Category: University culture

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.

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.

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?

This year, we should avoid returning to normal

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

Hello and welcome to a reflective piece written by someone in a position of relative privilege in academia during a time of collapse and crisis. Written by someone who knows no more than you do about how best to cope with or understand it, and quite possibly substantially less.

So why am I writing? Out of an attempt to take stock of where we’re at as honestly as I can, without succumbing to the twin temptations of false hope of some brighter new dawn or the consolations of cynicism.

Generated using imgflip Stay Alert Meme Generator

After a little reflection, this is what I want to tell you…

Kindness is everything

I don’t know who you are but listen, you’re doing really well. You probably know the saying by now: “you’re not working from home, you’re working at home in a pandemic”. And it’s true—you’re being tested in all kinds of ways, I’m sure. It’s so easy to focus on what we feel we’re not doing well that we completely take for granted the things we are doing well. This is the basis of imposter syndrome where we think of our own talents and achievements as mundane but regard those of others as vastly superior. See also: the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

We’ve got to be kinder to ourselves, as well as to others. I’ve been carrying a bit of residual guilt around because it feels like very little of the burden of the current crisis has fallen upon my shoulders. I have been able to continue working in physical safety and—in spite of some spicy days and weeks—with a manageable workload that doesn’t pose a serious risk to my mental wellbeing. As I don’t have children, I’ve not had pressures of home schooling.

It’s good to be aware that others have it tougher, to be willing to help, to show kindness and concern and empathy and consideration. To have a sense of proportion. But it’s a mistake to minimise or even discount the things that we’re finding difficult. The things we’re missing.

The fact that other people are in much, much more pain than I am doesn’t mean it hurts any less when I stub my toe. And I won’t make my toe feel any better by berating myself for being in pain and for not wanting to be in pain.

It’s easy to focus on those from whom extraordinary efforts are required during these extraordinary times, to compare ourselves to that extraordinary standard, and judge ourselves harshly. But if you’re anything like me, by this stage you’ve probably normalised a lot of the restrictions that all of us are asked to live under. Not seeing family and friends, severely curtailed leisure activities, having to adapt to remote working and so on. It’s all so [makes screaming sound] and this is the new normal.

But we should not forget that we’re all contributing. If you’re following whatever the guidelines are today, you’re contributing. I have always been ill-suited for a healthcare career due to my squeamishness and clumsiness, so perhaps I should not compare my contribution to theirs. A lot is being asked of each and every one of us even if you feel – as I do – your burden is lighter. From each according to their ability, and so on.

Won’t get fooled again

Kindness—for others, for ourselves—should be the order of the day but what is stopping it becoming the order of the everyday?

There’s a temptation to think that things must be different, will have to be better after this crisis. We should be aware that powerful forces will want to put things back more or less where they were before it ever happened (see the last financial crisis) or in even crueler positions (ibid). I’ve listened to a few podcasts discussing the post-1945 political settlement in the UK and the birth of the welfare state, and it’s clear is that none of that happened by accident or overnight. A lot of work went into preparing the ground and preparing the arguments and policy solutions.

If we want to “build back better” (sorry) in academia, we need to think creatively, we need to share ideas, we need to prepare the ground for radical ideas. We need to shift the Overton Window.

Equal treatment

For one thing, we can’t do better in academia without confronting our structural inequalities. And I am sorry. Yes, this is another white, middle-age, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgender man telling everyone what he thinks about equality issues. I understand the scepticism. But in my defence there’s only one thing worse than all that: someone who is all those things and yet doesn’t think about equality issues.

Over the summer I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast on ‘Playing Favourites’ which includes a story about a Yale academic who received markedly better treatment for a hand injury once the doctors discovered that she worked at Yale. And a story about an academic who agreed to an interview she would usually decline just because the journalist had been at the same university at the same time. Both the doctor and the academic could come away from their respective interactions feeling a warm glow as they’d both done something nice for someone else that they didn’t have to.

But as the academic in that second story—Mahzarin Banaji—said: “I think that kind of act of helping towards people with whom we have some shared group identity is really the modern way in which discrimination likely happens.”

Which leaves me to ask: who gets my standard service, and who gets my above-and-beyond, my extra mile? Who gets one last extra read of their proposal? Who gets a meeting rather than an email? Who gets a longer meeting? Whose request gets the quickest response? This year my challenge to myself is (a) to keep an eye on who find I want to do favours for; and (b) look to do more favours for members of disadvantaged/unrepresented groups who may not have had their share of favours in the past. I invite you to join me. My preliminary conclusion is that I tend to privilege the pushy because I’m a people pleaser. I should do better.

My one piece of advice

I’ve only got one bit of proper, real advice for researchers and research professionals and it has got nothing to do with research or academia and it is, I am sorry, only relevant to those privileged enough not to be shielding. Go for a walk outside. Or a run, or a cycle. If you can, you should. You won’t regret it. I seldom regret going for a run, and I never regret going for a walk. Around the park, around the block, whatever. Listen to nature or the streetscape, or put in your headphones, listen to your happy tunes at top volume or your favourite podcast, and stride purposefully like you’re five minutes late for a meeting on the other side of campus.

You may or may not feel better afterwards. But at least you’ll have been for a walk.

Region’s Greetings from one of my recent walks. Trent Embankment, Nottingham.
Picture credit: me. Graffiti credit: Probably not Banksy… Trent Banksy, maybe…

An applicant’s guide to Full Economic Costing

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

Image courtesy of Max Pixel CC0 Public Domain License

You’re applying for UK research council funding and suddenly you’re confronted with massive overhead costs. Adam Golberg tries to explain what you need to know.

Trying to explain Full Economic Costing is not straightforward. For current purposes, I’ll be assuming that you’re an academic applying for UK Research Council funding; that you want to know enough to understand your budget; and that you don’t really want to know much more than that.

If you do already know a lot about costing or research finances, be warned – this article contains simplifications, generalisations, and omissions, and you may not like it.

What are Full Economic Costs, and why are they taking up so much of my budget?

Full Economic Costs (fEC) are paid as part of UK Research and Innovation grants to cover a fair share of the wider costs of running the university – the infrastructure that supports your research. There are a few different cost categories, but you don’t need to worry about the distinctions.

Every UK university calculates its own overhead rates using a common methodology. I’m not going to try to explain how this works, because (a) I don’t know; and (b) you don’t need to know. Most other research funders (charities, EU funders, industry) do not pay fEC for most of their schemes. However, qualifying peer-reviewed charity funding does attract a hidden overhead of around 19% through QR funding (the same source as REF funding). But it’s so well hidden that a lot of people don’t know about it. And that’s not important right now.

How does fEC work?

In effect, this methodology produces a flat daily overhead rate to be charged relative to academic time on your project. This rate is the same for the time of the most senior professor and the earliest of early career researchers.

One effect of this is to make postdoc researchers seem proportionally more expensive. Senior academics are more expensive because of higher employment costs (salary etc), but the overheads generated by both will be the same. Don’t be surprised if the overheads generated by a full time researcher are greater than her employment costs.

All fEC costs are calculated at today’s rates. Inflation and increments will be added later to the final award value.

Do we have to charge fEC overheads?

Yes. This is a methodology that all universities use to make sure that research is funded properly, and there are good arguments for not undercutting each other. Rest assured that everyone – including your competitors– are playing by the same rules and end up with broadly comparable rates. Reviewers are not going to be shocked by your overhead costs compared to rival bids. Your university is not shooting itself (or you) in the foot.

There are fairness reasons not to waive overheads. The point of Research Councils is to fund the best individual research proposals regardless of the university they come from, while the REF (through QR) funds for broad, sustained research excellence based on historical performance. If we start waiving overheads, wealthier universities will have an unfair advantage as they can waive while others drown.

Further, the budget allocations set by funders are decided with fEC overheads in mind. They’re expecting overhead costs. If your project is too expensive for the call, the problem is with your proposal, not with overheads. Either it contains activities that shouldn’t be there, or there’s a problem with the scope and scale of what you propose.

However, there are (major) funding calls where “evidence of institutional commitment” is expected. This could include a waiver of some overheads, but more likely it will be contributions in kind – some free academic staff time, a PhD studentship, new facilities, a separate funding stream for related work. Different universities have different policies on co-funding and it probably won’t hurt to ask. But ask early (because approval is likely to be complex) and have an idea of what you want.

What’s this 80% business?

This is where things get unnecessarily complicated. Costs are calculated at 100% fEC but paid by the research councils at 80%. This leaves the remaining 20% of costs to be covered by the university. Fortunately, there’s enough money from overheads to cover the missing 20% of direct costs. However, if you have a lot of non-pay costs and relatively little academic staff time, check with your costings team that the project is still affordable.

Why 80%? In around 2005 it was deemed ‘affordable’ – a compromise figure intended to make a significant contribution to university costs but without breaking the bank. Again, you don’t need to worry about any of this.

Can I game the fEC system, and if so, how?

Academic time is what drives overheads, so reducing academic time reduces overheads. One way to do this is to think about whether you really need as much researcher time on the project. If you really need to save money, could contracts finish earlier or start later in the project?

Note that non-academic time (project administrators, managers, technicians) does not attract overheads, and so are good value for money under this system. If some of the tasks you’d like your research associate to do are project management/administration tasks, your budget will go further if you cost in administrative time instead.

However, if your final application has unrealistically low amounts of academic time and/or costs in administrators to do researcher roles, the panel will conclude that either (a) you don’t understand the resource implications of your own proposal; or (b) a lack of resources means the project risks being unable to achieve its stated aims. Either way, it won’t be funded. Funding panels are especially alert for ‘salami projects’ which include lots of individual co-investigators for thin slivers of time in which the programme of research cannot possibly be completed. Or for undercooked projects which put too much of a burden on not enough postdoc researcher time. As mentioned earlier, if the project is too big for the call budget, the problem is with your project.

The best way to game fEC it is not to worry about it. If you have support with your research costings, you’ll be working with someone who can cost your application and advise you on where and how it can be tweaked and what costs are eligible. That’s their job – leave it to them, trust what they tell you, and use the time saved to write the rest of the application.

Thanks to Nathaniel Golden (Nottingham Trent) and Jonathan Hollands (University of Nottingham) for invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article. Any errors that remain are my own.

Towards a more positive research culture: what’s the role of research development staff?

Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar recently published a blog post entitled Why we need to reimagine how we do research which launched a survey into research culture.

The relentless drive for research excellence has created a culture in modern science that cares exclusively about what is achieved and not about how it is achieved. 

As I speak to people at every stage of a scientific career, although I hear stories of wonderful support and mentorship, I’m also hearing more and more about the troubling impact of prevailing culture.

People tell me about instances of destructive hyper-competition, toxic power dynamics and poor leadership behaviour – leading to a corresponding deterioration in researchers’ wellbeing. We need to cultivate, reward, and encourage the best while challenging what is wrong.

We know that Wellcome has helped to create this focus on excellence. Our aim has rightly been to support research with the potential to benefit society. But I believe that we now also have an important role to play in changing and improving the prevailing research culture. A culture in which, however unintentionally, it can be hard to be kind.

If we want science to be firing on all cylinders, we need everyone in the research system – individuals, institutions and funders – working in step to foster a positive working culture. 

Or, as Farrar’s Wellcome colleague Ben Bleasdale puts it, “[e]xcellence in research shouldn’t come at the expense of those who make it happen”. 

Everything is not, in fact, awesome.

Which leads me to wonder what the role of research development and other research support professionals should be in moving towards a more positive research culture. I don’t know the answer, and this post is an open invitation to share your thoughts. I’ll pull these together into a crowd-sourced post with credit for those who want it and anonymity for those who don’t. This approach seemed to work well for a previous post around supporting a new academic discipline, so perhaps it will work here too.

I don’t want to say too much in this post, but as I’m asking others I should at least share a few indicative thoughts about areas to think about.

We should look at our own profession, our own culture, and how we treat each other. In my time in research development I’ve generally found it to be a supportive profession, both internally within the universities where I’ve worked, and (especially) externally through ARMA. However, I’m white, male, heterosexual, middle age, middle class, so I’m very much playing on ‘easy mode‘. I don’t get mistaken for an administrator, and either I’m super diplomatic and great at influencing and persuading, or I get taken more seriously by some people because of my jackpot of categories of privilege. As I’ve alluded to on this blog before, I do have a slight stammer and have written about the challenges that can cause me, but it that has seldom held me back and I don’t think it’s affected how I’m perceived.

In terms of our own profession and our own behaviour, the phrase “be the change you want to see in the world” came to mind. Although… when I went to google to find out who said it, I found an interesting blog post that arguing that Mahatma Gandhi (to whom it is usually attributed) said and meant something rather more different and much more challenging. It’s not simply about living our values, but reflecting on them and changing ourselves where necessary. As a philosopher by training I also thought about Aristotle and his writings on the importance of character and virtues – if you nurture the right character and the right virtues, the chances that you’ll respond in the right way when tested or under pressure will be higher. But how do we do that? Practice, reflection, courage, and learning from the example of others, both positive and negative.

Less esoterically, a second category of issues is around our role in supporting research and researchers, especially around grant getting and grant writing activity. Competition for funding, low success rates, increasingly long and complicated application forms, and pressure from university management form part of research culture. While we rarely have formal power or authority over academic staff, we do have a measure of influence on research culture.So how do we use that influence and our roles for good? What’s our role in preventing research excellence coming at the expense of those who make it happen – which includes us, in our small way. I’ll kick things off with three issues I’ve been thinking about recently…

Firstly, forwarding funding opportunities and supporting applications. When I send funding opportunities onto academics, am I guilty of unconscious bias? Am I committing the availability error and just emailing the first people who come to mind? Does that mean some people with certain characteristics are more likely to receive those emails than others? Does unconscious bias affect how I respond to tentative enquiries about opportunities, or about how I divide my time between proposals?

Honest answer is that I don’t know. But I’ve been influenced by the pushback against ‘manels’ (all male panels at conferences)… and if my funding opportunity distribution list looks like a manel, especially a white manel (because intersectionality is key) I’m taking time to stop and think about who I might have missed. Sometimes structural inequalities or call specifics mean that I got it right first time, but it’s worth a check.

Secondly, what’s our role around workload and work life balance? Could we do more to minimise the burden on researchers at all levels of seniority? Partly this is around efficiency and systems and processes, but partly I think there are cultural issues to consider too. I recently had a discussion with organisers of a research network which ran funding calls about the appropriateness of having a deadline of (something like) 23:59 on Sunday evening. The argument was that academics preferred this because it gave them more time than, say a Friday 4:00pm deadline. But it’s time over a weekend, and arguably this increases the expectation that academics work weekends. When do we set our internal deadlines for various tasks, from REF reviews to internal peer reviews to internal deadlines for draft applications? Do we assume that academic colleagues will be working weekends?

Thirdly, when we advise on the staffing of research projects, are we creating good jobs with fair salaries and training career development opportunities? The issue of ‘good jobs’ on research projects (for academics and managers/administrators) was something that Wellcome brought up at a visit I attended a few weeks ago. I have to admit that under cost pressures on UKRI applications, there’s a strong incentive to try to cut researcher time as much as possible to reduce both employment costs and overheads. Of course, we should never over-cost for any post for any funder, but likely I’ve had a role in creating (potential) jobs that are lower quality than they might otherwise be.

That’s probably enough for now – this was supposed to be a short post. But this is an open invitation to email me with any thoughts you have about challenges we face, or steps we might take, in responding to the Wellcome Trust’s challenge to reimagine how we do research. I’ll be sharing this invitation via the ARMA Research Development email list and via Twitter for greater international reach.