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 1 year ago
Equal opportunities
Ask universities to confirm whether they support staff with caring responsibilities, e.g. by offering compressed time, or teaching contact hours within the Athena Swan core hours.
over 1 year ago
Extend journal deadlines for those with caring responsibilities
Journals keep researcher profiles for people who submit and who review articles. This should include a new field to flag those who work part-time and / or have caring responsibilities. Deadlines should be extended for those that meet these criteria. Further, journals should measure their time-to-publication statistics over standard working days, not including weekends or major holidays. Deadlines should be measured in working days, not calendar days. At present, it is assumed that we can work at all hours to meet their deadlines, for example a 10 day deadline reduces to 6 days when weekends are removed and to 3 days if you were to work at 50% FTE. Finally, auto reminder bots should be turned off on non-working days.
almost 2 years ago
More flexible personal development - mixing your research with policy/industry engagement and reimagining how researchers are evaluated
More and more we rely on evidence-informed policies to determine impactful and positive change in society as well as responsible innovation in industry. Academics are particularly well suitable to contribute towards this goal and should be able to have the opportunity to more easily engage with policy/industry environments. I argue that as entrepreneurship is for industry we need to promote "advocacy/lobbying" for policy. My objective proposal is that we create a new type of fellowship/personal development scheme that allows researchers to develop their main research activities for 4days a week in parallel with 1 day where they can explore industry policy engagement. Obviously, we should also reimagine how researchers are evaluated and reward them based on the type of researcher they are: communicator, entrepreneur, activist (on top of the science they already do). #UCL
over 1 year ago
Research is about more than researchers - value, recognition and clear career pathways for technicians is critical to good research
Technicians are often overlooked, are unable to manage research projects, be named on grants or progress in their careers, yet are fundamental to research labs. This should be supported by funders and institutions.
over 1 year ago
Boost confidence in reporting
Various ways to do this: 1. Include in the process for reporting unacceptable behaviour the option to report directly to the Funder. 2. Funders could require PIs who have funded studentships with them to sign up to a charter of expected behaviour. If PIs are found to behave unacceptably, the funding is revoked from the PI and the student can take it somewhere else. 3. More monitoring of how PhD programmes are directed within the institution. 4. Before a problem arises, students need a relationship (mentor?) with someone (other than their PI). Should be a senior person to help guide them. Ideally someone with no links to the dept. 5. Publish (anonymised) evidence that previous incidents of reporting unacceptable behaviour have been taken seriously and handled well. 6. Professional body (or student union?) to investigate complaints
