terminology. In part one, I’ll look at government or public funding and say a bit about different funding models for research. In part two I’ll touch on research charities, learned societies, EU funding, and conclude with some general advice on finding research funding opportunities.

The ‘Dual Support’ system for Research and QR Funding

The UK has a dual support system for the public funding of research. The first element is a ‘block grant’—basically a huge chunk of cash—given to UK universities to spend on research as they see fit. The second (which I’ll come to shortly) is support for specific research projects through competitive peer-review processes.

Most of this block grant is Quality-Related (QR) funding, which is allocated to universities on the basis of their research performance as measured through the last Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF is a huge evaluation exercise that takes place every seven or so years, most recently in 2021. Although we’re well into what would be the new ‘REF cycle’, we don’t yet know what the rules will be for this round, and things could be radically different. Or very similar. At the time of writing, we don’t know.

Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) doesn’t know anything about the REF either

Universities can spend QR funding on pretty much any research purpose. Typically, it’s used to support academic salaries, research infrastructure, and internal ‘seed funding’ (for smaller, early-stage research projects). It’s a vital source of stable, predictable, flexible core funding for research. Its importance shouldn’t be underestimated.

Although everyone approves of QR funding, you’ll struggle to find many people with a good word about the REF. I did have a go at a partial defence once, pointing out some of the inconsistencies in some of the critiques, which is still the case. Although it’s primarily about the distribution of QR funding, the REF is also used within universities to check up on the performance of constituent schools and research groups. Individual researchers’ contributions towards the ‘REF return’ are also often assessed.

While the REF has many detractors, there is little agreement about what might take its place. The REF deserves its own article, but as yet another review is underway at the time of writing, there’s no point in writing it.

Competitive funding for projects – UKRI

A bus heading for Swindon
UKRI is based in fashionable Swindon, and its HQ has a secret entrance to the railway station.

Competitive funding awarded for specific projects or programmes of work are the second arm of the ‘dual funding’ system. Most publicly funded competitions for academic research grants in the UK are run via an organisation called UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) which is made up of nine funding bodies: seven research councils, a body called Innovate UK which is involved with R&D in commercial contexts, and another called Research England which, among other activities, helps develop and implement the REF.

Of those nine constituent bodies, the research councils are probably the most important for academic researchers to learn about and understand.

The research councils are:

  • Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
  • Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
  • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
  • Medical Research Council (MRC)
  • Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
    • Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)

As you can tell, each of the seven councils has a disciplinary remit that it carries in its name, except for the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which supports research in astronomy and space-related science. It’s also worth mentioning that academic researchers might be involved in grant bids to Innovate UK, but these projects will need to be industry-led or have strong industrial partnerships.

Until 2018, each council was a largely separate identity with a small coordinating/umbrella body called Research Councils UK. Partially in order to encourage interdisciplinary research, UKRI was created with a remit for more active stewardship and coordination.

Each council runs its own funding calls for specific projects, usually a mixture of directed calls on specific issues and responsive mode funding which is open to any discipline within their remit. Each council will have a more-or-less predictable annual cycle of schemes alongside one-off or occasional calls on specific priorities. Some schemes will have specific deadlines, while others will be ‘open call’ – accepting applications at any time. Confusingly, the phrase ‘open call’ is also sometimes used to mean responsive move – open to any topic. The research councils have the most money and should be your first port of call when looking for funding.

Under the long-established Haldane principle, funding decisions on individual research projects are taken by experts, not by government. Although the government has a role in strategic direction and budget allocations, the research councils are autonomous. UKRI is an ‘arms-length body’—that is, government is supposed to keep a safe distance away from its day-to-day functioning, and therefore UKRI’s funding decisions never have to be signed off by a government minister.

In theory, it shouldn’t be possible for proposals to fall between different research councils with neither willing to take ownership. Remit checks are available, and you should take advantage of this if your work could interest two or more Councils or if you are unsure where it fits. Frequently different research councils will collaborate on grant calls with a specific interdisciplinary purpose.

Funders Future, Funders Past

You might hear about the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), which I’ve not included in the council list on the grounds that it doesn’t exist yet, and if/when it does exist, it’s likely to be independent of UKRI. which now does exist and is indeed independent of UKRI. The ambition for Aria is to be a UK equivalent of Darpa in the US, funding “high risk, high reward” research. It’ll do this by appointing academic programme directors to run particular themed funding calls. While those working in universities welcome more research funding, opinion is divided about the merits and demerits of proposed governance arrangements and whether Aria really needs to be a separate organisation.

Speaking of things that don’t exist, you might also hear about the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). This was programme of applied research to support international development, funded from the UK’s international aid budget. But government cuts to the budget brought the scheme to a juddering halt, leading to the curtailment or cancellation of key research projects in some of the world’s poorest countries. Government reneging on funding commitments is widely regarded by researchers as a national disgrace. Even if GCRF returns, trust has been shattered.

Funding Models

UKRI funding is highly prized by UK universities because it pays Full Economic Costs (fEC). I’ve written a separate article detailing how fEC works, but all you need to know for now is that it’s the most attractive financial deal for research because, as the name implies, it means that all the costs of undertaking the research are considered. It’s important to note that a successful grant application will not directly affect your personal salary, though bringing in research funding will strengthen any case for promotion.

Other funders such as charities tend not to pay overheads (contributions towards the costs of running a university) or salary costs for investigators, funding only the directly incurred costs of the research. Fortunately, the government makes an award worth approximately 19% of award value for eligible charity funding through a separate budget line of QR funding.

Even with QR funding and fEC overheads, funding for university research doesn’t come near to covering its share of the costs. In practice, university research is subsidised from other sources, such as teaching income (especially overseas students) and conference and other commercial income.

It’s also worth drawing a distinction between two different categories of research funding – project grants and fellowships. Many funders offer both. Projects are about a particular programme of work, often with multiple co-investigators. Fellowships are about the research too, but they’re also more focused on the individual researcher. At earlier career stages they focus on the personal and professional development of the fellow as well as producing the research findings. At mid and later career stages, they can be about a range of projects or activities carried out by the fellow. Fellowships may involve mentors and collaborators, but usually not co-investigators.

In part two, I’ll touch on NIHR, research charities, learned societies, EU funding, and conclude with some general advice on finding research funding.

European Funding – Horizon Europe

Although the UK has left the European Union, the UK and the EU have agreed that the UK will continue to participate in the EU’s research funding schemes as an ‘Associated Country’. There are already several Associated Country participants including Norway, Turkey, and Switzerland. At the time of writing, the details have yet to be finalised. The UK government has set aside a budget which will fund UK participation in Horizon Europe schemes, including the European Research Council (for frontier research) and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (researcher training and development).

Whatever I write here risks being out of date by the time I press ‘publish’, but at the moment it looks like the UK is back on track to rejoin Horizon Europe after progress was finally made on the Northern Ireland protocol. There are still complex negotiations to take place about funding shares, but prospects are looking much brighter than before, where some nebulous ‘Plan B’ alternative was being discussed.

In the weeks and months after Brexit, there were fears that Brexit might have a ‘chilling effect’. While remaining technically eligible, the initial concern was that applications led from the UK or involving the UK would be reviewed less favourably. However, there’s been no evidence of this and in fact the UK continued to vie with Germany as host of most prestigious ERC grants in the final calls under Horizon 2020 at a time when Brexit was in full flow, with the UK’s success rates improving in this competition.

However, there may yet be an effect: if UK-based researchers stop applying for funding, there is a risk that it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if the politics have changed, geography hasn’t. The UK is still a major research powerhouse and our European colleagues still want to work with us.

Major Charitable Trusts

The ‘trusts’ are sometimes regarded as quasi-research councils such is the amount of money they have to spend. Both Trusts are funded by investment income – for Leverhulme, a large shareholding in Unilever, and for Wellcome from a portfolio purchased with the proceeds of the sale of Wellcome PLC to what is now GlaxoSmithKline. Both run their own schemes and partner with other funders.

The Leverhulme Trust funds research in any academic discipline apart from medical research and are a particularly important funder for humanities and social sciences.  The Trust offers a suite of standard schemes including project grants and Fellowships at various career stages, which run on an annual basis. They are particularly interested in fundamental/basic/blue skies research and interdisciplinary research. If your project falls between two or more disciplinary stools, is a passion project, is heterodox, and high-risk high-reward, the Leverhulme Trust is well worth a look. Leverhulme also runs larger strategic schemes every few years to which each university can only submit a single application,

The Wellcome Trust funds research into health and wellbeing, including humanities and social science research. They fund work into fundamental biological processes; complexities of human health and disease; and tools, technologies and techniques to benefit health research. They don’t fund translational research or developing/testing/implementing treatments or interventions. With their new strategy, Wellcome have moved to funding longer and more expensive Fellowships and Projects, which has in turn raised their expectations for successful projects.

Wellcome are also partners in a separate, US-based organisation called Wellcome Leap, which (a little like ARIA) draws inspiration from DARPA and funds use-inspired research in the field of human health. They issue complex calls with hyper-short deadlines and turnaround times, usually setting out a programme to be achieved and inviting expressions of interest to participate and contribute towards specific programme goals.

Learned Societies and Academies

These are scholarly societies with royal charters and charitable status which offer research funding, either from private investments, donations, or government funding. The Royal Society funds natural sciences, the British Academy funds humanities and social sciences. The Royal Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Medical Sciences have remits that are more easily guessable.

While they don’t have much money compared to UKRI, they’re often good for Fellowships and for funding for smaller projects which may fall below the minimum funding floor of the relevant research council.

National Institute of Health Research (NIHR)

The NIHR spends public money on research for the benefit of the UK National Health Service (NHS), public health, and social care. More applied and translational than both the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, the NIHR has a wide range of programmes including Health Services and Delivery; Health Technology Assessment; Research for Patient Benefit; and Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation.

Other charities

Most charities that fund research are medical charities, including Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, and Versus Arthritis. But there are a lot of smaller charities too, and it’s a complex picture. A good starting point is the membership list of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC). They’re an umbrella body that supports member charities, and require certain standards of peer review, transparency in decision making etc of their members.

Finding Funding

If your institution subscribes to Research Professional, you should set up an email funding alert based on your interests. There are a lot of niche/discipline specific funders that I’ve not mentioned here, and this is an excellent way of finding them. You should also sign up to newsletters from key funders in your discipline area, and/or follow them on Twitter.

You should also talk to your local Research Development Manager and to your new colleagues. You’re not alone in your quest for research funding – they’ll have a lot of experience and could save you a lot of time in finding the best funder and scheme for your ideas.

In the UK, as elsewhere, success rates for grant applications tend to be low. They obviously vary, but generally 25% is regarded as pretty good. There are a lot more good ideas than there is funding available. Putting together a competitive grant application is a major undertaking, so it’s important to consider all of the available options to find the most appropriate funder and scheme. It’s tempting to pounce on the first scheme you see. Don’t. Take your time and get advice to find the right one for you.

Research Grant Application Success rates: An optimist writes….

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in October 2019 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Success rates for many research funding calls may be low, but a quality, competitive application’s chances of success will be much higher. Adam Golberg tries to look on the bright side of life…

Dark Elf Dice, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When analysing a funding call and deciding whether to apply, it’s always worth finding out the success rate from previous rounds. Some funders are better than others in terms of publicising success rates. Some won’t share them at all, others will hide them away in annual reports, others will publish a lot of details and data, but on relatively hard to find pages on their website. Or they’ll conflate outline and full application stage success rates. If you can’t find success rates easily, ask your friendly neighbourhood research development professional.

One-off or new calls might specify a total budget or expected number of projects to be funded, but obviously won’t have success rates. Changes to funding schemes can make comparisons with previous years less useful, and with multiple stage schemes (outline, full, and perhaps an interview), it’s probably the success rate at each stage that’s most useful to know. Where calls don’t have success rates – and often even when they do – there will usually be details of approximately many awards will be made, or what kind of budget is available for this call.

These success rates and numbers of projects likely to be funded are likely to be depressing – success rates in single digits, in the most extreme cases. But don’t get discouraged too quickly.

Overall scheme success rate vs. competitive application success rate.  

I’d argue that it’s worth thinking in terms of two different success rates. The first is the statistical success rate – total number of awards divided by the total number of applications. I’d argue that there’s a second success rate – the number of awards divided by the number of fundable applications.

What makes an application ‘fundable’?

  • Eligibility: not eligible = automatically unsuccessful.
  • Significance and competitiveness – not merely of relevance to the remit of the call. It must have the clear potential to make a significant contribution to the goals and objectives of the call at the scale expected.
  • Feasibility – in terms of methods, access to data, power calculations, management plan, relations with partners, budgets/resources. Can this be done as proposed?
  • Consistency – research questions don’t mutate or appear and disappear, different sections of the application reinforce rather than contradict each other
  • Clarity – if your application is unclear, you risk referees choosing the least sympathetic reading of any sections that are ambiguous or under-specified. Worse, they might conclude that you haven’t thought it through. Your proposal should have been through multiple drafts and checked repeatedly.

If your application ticks all of these boxes, you probably have a competitive application, and ‘your’ likely success rate could well be double the overall success rate. The overall success rate includes rushed or undercooked applications; the crowbarred-to-fit-the-remit; the ineligible; the incomprehensible; the only-incremental-progress; the only-submitted-to-appease-the-Head-of-School. The fundamentally misconceived; the lacking in novelty; the missing key elements of the literature.

Two reasons not to get too excited – the first is that even double the standard success rate means the odds are very much against you for the majority of funding calls. The second is that most applicants think that their application ticks all the boxes, and won’t number among the unfundable driving down the overall success rate. Probably a few people are knowingly risking a long shot for better reasons or for worse, but most ought to be confident in their proposal.

So how do you tell if you have the potential to submit a competitive, fundable application? Well, the fact that you’re thinking of research funding as a competition is a good start. Probably the best way is to get external input – from your Research Development Manager  (or equivalent) and from senior academic colleagues – at the earliest possible stage. It’s impossible to read a funding call without seeing it through the tinted lenses of your own research ideas and your own expectations. Then you need to take a realistic view about your starting point in terms of the development of the ideas and the team, what the application form requires, the likely success rate for quality applications, the time and energy you and your team have available, and what else you might have done with that time.

One off calls – find the size of prize

One bit of advice I used to give was to see how many projects or fellowships are likely to be funded, and then come to a view about whether your proposal is likely to be competitive in terms of significance.  If there are twenty early career fellowships available, are you likely to be among the twenty strongest applicants in terms of track record and quality and significance of your proposal?

However, I now think the question to ask is subtly different. Is your application likely to be among the twenty strongest who will actually apply, rather than among those who might conceivably apply? There will always be a proportion of potentially strong rivals who don’t apply for whatever reason – they don’t have the time; they don’t have the energy; it’s the wrong stage in the research cycle; they don’t know about the call; or they have other irons in the fire.

Another reason why I no longer pose the question so bluntly is in response to an outstanding early career researcher pointing out to me that it might encourage the wrong people and discourage the right people. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the tendency of the skilled in any particular task to underestimate their own skill and overestimate the skill of others, and while those lacking in skill overestimate their own abilities and find it harder to recognise genuine skill among others. So those who aren’t outstanding candidates are more likely to wrongly believe they are, while those who might are more likely to doubt themselves.

Reasons to be cheerful, part III

Somebody has to win. Individuals and teams are winning those grants. Yes, there is an element of luck involved – which referees are selected, who is on the panel, who speaks up for/against your proposal, what rival bids propose and whether that complements or conflicts. But there’s little you can do about any of that. Your job is to make sure, when deciding to apply – that you can produce a competitive application by the deadline. An eligible, feasible application offering a significant contribution, speaking loudly and clearly to the remit, and written up with clarity and consistency. An application that has every chance of clearing every hurdle and still being in contention on the final straight. Manage that, and you can expect ‘your’ success rate to be significantly better than the scheme average.


Reflections on #ResearchFishGate

Reflections on #ResearchFishGate

So… this is a quick post because I’m pushed for time, but if you’ve not heard about #ResearchFishGate, then’s here’s a quick primer from Research Professional’s Sophie Inge.

Short version… academics have been complaining on social media about having to make their annual returns on their funded projects. In the best of all possible worlds, with the best possible system for collecting such information, academics would still complain about having to do it. Academics always complain about admin. However, I don’t think that accounting for how you’ve used public (or charity) money is itself unreasonable.

“I have shared my concerns with your funder”

However, I think the bulk of the complaints in this case have been less about having to do it at all, but about the software/platform that’s used to do it and whether this information is every actually used. I’ve not been involved in supporting ResearchFish returns for some time now, but my impression is that the platform has improved. But clearly not as fast as some people would like.

ResearchFish have – for some time – been, er, trawling twitter for mentions and have been responding to any criticism with a fairly standard form of words.

We understand that you’re not keen on reporting on your funding through Researchfish but this seems quite harsh and inappropriate. We have shared our concerns with your funder.

https://twitter.com/Researchfish/status/1504542085369712640

There have since been a number of apologies and attempted apologies, UKRI and other funders have weighted in, and it’s been a bit of a mess. At the time of writing it remains unclear whether concerns were shared with the funder in question, though there are stories on twitter of academics being ordered in front of HR/Heads of School to explain themselves. So something has been going on.

Responding to legitimate criticism with threats to report critics to funders has gone down very poorly indeed. Researchers have questioned the GDPR implications… how does ResearchFish know which funder to “share their concerns” with? Is it misusing data?

Anyway, never mind all that

I’m less interested in the specifics of #ResearchFishGate and more interested in the broader issues raised about social media use. I’m sure I’m not the only one who saw the tweet and had a moment of alarm… who or what have I criticised? Have I gone too far? Is anyone going to share their concerns with my funder?

I have permission, approval and (occasionally) encouragement for my social media activities. (It helps when your meta-meta-meta-boss is Registrarism). With the proviso that I don’t “start slagging off funders on twitter”. And I have been a good boy.

However… you don’t get very far on Twitter if you’re in corporate drone mode. I wrote something about social media personas in 2014 (2014!), in which I argued for “smart casual” as a sensible Twitter approach. Adam-at-work, if you will. By showing my human side, I build relationships. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t. And if I didn’t build networks and relationships, then what’s the point?

One key point from #ResearchFishgate is that few/none of the critiques actively @-ed ResearchFish onto the discussion. They were talking about ResearchFish, not to ResearchFish. This is a really important point. However….

Of course ResearchFish has a Twitter search column for mentions of their name. I have one for links to my blog so I can find out if anyone’s tweeting about it (spoiler: they’re usually not). I have one for an LSE Impact Blog article I wrote in which I definitely don’t slag off funders, and occasionally I’ll set them up for Research Professional articles I’ve written. And I’m just a vain blogger who craves validation, not a corporate behemoth.

So anyone who tweets about ‘ResearchFish’ or any other funder or ecosystem platform or player, even without @-ing them in is being naive in thinking that they won’t see it. Perhaps even if you disguise the name to evade searches.. they might have that search set up too. Replacing all the vowels with “*” in the style of some newspapers and swearing isn’t that original.

The traditional social media advice was always that it’s public and permanent… don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want everyone else to see…. who knows what will go viral (possibly wildly out of context)? Of the comments I’ve seen, some do include industrial language, but if there have been any that are abusive of individuals or even @-ing ResearchFish in, I’ve not seen them.

I’m sure it’s not nice to read that people don’t like your product… especially if it’s something you’ve worked very hard on trying to improve… none of us like criticism when we’re doing our best. We especially don’t like it if we can’t use it to improve in any way… but the answer is to grow a thicker skin and ignore it. It would be entirely sensible to use twitter as sentiment analysis, and to look for feedback – especially if there are concerns or issues that can be addressed instantly with user guide advice, or which can be fed back to the Devs. That’s okay.

It’s not okay to trawl twitter for mentions and then issue threats. It might be okay… just about… to make a polite enquiry in response to criticism and ask how the product could be improved. But it’s still barging – uninvited – into someone else’s conversation, even if it’s conversation that’s in the public square.

And I think that’s something that has changed during the pandemic. The tweets that drew the ire of the Fish of Research are the kind of thing that would – in the before-times – probably have been said around the metaphorical water cooler. Only we’re not there any more so often… we’re working from home, or our colleagues are. We have our Teams chats, but that’s generally work stuff, or work-flavoured. But Twitter’s right there, it’s a different and broader social circle. We’re all feeling more alone, more atomised… so those of us on Twitter are perhaps leaning to it more for conversation, companionship, interaction, and validation than before.

I’ve complained about an issue that… in hindsight… I probably shouldn’t have done, as it’s an internal University of Nottingham issue. But I learned that it’s a problem elsewhere too, that people agreed it was a problem and I heard some extra-egregious examples of the kind of thing I complained about. So I don’t regret doing it. I have raised it with my colleagues, but I think they’ve had enough of me moaning about it. Also… what can they really say? We’re in agreement about it.

Conclusions?

Are there any? I guess so. A few lessons.

(1) Big Brother is watching you. Criticise any product and organisation on Twitter – even without @-ing them in – and you should assume that they’ll see it. None of the old advice has changed about social media use and who might see it. Indications are that employers are getting more stringent/intrusive about this.

(2) The default assumption for any organisation (or public figure) being criticised is that they’re talking about you, not to you. Without an @, it’s a private conversation, and you should think very carefully before intruding. And then you probably shouldn’t unless you think your intervention might be welcome.

(3) In spite 0f (1), I do think that the pandemic/wider social media use means that there should be greater allowances for social media use. A conversation can both be in the public square and be a private conversation, with at least some allowances for language and tone. Perhaps X wouldn’t have criticised ResearchFish in precisely those terms and with precisely that language if X knew they were eavesdropping, but the overall sentiment would be the same. That’s not to say that there aren’t still lines that shouldn’t be crossed… just that perhaps the tolerance band should be broader than before.

My defined contribution to the UCU strike ballot debate

At the time of writing, UCU are balloting on strike action in response to (among other things) draconian cuts to USS. My gut reaction is also three letters…. FFS.

At the time of writing, UCU are balloting on strike action in response to (among other things) draconian cuts to USS. My gut reaction is also three letters…. FFS.

Though – spoiler alert – I am going to be voting for strike action very reluctantly and with a very heavy heart.

“Freedom for the University of Tooting!”

I wrote a post about strike action and the importance of union membership back in 2013 and on the pensions strike back in 2018. I think both posts hold up pretty well. But briefly, and contrary to popular demand, here are all the things I think about pensions.

  • Pension planning seems like a technocratic problem that ought to have a technocratic solution. Or, more properly, a range of technocratic solutions to chose from, depending on our priorities and preference. Which, again, we can talk about.
  • Is there is a genuine problem with the pension scheme that’s not been resolved by all of the many, many previous pension cuts we’ve had since I signed up to USS about twenty years ago? Each time we were promised that this cut would resolve the genuine problems with our pension scheme. Each time it hasn’t. If there is still a problem, this ought to be understandable and communicable. And something that can be negotiated about, around, and through.
  • But UUK/university management has made this impossible through failures of transparency, dubious consultations, and a level of spin that borders on the Trumpian. It’s all massively counterproductive – we’re not stupid, so stop treating us as if we are. Those minded to at least entertain the thought that there’s an issue with our pension scheme don’t trust UUK, because they have acted – and continue to act – in bad faith.
  • My suspicion is that they’ll be back again, and again, and again, and again for as long as they can get away with it. Same arguments each time. Back in 2018 we needed draconian cuts, apparently, and then after sustained industrial action, we didn’t any more. It’s almost as if… etc and so on. Universities may not be for-profit, but university management wants surpluses for reinvestment in their pet projects (at least some of which are genuinely good ideas) because they tend to want to make their mark. So it is in their interests to drive costs down as low as possible and keep them there.
  • Colleagues not paying into their pensions because contributions are too high is a problem with our pension. Even if framing the issue as if this was the sole consideration and not mentioning the, you know, massive cuts is disingenuous in the extreme.
  • Pensions are not a perk, but deferred salary. Organisations whose continued existence is very certain (broadly, public services) are in a position to provide better pensions. As a trade-off, salaries are lower. We knew this when we chose our careers and expect the deal to be honoured. Why should we have better pensions that some other sectors? Because that was always part of the deal.
  • I hate being on strike. I hate the arranging to have some of my work covered with colleagues who are themselves busy, especially when we’re several posts down. I hate the divisions it causes. I hate the stress it imposes and the difficult decisions about who to let down and how. I hate coming back to work to find that I’ve got a huge backlog that only I can clear. I don’t like not getting paid, and essentially having to work for free to catch up.
  • Some people like being on strike and the conflict and the associated rituals and the ‘winter of discontent’ cosplaying just that little bit too much.
  • Media coverage of all industrial action is always disgracefully one-sided. Management want ‘reform’ and is presented positively… management talking points always lead and they are never challenged by the reporter. Workers are striking for ‘pay and conditions’… presented selfishly or short-shortsightedly. And are always challenged. The framing is always that of management. Always. Strikers will be vilified – ‘won’t somebody think of the [whoever is inconvenienced]’ – with no sense of awareness. The work that the strikers do isn’t important until they stop doing it, apparently. Often they’ll quote someone affected saying how annoyed they are. Again, this will be framed as the fault of the strikers rather than the failure of employers to manage their industrial relations in a competent manner. That question is never even asked, never mind answered. It’s a dance as old as time. Or at least as old as capitalism.

The Four Fights

But it’s not just about pensions. It’s about the ‘Four Fights‘ too.

address the scandal of the gender, ethnic, and disability pay gap

end contract casualisation and rising job insecurity

tackle the rising workloads driving our members to breaking point

increase to all spine points on the national pay scale of £2,500. [to make up for a 17.6% real terms pay cut between 2009-2019]

(UCU website, accessed 18th Oct 2021)

All laudable goals. Especially the pay gaps… it really ought not to be beyond the wit of folks of good will in university management and UCU to come up with an action plan to start to address this. Granted, we cannot solve the problems of discrimination and inequality in wider society, but we can do our bit, and it ought not to be that expensive. I don’t really understand why this is so hard to agree on.

The others, though. Pragmatically… how are they to be achieved? And can they be achieved without costing more? And if not, can we afford all of them, and how do we prioritise?

Let’s get a few red herrings out of the way first.

First, you might very reasonably be very cross about the above-average-inflation pay awards to some vice chancellors and some senior university staff. You might be one of those people who – consistently – thinks this is an issue across the whole economy. Or you may be one of those people who – inconsistently – thinks nothing of the worst excesses of the private sector’s snouts-in-troughery, but objects to anyone in public service being ‘paid more than the Prime Minister’. But… even if we cut executive pay by… let’s say 1/3… this will give us nowhere near enough money by itself to address any of our issues.

Second, you might form the view that there are two many ‘faceless’ managers and administrators. If so, I would invite you to (a) read this piece and reconsider; (b) reflect on the fact that ‘faceless’ just means you don’t know them or understand what they do; and (c)… we’re right here, folks. Striking alongside you. Those of us who can afford to.

“Down with this sort of thing!”

Low(er) cost solutions

Let’s consider what could be done quickly and relatively cheaply. How far can humane management/HR practices go in addressing casualisation and job insecurity? A fair bit, I’d imagine. We could be much better at giving researchers permanent or open-ended contracts. Even if the reality is that redundancy processes can and will still be used to terminate contracts where there’s a lack of funding. We can treat our fixed term staff better, and we can take our duty to support the development of our staff much more seriously. We should be setting them up for their next role, whether that’s with the same institution or elsewhere.

Demand for academic posts exceeds supply. This is a topic for another blogpost, because scarcity of opportunity and funding are wicked problems which drive a lot of what’s wrong with research culture. But we could do better about not ruthlessly exploiting that fact for fun and profit. To avoid a race to the bottom for competitive advantage, we need sector wide norms and standards. And as far as I understand it (and correct me if I’m wrong, which I often am) this is what’s being resisted. I don’t believe that we have the most humane management/HR practices, and that’s why I’m reluctantly supporting industrial action on this point.

Can we tackle rising workloads without spending a lot of money? Again, there are certainly some things we can do. I’ve been coordinating my university’s response to the Review of Research Bureaucracy, which has been an eye-opening experience. It’s only looked at externally imposed bureaucracy, and only research bureaucracy. It may be that the real issue is internally imposed research bureaucracy, teaching bureaucracy (especially), and, well, administrative bureaucracy. I’m sure there’s more that can be done, and some of that may involve employing more administrative and managerial support. My vision is of a university where academics do academia, and administrators and managers do administration and management. And we do leadership together.

We might expect universities to take a long, hard look at what’s expected of the average academic and review what expectations are reasonable. Too many institutions have grant income targets that are scarcely on a nodding acquaintance with reality. They appear not to understand that limited funding means that for some to succeed, others must fail. I know it’s fashionable to blame the REF for everything. But actually the last REF rules that moved away from demanding four publications per researcher opened the door to greater flexibility of roles and expectations.

But for all the talk of ‘be kind’ and yoga and wellness and mindfulness and whatever else, there’s still far too much unkind management and unrealistic expectations. Personally, I’m currently lucky to benefit from supportive, enlightened and empowering management (hello, if you’re reading), but I’ve also experienced the opposite and there’s far too much of it about. Whether sector-wide strike action is the way to address rising workloads I’m not sure. What could we do at a national, sector-wide level? What would that look like? I’m convinced of the importance of the issue, but less so for the case for national strike action as the mechanism to resolve it. But I’m open to persuasion.

Fantasy Head of School

But another possible response to rising workloads is… well… sorry… it’s casualisation and job insecurity.

Sandra Oh, in ‘The Chair’ (Netflix)

Let’s play Fantasy Head of School. Or University Management Simulator. Hypothetically, anyway. Pressures on your permanent staff too great? Use your limited resources to buy in as much extra teaching capacity as possible… which means sessional teachers and short term teaching fellowships or teaching-focused roles. Or… we treat those staff better, give them more professional development time, more scholarship time, and we get less teaching capacity for our buck. And increase workloads.

Look, if you don’t know who this is, just go and watch Community. Thank me later. It’s much funnier than ‘The Chair’.

That’s not the only issue – creating better bottom-rung-of-the-academic-ladder jobs – more hours, longer contracts – almost certainly means fewer such opportunities. Is that a good thing? I think, on balance, probably… but it’s not straightforward. My one remaining reader will no doubt be sounding the ‘false dichotomy’ klaxon at this point. Correctly so. We can, of course, find a compromise or a balance of sorts, but let’s not pretend it’s straightforward. We can’t have everything.

Do we employ more staff (to reduce workloads) on more secure contracts (to reduce insecurity)? Or do we address the real terms 17.6% pay cut by increasing all spine points by £2.5k? And – dare I say it – paying higher employers’ pension contributions, if that is indeed actually needed. What gets priority? You’ll forgive me if I would rather see any £££ for pay rises focused at the lower end of the pay scale rather than giving Profs another two and half grand. Whisper it quietly, but I’d rather spend it on the lowest paid university employees who tend to be represented by UNITE or UNISON rather than UCU. And a focus on the lowest paid/lower spine grades and spine points might also be a good way to start addressing pay gaps.

Pay costs and non pay costs

As Fantasy University Manager, could we hack away at non-pay costs? Conference funding? Seedcorn funding for new research ideas? Research facilities and infrastructure? The university’s core infrastructure and systems which – when working well – create efficiency savings and minimise friction? Estates and buildings? Student spaces? Lecture theatres? Seminar rooms? One of my constant frustrations as a Research Development Manager is working with brilliant colleagues with outstanding ideas who we can’t support with kit/seedcorn ££/infrastructure as they deserve.

I’ve read in a number of places that the percentage of average university income spent on staff costs has been in decline for some time. The best source I can find for this is this UCU article from 2017. I’m wary about trying to dive into HESA stats as I’m not competent to play with financial data without water wings and a lifeguard. If anyone has any better sources/more up to date info, please let me know via twitter, email, or in the comments. This decline may or may coincide with a long run of real term pay cuts, and that may be related. Or not. I’m also not sure what the percentage of staff costs for an organisation ought to look like… my instinct is that under 54.6% seems very, very low. But I’m not sure why I think that… some half-remembered presentation? Or a Business School research grant application? But if it is low, I don’t know why that might be, or what it might mean.

I’m not sure what I think about grand estates/infrastructure projects. Obviously some have gone very well, others very badly. Can we reduce investment on estates and infrastructure to spend more on staffing? There’s a balance to be struck. One option is that we say the balance has swung too far, and we cut back and spend more on staff. Another option is that we end everything but essential maintenance to spend more on staff, but that’s not sustainable in the long run. Unless we want dilapidated lecture theatres and ageing research kit, because if that happened we’d be the first to complain about a lack of investment.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the pendulum has swung too far, and that there is extra money at all or most institutions if it were to cut back or delay or cancel some estates and infrastructure projects. Even on top of whatever COVID-related cuts have been made. If there is that money available, how do we spend it? Because I’m not convinced that there’s enough of a saving there to cover everything that UCU is asking for.

There isn’t a magic money tree. Pragmatically speaking. The resource envelope is what it is. Unless anyone is willing to spend, spend, spend and dare the government to shut them down or bale them out. Perhaps £££ will be increased under a future government of a more progressive frame of mind willing to invest more in public and quasi-public services. But that won’t happen in the short, or perhaps even medium term. And when it does, I suspect that universities will be some way down the priority list. As Fantasy Head of School, you need to make decisions now.

I’m aware, of course, that UCU’s demands are a wish list, a negotiating position. It’s also a way of achieving a broad consensus among colleagues whose interests are not precisely aligned. If we look at the Four Fights and the Pensions situation purely selfishly, we’d not all have the same list of priorities.

But ultimately, we have a long list of demands. Some of which can be met or addressed without prohibitively expensive measures… but for others, if there is money available, we’ll need to prioritise. And that priorisiation is likely to be controversial and uncomfortable. And we can either engage with prioritisation, or we can leave it to university management.

I know which I’d rather do.

Reviewing Internal Peer Review of Grant Applications, Part 2: How to make it work better

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in April 2019 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

We can leap higher with assistance than we can on our own. Picture: Darren England (AAP) via ABC News.

Most universities have internal peer review processes for grant applications. In part one I discussed the different purposes of internal peer review and how they can cause confusion. I also wrote about how to ensure that we present internal peer review as helpful and supportive rather than a hurdle to be overcome. In this second and final part, I’m going to look at how we might do internal peer review of grant applications better.

Who do we ask to review?

The ideal reviewer is a senior academic with a track record of success with major research funding applications and some insight into the subject area. Even at research-intensive institutions, there is a limited supply and their time is valuable. Especially for reviewers in development-related topics because of the volume of Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) bids. [Alas, this example from 2019 has dated poorly.] Our instinct is to ask senior Profs, but I wonder if a closer review by someone less senior could be more useful. We should think beyond the usual suspects, as reviewing can be a developmental exercise. My experience has been that researchers who are rarely asked to review often throw themselves into the task with a lot more enthusiasm. They’re often delighted to be asked, and keen to do a good job.

Do we make internal peer review anonymous?

This is tricky. In my view – ideally – no. Being able to put feedback in the context of the reviewer’s background can be very valuable. I also think that people should be willing to stand behind their comments.

However, because internal peer review can have a filtering role, perhaps the protection of anonymity is required for reviewers to be willing to say that proposals shouldn’t go forward. Or perhaps even to be willing to criticise colleagues’ work at all. However, I would expect that the rationale for soft filtering out an application should be one that most applicants would accept and understand. For a hard filter – when only x number of applications can go forward from the institution – there would usually be a committee decision bound by collective responsibility. I’m not aware of any research or internal survey work done on internal peer reviewers and their attitudes to anonymization, and I’d be interested to see if anyone has looked at this.

How do we ask reviewers to review?

It’s not obvious how to review a grant application. Those without much experience may be reluctant to trust their instincts or judgement because “it’s not really my area”. A small number go the other way and go power crazy at the chance to sit in judgement – judging the proposal from their own personal, partisan perspective and completely write off entire academic disciplines and sub-disciplines.

One option is to ask reviewers to use the same form that the funder in question gives to referees or panel members. It’s a great idea in principle, but academics typically have a loathe-hate relationship with forms. But there are some specific questions we could ask reviewers in a structured way, or use as prompts. Fewer questions will get better answers.

What isn’t clear? What’s confusing or ambiguous?
What are the potential weaknesses?
What’s missing?
How could the application be improved?

If I were to ask a single question, it would be the pre-mortem.

If I could see into the future and tell you now that this application is not going to be funded, what will be the main reason?

This question helps home in on key weaknesses – it might be fit-to-call, it might be unclear methodology; it might be weak impact pathways; it might be the composition of the research team. It’s a good question for applicants to ask themselves.

How do we feed back?

It’s not enough for feedback to be correct, it must be presented in a way that maximises the chances that the PI will listen.

Ideally, I’d like a face-to-face meeting involving the internal reviewers, the Research Development Manager, the PI and possibly the co-investigators. The meeting would be a discussion of a full draft in which reviewers can offer their views and advice and the PI can respond, and ask questions about their impressions of the proposal. I like face-to-face meetings because of the feedback multiplier effect – one reviewer makes an observation, which triggers another in the second reviewer. A PI response to a particular point triggers a further observation or suggestion. If approached in the right spirit (and if well-chaired) this should be a constructive and supportive meeting aimed at maximising the applicant’s chances of success. It must not be a Dragon’s Den style ordeal.

In reality, with packed diaries and short notice calls, it’s going to be difficult to arrange such meetings. So we often have to default to email, which needs a lot of care, as nuance of tone and meaning can be lost. I would advise that feedback is sent through an intermediary – another task for your friendly neighbourhood research development manager – who can think about how to pass it on. Whether to forward it verbatim, add context or comments, or smooth off some abrasive edges. I’ve had a reviewer email me to say that she’s really busy and could I repackage her comments for forwarding? Happy to.

A good approach is to depersonalise the applicant – address the feedback to the draft application, not its authors. (“The current draft could be clearer on….” versus “You could be clearer on…”). But I think depersonalising the reviewers and their comments is a mistake – impersonal, formal language can come over as officious, high handed, and passive aggressive. It will make applicants less likely to engage, even if the advice is solid. Using (even rhetorical) questions rather than blunt statements invites engagement and reflection, rather than passing final judgement.

Which would you respond to best?

The panel’s view is that your summary section is poor and is an introduction to the topic, not a proper summary of your whole project. You should rewrite before submitting.

Or….

Could the summary be strengthened? We thought the draft version read more like an introduction to the topic, and we think reviewers are looking for a summary of the complete proposal in a nutshell. Is there time to revisit this section so it better summarises the project as a whole?

Institutions invest time and money in having arrangements that provide prospective PIs with detailed feedback from senior academic colleagues to improve their chances of success. But it’s all for nothing if the resulting advice is ineffective because of the way the feedback is communicated, or the way the whole process is presented or perceived by researchers.

Reviewing Internal Review of Grant Applications (part 1): Helping or Hoop-jumping?

“The review panel is concerned that your methodology is under-specified”
(WF Yeames, ‘When did you last see your father?‘)

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in April 2019 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Most universities have internal peer review processes for research grant applications. In the first of two articles about internal peer review, I wonder whether what ought to be valuable support can be perceived as an obstacle. Part two looks at how we might run peer review more effectively.

Why do we have internal peer review?

Internal peer review of research grant applications has two distinct functions which can easily become blurred. I think this can cause misunderstandings.

The first function is as filter – to select which applications go forward and which do not. This has two variants. A ‘hard filter’ for a scheme or funder with formal limits on the number of applications that one institution can submit. Or a ‘soft filter’ where there are no formal limits on application numbers, but there’s a steer from the funder to submit only the most competitive applications. Another motivation for a soft filter is to save academic time by slowing, stopping, or redirecting uncompetitive applications.

The second function is to improve the quality of the application. The goal is to produce some actionable suggestions for improvements to increase the chance of success. In a previous article I explained how research development staff can bring a fresh perspective. Comments from a senior academic of comparable standing to the expert reviewers or funding panel members can be similarly helpful, but with the added benefit of academic expertise.

Both functions of peer review – of filtering and improving – are often rolled together into one process. Perhaps this causes confusion both for reviewers and the reviewed. I wonder if we over-emphasise the role of the filter at the expense of the improvement? Does fear of the filter reduce the efficacy of the suggestions for improvements?

Perceptions of internal peer review

When discussing internal peer review with academic colleagues, I’ve seen wildly different reactions. Some are very enthusiastic and are hungry for comments and feedback. Others are a bit more…. Gollum and don’t want anyone to gaze upon their precious. Most are somewhere in the middle… welcoming of genuinely useful comments and insights, but wary about being forced to make changes against their better judgement or being prevented from applying at all.

There’s no denying that ‘filter’ role exists and it would be mistake to do so. I reassure academics that in my experience it’s very rare for a bid to be soft-filtered out because of internal reviewer’s comments and for the applicant to disagree with the rationale. Usually the reviewer has spotted something that the applicant missed, either related to the call, the application or underpinning idea. Perhaps it needs another co-I, or needs stronger stakeholder engagement, needs to engage with a particular body of literature, or just needs a lot more time to develop. Or the issue is the fit to funder or call.

Research development staff send out details of calls with internal timetables and internal deadlines for the various review stages. But are potential applicants seeing peer review (and associated deadlines) as a developmental process put in place to support them and to help them succeed? Or do they see peer review as a barrier to be overcome (or even evaded), placed in their path by over-officious Heads of Research and research managers that seek to micromanage, police and restrict?

I sometimes worry that in our desire to set out processes to try to prevent and pre-empt disruptive last-minute applications and set out an orderly and timely process, we end up sending the wrong message about peer review and about the broader support available. If we’re dictating terms and timetables for peer review, do we make it look as if grant applicants must fit around reviewer (and research support) requirements and timescales? And is that the right way around?

To be clear, I’m certainly not arguing against having a structured process with indicative milestones with some level of enforcement. Unplanned last minute applications are disruptive and stressful, forcing people to drop everything to provide support with no notice. Worst of all, the applications that result usually aren’t very good and rushed applications are seldom competitive. We absolutely should try to save people from this kind of folly.

And… of course, we need to allow time for senior (and therefore busy) academics to undertake internal peer review. I suspect that most institutions rely on a relatively small pool of reviewers who are asked to read and comment on multiple applications per year, and that few get any formal workload allocation. While we should certainly give applicants plenty of time to write their applications, we need to treat our reviewers with consideration and value their time.

Positive about internal peer review

I’m not arguing that we disguise or minimise the ‘filter’ element of internal peer review in favour of an unqualified upbeat presentation of internal peer review being entirely about improving the quality of the application. But perhaps we could look at ways to present internal peer review in a more positive, supportive, developmental – and less officious – light.

The most important part of peer review positivity – and the subject of the second part of this series – is in how internal peer review happens in practice: who reviews, how and when; and how and in what spirit reviewer comments are communicated to applicants. If internal peer review as a process helps strengthen applications, word will get round and support and buy-in will grow – one positive experience at a time.

But even before that stage, I think it’s worth thinking about how we communicate our internal peer review processes and timetables. Could we be more positive in our framing and communication? Could we present internal peer review more as a helping hand to climb higher, and less as a hurdle to overcome?