SSC becomes SBS

SBS: I love the smell of paperclips
in the morning...smells like...victory

No one could ever accuse the erstwhile SSC of being laggards. Not only have they processed 3,689 applications on behalf of the Research Councils in the three months up to March this year, and prepared 1,382 offers, committing the Exchequer to some £756m but, more importantly, they have given serious and sustained consideration to their name.

Yes, we all knew that SSC was a non starter. I mean what's the good in that? Doesn't sound very exciting does it? It'll never fly.

What they needed was something snappier. Something that smacked of danger and adventure. I mean, what's more dangerous and adventurous than  processing applications and authorising payments? Nothing. That's what.

So we were very pleased that they rightly chose to rename themselves Shared Business Services which, I think you'll agree, is much more descriptive than the Shared Services Centre. Not only does this 'reflect broadening services and ownership', but more importantly it shares the acronym of the Special Boat Service.

Synchronise watches! Don the black facepainty stuff! Use those assertive hand gestures! Boom! Bang!

'Charlie Sierra Oscar One! We are in position and ready to process this AHRC Research Networking Scheme application. I repeat, we are in position and ready to process!'
'Incoming payment! Incoming payment!' Whizz! Boom!
'Ah! Prof Smith has bought it...and he's not completed the necessary claim form!' Whooosh...Bang!

Keep your eyes posted for further exciting developments in the area. There's rumours that the ESRC is going to become 'Sense and Society', or SAS, to better 'reflect broadening services and ownership' (natch). Similarly the Leverhulme Trust will be dropping all that Edwardian soap magnet nonsense and renaming itself '3 Commando', whilst AHRC, not to be outdone, is going for the 'Primary Portal for Arts Research Anywhere', or 1 PARA.

A Decade of Development

Research Fortnight asked me to write an article to coincide with the 2013 ARMA Conference. I've reproduced it below (thanks to John Whitfield for this), but you can see the original on their website, here.

_________________

Spoiler: Neil Young doesn't feature
in this article. At all. 

Ten years ago, Iraq had just been invaded. Tony Blair was still in office. The iPhone hadn’t been invented. John Peel was still alive.

Ten years ago, I started working as a research funding officer at the University of Kent in Canterbury. University research offices up to then had essentially been branches of finance: they acted as accountants, costing applications and managing awards. Anything else—an occasional visit from a funder, a termly newsletter—was an add-on.

The introduction of a research development service was intended to provide more proactive support to researchers at the university. We could do whatever we thought necessary to help staff improve the quality and quantity of applications. Here was a service that aimed to change the role of university administrators: to have them stand beside academics, take them by the hand and lead them through the funding maze.

In the decade since, research development has become embedded in higher education, transforming the relationship between academics and administrators. It is now unthinkable that a research-intensive university would not have a research development team, says Adam Golberg, a research manager at Nottingham University Business School. “An institution where researchers have no access to specialist information about funders, and no-one sending them possible leads, is not one that is serious about research,” he says.

Each university has defined the job in its own particular way. Some focus on supporting applications, others take a more strategic view; some have a dedicated research development officer, whereas others combine the role with costing and contract duties. David Young, research funding manager at Northumbria University, sees funding development as falling into two categories: direct and indirect. “Direct support,” he says, “is about one-to-one or group-based co-writing support for particular grant applications. Indirect support covers the whole framework or environment surrounding research bidding activity—such as mentoring schemes, training programmes and mock panels.”

Development is still a relatively small part of research support. Jon Hunt, deputy director and head of the Research Development and Collaborations team at the University of Bath, estimates that such roles account for about 10 per cent of the team’s service. However, though the team gets involved in only a fifth of grant proposals, they “have supported nearly 40 per cent of the value of this year’s awards—around £20 million”, he says.

Even so, it’s difficult to attribute a successful application to a development office’s input. This makes practitioners wary of taking the credit. “It is hard to attribute increases in success rates to any one element,” says Linsey Dickson, research funding and liaison manager at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

For Justine Daniels, head of research development at the University of Sheffield, proactive engagement with funders is vital. They discuss schemes and applications and listen to feedback “that principal investigators can’t always hear”. As a result, Sheffield’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council applications have become more in tune with the council’s priorities, success rates have improved, and 20 Sheffield researchers hold fellowships from the European Research Council, up from four in 2010.

Daniels thinks that research development will increasingly become linked with post-award activity. As funders aspire to become sponsors, rather than distant bodies distributing funds, universities need to build on a relationship that begins before an award, and project managers will need to interact more closely with funders. Hunt agrees: his team has both research development managers and a research project management service that works on 14 projects worth around £17m.

Research development is a child of these straitened times, its bullish rise shadowed by the bearish withering of the economy. Budgets are tighter, and schemes have been axed or restricted by demand management. In this climate, research development has not led to a great leap forward, but it has prevented a slow slip backward.

At Kent, I believe the funding team has fostered a more positive research environment, from supporting individuals to developing an internal peer-review system. This has led to some notable wins, but more importantly has kept research—and research funding—at the top of the university’s agenda when the shutters outside have been banging in the cold wind of austerity.

#ARMA2013: A Tale of Two Cities

Nottingham. Or is it Las Vegas?

As many of our regular readers will know, ARMA is the Association of Research Managers and Administrators. Except when it's the Association of Residential Managing Agents. Or the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. Or the Armenian Medical Assocation. Or the Assocation of Records Managers and Administrators.

Once a year, the 'proper' ARMA has a conference, and this year decided on the hashtag #ARMA2013 to use on Twitter. Only problem was, those interlopers, the so-called 'ARMA', decided to use #ARMA2013 too. And to heap confusion on confusion, they've only gone and held it in a similar sort of city to the Real ARMA!

Imagine the potential chaos! Fortunately, help is at hand. Fundermentals has provided this helpful cut out and keep guide for confused conference delegates, unsure whether they have arrived in the right city for their profession.

Nottingham and Las Vegas

So tell me, how do I know if I'm in the right city? Can you see a replica of a pyramid?
No. Statue of Liberty? Eiffel Tower?
No, no. And do you have your coat on?
Yes. Safe to say you're in Nottingham.
Ah. Jolly good. So what else do I need to know? Well, when Las Vegas was founded in 1905 Nottingham was approximately 1300 years old.
What! It had all that time but didn't make even a small replica pyramid? Yes, I know. Go figure.
So what were they doing? Well, hiding in caves, initially. Then making lace. Then bicycles.
Busy people. Probably trying to keep warm. Perhaps.
Anything else I should know? Nottingham's famous for Robin Hood.
Ah! The Sheriff of Nottingham! I knew I'd heard the name somewhere. Yes.
Surprised Las Vegas hasn't created a Sherwood Forest Casino. It's only a matter of time.
So Nottingham's got the history. What's Las Vegas got? Elvis.
Of course! But surely Nottingham's had some of the greats? Well Swing Out Sister did come from Nottingham.
Hmm. Is it too late to join the other ARMA?

Do say: 'Ah! They've reintroduced trams! How wonderfully sustainable!'
Don't say: 'The good thing about trams is they're so silent you can't hear them com-'

Brenda Blethyn to Be New Chief of BBSRC

News has come through on the wires that the BBSRC has appointed a new Chief Executive. Imagine our surprise, at Fundermental Towers, that they decided on our old friend Brenda Blethyn. The national treasure will forever be in our hearts. However, we did question her knowledge of biotechnology and biological sciences.  The more paranoid amongst the Faculty are saying that her staring role in Secrets and Lies gave her insight into the development of funding policy. I, for one, couldn't possibly comment. Suffice to say that we were pleased that this Ramsgate girl has risen to the top in Death Star House, and wish her every success.

Blethyn

Hunter

Balancing the Conflicting Demands of Academia

The final Early Career Research Network meeting of the year focused on how to balance the conflicting demands of academia. The fact that the room was full suggested that this was something that was close to the heart of many starting out. However, the speakers, Profs Gordon Lynch and Sarah Spurgeon, made it clear that the issue doesn't disappear with seniority; like parenthood the challenges and demands change, but they never go away.

In the first part of the session, participants talked together in small groups about the main tensions in juggling different parts of their jobs. When these were fed back it was clear that there were a number of common themes: balancing immediate and pressing deadlines with long term research work; frustrations with unnecessary and inefficient administration; unrealistic demands of some students; knowing your limits and knowing when (and how) to say 'no'.

'There's no simple algorithm for dealing with these,' confessed Sarah, and the rest of the session was an opportunity to share strategies for coping. Not all of these would work for everybody, but achieving a successful balance is about working out which of them would work for you.

• Try to work out which pressures are individual, and which are the result of the structure or institution within which you work. Having recognised this distinction, consider what can be done about them. You will have more control over the individual pressures (see the next point), but sometimes you can facilitate collective change if enough people suffer from the same pressures and are able and willing to work differently.
• Work out which of your tasks are essential and which desirable, and concentrate on the first.
• Get a sense of perspective: how much work do others have? If they have less, are their tasks more consuming? If everyone's pressured, is there any possibility of working more intelligently, or sharing workloads? (see the first point).
• Try to double up tasks, especially between research and teaching. For example, if your research project requires a literature review and you have some control over your teaching programme, try and include an element  that would require you to undertake a literature review to inform your teaching.
• Create email-free periods of work time. Modern technology has made periods of intense concentration increasingly difficult to find. By carving out a period each week which colleagues and students know as a period when you won't respond to emails, you can regain time for proper thought.
• Look for external funding to buy out your time to do things that you want to do. 
• Think more strategically about managing your time. For instance, if you want to keep weekends sacrosanct, you might have to sacrifice weekday evenings to keep on top of work.
• Have a broad career strategy, which is important to you but is informed by local, national, and international contexts.There will be times when it might make sense to go part time. Accept them, and recognise them as temporary and transitory.
• Have a plan which has many strands. Don't rely on a single strand of research, which might depend on a single grant, but consider what other options, what other interests you have, and be prepared to change between them as your life changes.
• Set realistic goals over different time scales and review them regularly.
• Get help from the right people. Having supportive mentors and colleagues is invaluable.

Sarah concluded by saying that ‘most importantly, it is difficult to get this right and, in my view, however glittering the careers of others may appear to us, I firmly believe nobody achieves the perfect balance all the time.’

Recycling your Proposal

Paper, glass, metal...but where's the slot for proposals?

Given the shrinking success rates, it makes sense to consider whether - and where - you should recycle your funding proposal. At the penultimate Grants Factory event yesterday Prof Ray Laurence and Prof Peter Taylor-Gooby encouraged people to consider doing this, but sounded a note of caution.

• Most applicants would consider recycling an application because they are passionate about the project and want to get it funded. However, their passion might blind them to its shortcomings. Make sure you take on board the feedback offered with the rejection. A dose of tough love will make your new application stronger. 
• Similarly, a rejection might be a good opportunity to step back from your project and really think about why you're doing it. Are you passionate about the project, or have you just got on the 'funding treadmill', believing you should be submitting funding bids without really thinking whether it's what you want. If you're just doing it through a sense of obligation it's actually 'hugely depressing' when you get the funding.
• If you are serious about getting funding, and are willing to take on board feedback, be alert to the different guidelines between the funders. It's easy to assume they're all much of a muchness, but there are key differences, and funders get angry with 'lazy' resubmissions from elsewhere.
• Think imaginatively. In many disciplines there are a limited number of funders to whom you can submit essentially the same project. You might have to think about carving up the project into smaller sub-projects, or seek funding for a pilot to demonstrate potential which will, in the long term, strengthen your hand. Sit down and consider your project, dividing it up into activities for which funding is essential, and those for which it is desirable. Alternatively, if your application was for a visiting fellow, say, you could think about expanding the scope of the project to a network, which would increase the possible sources of funding, and potential value of exchanges.
• Finally, consider collaboration. Not only will this change the nature of your project, and potentially strengthen it, but it may also open up alternative avenues - for example if your collaborators are in different countries. 

The final session this year is an ECR Network meeting, looking at 'balancing the conflicting demands of academia'. Get in touch if you want to come along.

ECR Network: Balancing the Conflicting Demands of Academia

The final Early Career Researcher Network event of the year will take place next Wednesday, 5 June between 12-2pm, and will focus on how to balance the conflicting demands of academia.

Starting off in academia can be difficult. Not only are you trying to establish your research career, but you are having to cope with the new demands of teaching and supervision, as well as understanding what is required of you as a ‘good citizen’ within your department. Outside of work you may have conflicting demands from family and home.

This session will be led by Prof Sarah Spurgeon (EDA) and Prof Gordon Lynch (SECL), both of whom have had to juggle conflicting demands within their own lives. It will be an opportunity to hear from them, but also to hear from other ECRs across the University, to share your experience, and to offer help and advice to each other.

Lunch will be provided. The event is free and open to all, but please let me know if you intend to come along so that I can arrange catering.