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 Ideas4 months ago
Shift the group/department balance
A shift from thinking in terms of invidual PI-lead group to a more Department centre would offer lots of advantages, not only from the economic point of view. This way, early researchers (mainly, post-docs, who might suffer more from fixed term, uncertain jobs), would have better stability prospects, as they would effectively be employed by the Department rather than the individual PIs. This would offer more concrete possibilities of job stability, with obvious advantages in terms of general and mental wellbeing, as well as productivity and knowledge transfer and maintenace in the Institution.
7 months ago
Stop contributing to casualisation
Greatly increase the amount of funding that works like the University Award in that it researchers to gain permanent positions at academic organisations.
6 months ago
Having for each task an amount of time calculated with value £ per hour (e.g. what happens for teaching contracts for postgrad students)
Long hours at work culture.
7 months ago
Focus on usable outputs rather than papers
Place more focus on the usability of research outputs, like methods, tools and opensource data, when awarding funding and celebrating success. Place a greater emphasis on reproducibility, teamwork and collaboration rather than 'individual prestige'.
4 months ago
Encourage PhD students to participate in development training not directly related to their academic career.
I think being young, most PhD students are eager to please their supervisors and focus solely on their PhD projects without spending enough time developing skills useful for alternative career paths. According to Vitae, only 3.5% of PhD graduates end up as permanent research staff within UK universities and only 0.45% become professors. Therefore, I believe that there should be a strong emphasis on developing skills to better prepare PhD graduates for careers outside of academia. Perhaps universities should make sure PhD students take an allocated number of days to attend courses on topics like scientific communication – e.g. practising communicating their research projects in lay terms to the general public, management skills, teaching ability, interpersonal skills – e.g. being involved in charity fundraising activities or university committees, and CV writing for outside of academia.
