Research culture: let's reimagine how we work together
We want to hear your solutions to improve research culture. As a funder we need to play our part, and your role is essential. Achieving a successful research culture needs collective responsibility and change at all levels. Your ideas will help us to craft a set of ambitious goals for creating a better culture.
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Thousands of researchers have taken part in the largest ever survey into experiences of research culture. Now we want to hear your solutions to some of the concerns that have been raised. Your ideas will help us craft a set of ambitious goals for creating a better culture.
Check out the ideas that have already been suggested below, comment and vote for the ones you think could make a difference. Or you can add your own idea following this format (you'll need to create an account to vote and add responses).
Add your idea:
Title of your idea/solution
Enter a short description (optional):
1) A brief description - who can make the change and how?
2) Examples of what you could do to support this change.
3) Stick to under 250 words.
4) If you want, you can tag your institution!
Help us make sure everyone feels safe and free to engage in discussions. Don't be rude, hateful or insulting--we will not tolerate this. You can respectfully challenge ideas but never attack the person. Check out our forum etiquette and moderation rules.
Find out more about Wellcome's campaign to reimagine research.
View All Ideasover 2 years ago
Fund more core facilities within universities to remove inequality, increase reproducibility and create long term job opportunities
Wellcome and many other funding bodies support many successful research institutes. I believe at the core of the success of research institutes lies their ability to provide researchers with core facilities such as media kitchens, microscopy, mass spectrometry, sequencing etc. These facilities provide high quality resources, reagents and top level expertise that can speed up research and enable higher reproducibility in research outcomes. Furthermore, core facilities provide longer employment opportunities for highly trained staff. I believe that establishing or strengthening core facilities at the universities would help reduce the inequality in access to research resources between institutions and enable more laboratories to continue doing research with less direct funding and at reduced sizes. The cost of the core facilities could be shared between funding organisations depending on the overall funding level from each funding body at a given organisation.
over 2 years ago
Funders responsible for holding PIs to account for behaviour
While funding comes from outside bodies to specific researchers, universities have little incentive to effectively deal with complaints against bullying supervisors as they would lose the research funding. If complaints were directed to the funding body, a promise could be made to reallocate money to another researcher to be based at the same institution in the event of behaviour serious enough to warrant withdrawal of funds. The University would no longer have a financial incentive not to dismiss or discipline group leaders who are breaking codes of conduct.
over 2 years ago
Automate IT systems to default to having emails not be send / received outside working hours, with the option to ‘overrule’ by the student
Long hours at work culture.
over 2 years ago
Time... to do research, or be an academic
Lack of time creates toxic culture, and loss of goodwill (i.e. discretionary effort). We need institutions to create workload models that accurately reflect time, and provide time for all aspects of academic role (teaching, research and (less) administration). This will help to make University work transparent, and hold Universities accountable.
over 2 years ago
Impose fines on organisations that do not have a ‘reducing long-hours culture’ action plan, and who are working towards achieving that.
Long hours at work culture.
