Six Tips on Working from Home - and one of them is actually good

Wigs: a necessity
(Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash)

Like Alice in Wonderland, it feels as if, in the past two weeks, we’ve tumbled into a new world where none of the old rules apply. Gone is the commute, the weekend shopping, and the easy access to toilet rolls. Gone are the crowds, the sport, and the traffic jams. So it’s not all bad.

It’s bewildering, and nowhere more so than in the working environment. Most of us are working from home now, but what does that mean, and how can we do it effectively? Newspapers, blogs and broadcasters have all rushed to offer advice. Here, we summarise the common hints and tips that have emerged.

The Highs of the Hybrid: Bridging the Researcher-Administrator Divide

Last week I emailed all staff about a change to the names of the teams in Research Services. The Funding Team was being rebadged the Research Development Team. Their role didn’t change, but it better reflected what they did, and fitted with what most other universities called those who worked at a very early stage with academics in developing proposals.

To be honest I felt a little guilty about the email. It was one of those messages that, if I was the recipient, I would have deleted immediately or perhaps rolled my eyes and wondered if they didn’t have anything better to do in the Registry.

I think that’s probably what happened with 99.9% of the staff. However, it was the 0.1% who wrote back. ‘How many of the Research Development Team are active researchers?’ asked the academic.

It was an odd question, but I could read between the lines and recognise the disgust with which it was delivered. The point was this: what right did those who don’t do research have to talk to those who do about ‘developing research’?

The Danger of Management by Metrics

The Metric-Measured Man

There was depressing news from Kings earlier this month. The University plans to cut 120 academic posts in the Schools of Medicine and Biomedicine (from a total of 777)  in order to fund new building. Chillingly, the redundancies will be decided by two metrics: research income and teaching hours.

Using metrics is somewhat fraught at the best of times, but is positively toxic when jobs depend on it. The idea of having stated targets is something that all universities have toyed with and many have implemented. There are clear examples where these targets have had a real effect, focussing minds and ratcheting up activity. But at what cost? Anecdotally the morale in these metric-driven universities makes Airstrip One look positively Arcadian.

Eastern ARC Research Fellows

Last week Mel Rhose and Dean D'Souza wrote in The Guardian about the lack of entry level academic jobs. 'Securing employment is becoming increasingly difficult', wrote D'Souza. 'I do a quick search for advertised jobs. Hmm… these are few and far between. "What if there are no jobs out there for you?" a little voice in my head asks. "Perhaps you should search for a teaching job?" I pause to ponder the suggestion.'

Well, ponder no longer, Dean, for the mighty Eastern ARC is at hand with nine newly minted research fellowships which should, after five years, lead to permanent academic positions.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if Eastern ARC is new to you. To be honest, it's new to all of us. It was established in September 2013 by the Universities of East Anglia, Essex and Kent ‘to build on the universities' existing research and partnership activities to become a significant new force in research, and research training.’

Such geographic clustering has happened elsewhere. GW4 brought together Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter; and M5 and N8 have grouped universities in the Midlands and the North. Such development are perhaps not surprising, after the vacuum left by the implosion of the 1994 Group. I mulled over this in a previous post.

Initially, Eastern ARC will focus on three areas of strength across the universities:

• Digital Humanities;
• Quantitative Social Sciences; 
• Synthetic Biology.

The nine Eastern ARC Research Fellows (one in each area in each university) will develop world leading research within and between the universities. They will be appointed from 1 August 2014 at Grade 7 (£32,590-36,661), initially for a period of five years during which time s/he will be supported to gain his/her own external funding.

Not only will they be a catalyst for interdisciplinary work, but they will also play an important part in recruiting and supervising the 18 EARC students who will be recruited in 2015-16.

If successful, the Fellow will be offered a permanent lectureship after five years. The Fellow will act as the focus and catalyst for interdisciplinary research within Kent and will facilitate interaction with the other Eastern ARC partners.

Details of the positions are available on Kent's website as follows:

• Digital Humanities
• Quantitative Social Sciences
• Synthetic Biology

If you're interested in any of the positions, do drop me a line, and I'll put you in touch with the best person to answer your questions. Alternatively, you would be very welcome to come and visit Kent to look at the University, meet people, and see what potential the position offers.

A Professor Writes

Professor (emeritus) Arbuthnott: 'Modern' man.

Dear Sir

I was pleased to read of Alan Bance's disgust at Wendy Piatt's use of the word 'modern' to describe Post-92 universities (letters, 22 August 2013).

The REF and Edited Books

There was an interesting piece by Prof Andy Miah on the Guardian Higher Education Network blog last week, which looked at what academics should be doing at this late stage to bolster their outputs for the REF.

Prof Miah started by recognising two points: firstly, time is short, so there's a limit to what you can still publish; and secondly, there is wide variance between disciplines as to what is regarded as prestigious or good. Journal articles are regarded much more favourably in the STEM subjects, for instance, than they are in the Humanities, where there is more of a tradition of monographs.

The focus of his piece, however, was edited books, which he described as 'the biggest loser' in RAE2008, when very few were submitted. This was because editing does not equate to research, but also because there was some ambiguity over the peer review of book chapters, and the difficulty in getting book chapters cited. But these volumes are not without worth: they offer a useful way for early career researchers (ECRs) to be published, as the process is often more flexible and supportive.

Will this mean, therefore, that there is a certain amount of discrimination against ECRs in REF2014? On balance I think not: whilst this is the implication of Miah's argument, most ECRs worth their salt will have been able to publish up to 3 outputs within the time, without having to factor in a book chapter. From the preparatory REF meetings I've been part of it's certainly not been to big an issue. However, it is worth highlighting it: the more entrenched these assessment processes become, the more they will affect behaviour, and the more likely that a time will come when edited volumes are a thing of the past.

That's fine if that's what everyone wants, but we shouldn't stumble into it blindly. If the academic community and the publishing industry see the worth of edited books then they need to make sure that some allowance is made for them in the REF. Otherwise academics will continue to prioritise journals and monographs, and edited books will wither on the vine.

Guardian Live Chat: Research Funding

I took part in the Guardian’s Live Chat discussion on Friday. It was focussed on ‘Securing Research Funding’, and brought together an impressively diverse panel, including Anne Dixon (MRC), Tennie Videler (Vitae), Nathaniel Golden (ARMA), Jo o’Leary (BBSRC), and Tseen Khoo (RMIT University, Australia), as well as my blogging colleagues David Young (Lincoln) and Adam Golberg (Nottingham).

It was an interesting, but slightly unnerving, experience. Partly this was down to the technology. It took the form of a comments thread, which you needed to update regularly: by the time you’d written and posted a response to one comment, the board had updated with a number of subsequent comments, and the thread was lost.

However, it was also down to the nature of research funding: there are so many issues bubbling up at the moment that the discussion could have been twice as long and still only scratched the surface. Thus, it was slightly superficial and erratic, but interesting none the less.

It kicked off with a discussion of what makes a bad application. Plenty of ideas here, including: lack of novelty; an ill-defined hypothesis; unsuitable methodology; confused design; vague management; insufficient resources and inadequate expertise. The panel emphasised the need to stick to the funder’s guidance, and write a proposal that made clear what the research question was, why it was important, how it was going to be answered, and how the findings were going to be disseminated. Above all, applicants should take time to properly plan and draft their proposal, and try to communicate their enthusiasm for the project.

The moderator, Eliza Anyangwe, then asked what the main issues in research funding were at the moment. The panel licked its lips and piled in. In a wide ranging discussion several issues came to the fore, including: coping with cuts and the ‘Grand Challenges’ at the Research Councils; impact; the removal of many small grant schemes; the push for interdisciplinary projects and 'concentration' of funding; and demand management.

It was interesting to hear that many of the issues in the UK were shared by colleagues in Canada and Australia, and vice versa. Jo van Every from Canada spoke ‘of more strings [being] attached to the money', and ‘of increased pressures on universities to bring in more external funding’, which resulted in ‘competition for the funds available [being] much stiffer and success rates...dropping.’ Similarly, in Australia, Tseen Khoo was dealing with the ERA, which is their equivalent of the REF.

There was also some discussion of provision for early career researchers and postdocs, and the struggle to get into academia, let alone getting on the funding ladder. The panellists generally agreed that ECRs needed to remain mobile – as much as possible – and keep their options open, although they sympathised with those for whom this wasn’t an option.

So what do researchers need in order to succeed in this increasingly difficult environment? Well, a thick skin and a willingness to persevere are important, but academics also need to network and collaborate, and be open to different opportunities.

However, Jo van Every noted that ‘your goal is NOT to secure research funding. Your goal is to do go great work. Funding will help you do ever more great work. Or even greater work.’ Adam Golberg concurred: ‘applying for funding isn't always the right decision for any given individual at any given point in time, and contrary to what some university managers seem to believe (no-one here, I'm sure) it's just [not?] possible for all academics to produce outstanding fundable research ideas to order on a regular basis.’

David Young finished by raising two interesting points: firstly, the discussion had demonstrated that such a forum was useful, and suggested that ARMA consider providing a space for such issues to be shared. Secondly, and more provocatively, he questioned the ‘business-as-usual model’ which has resulted in the difficulties identified during the discussion. It is ‘making life increasingly precarious for early career researchers as well as arguably driving research towards serving the needs of industry first and foremost. Should we just accept this? Is there are mechanism or a space for us to resist?’

That’s fighting talk, but people questioned the will – or the ability to act collectively – that would enable this to happen.

The Guardian will summarise the key points of the Chat in due course, but do browse the comments which are still available here.

'There Is No Definition of the Ideal University'

Interesting counterblast in the Guardian last week to the puffing and posing that goes with the announcement of the World University Rankings.
'Imagine a newspaper decided to create a table ranking the world's cities,' suggests Malcolm Grant of UCL. 'It would be a nonsensical exercise.' There's no such thing as an ideal university, he says, and trying to compare a university in one country with that in another is ridiculous. Even within countries, universities vary massively. For example, the research income for a science or medical university are going to be much greater than for one focused on the humanities or social sciences, but that doesn't mean that the research of one is 'better' than that of the other. Even using citations is dangerous: Grant points out the example of one of the recent sets of rankings that concluded that Egypt's Alexandria University trumped both Stanford and Harvard for their influential research measured by impact.
'Global rankings have afforded annual light entertainment, but they are now seriously overreaching themselves,' he concludes. 'They do a disservice if they influence student choice, or come to be treated as a performance measure by the leaders of hugely diverse institutions.'

Nobel Prize Winner Attacks 'Directed Research'

Britain's latest Nobel prize winner has attacked government plans to divert research funding from basic science into projects that are expected to have a quick financial pay-off. Quoted in the Guardian, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a Cambridge Chemistry professor, said that the focus on trying to get very quick pay-offs was 'a huge mistake.' He went on: 'basic science has paid off far more than any directed research. If you don't invest properly in fundamental science, then you won't have the foundations to develop the technologies and applications of tomorrow. Ten years down the line, your technology will be based on obsolete foundations.'