Well, as ever, you can trust Fundermentals to do the wrong thing. Here, with a reminder of every twist and turn of the Year that Brexit Never Was, is the top ten most popular articles on the site this year.
Showing posts with label adam golberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adam golberg. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 December 2019
Fundermentals Top 10 2019
Well, as ever, you can trust Fundermentals to do the wrong thing. Here, with a reminder of every twist and turn of the Year that Brexit Never Was, is the top ten most popular articles on the site this year.
Tuesday, 18 June 2019
Blog Roll
 |
| Passion - or frustration - led us here. Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash |
I was inspired by the University of Lincoln’s blog, which is a great example of how to use an online platform effectively to communicate with the wider academic community.
Since then I’ve discovered a whole host of wonderful online resources that help me in my work but, just as importantly, make me realise I’m not alone.
Thursday, 13 June 2013
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.
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.
_________________
 |
| Spoiler: Neil Young doesn't feature in this article. At all. |
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.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
ARMA Getting out of Here
In addition I've teamed up with Jacqueline Aldridge to do a poster around the 'Grants Factory' concept. I've used my moribund cartooning skills to try and reinvigorate the lost art of the conference poster. Come along and see the real thing in all its g(l)ory.
If you tweet, the hashtag for the Conference is #arma2012, so you can join in virtually if you can't make it in person.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Leverhulme Bankrolls the BA Small Grants Scheme
Great news from the Mayfair Gentlemen's Club that is the BA HQ. As you will remember, the BA scrapped, and then reinstated, their Small Grants scheme. However, there was still some uncertainty hanging over the scheme: when I spoke to them at the time they said that they would make 'strong representations and arguments' to BIS to continue it. Now Leverhulme has come riding over the horizon with a fistful of dollars. They are going to pump £1.5m into the scheme over the next three years. Adam Golberg at Nottingham has done more analysis of what this will mean in practice, and he reckons that it will be an extra 67 or so funded projects.
It remains to be seen whether the scheme will continue indefinitely, and what the success rate will be when the scheme reopens in the open. But in the meantime let's just thank Leverhulme for recognising the worth of small scale funding as an investment in the future.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
MRC 'Neither Up Nor Down' Shock
Oh you couldn't make it up. Paul 'Shriek' Jump made it a hattrick in last week's Times Higher by bemoaning the fact that the MRC success rate had - wait for it - stayed the same. To recap:
- On 1 September Jump suggested that the fall in its success rate reflected badly on the ESRC...
- whereas on 8 September Jump suggested that the rise in its success rate reflected badly on the EPSRC;
Spookily, in a comment on this blog Adam Golberg had foreseen this scenario almost exactly: 'Next week in the Times Higher: The XRC Research Council announces unchanged success rates. Does this stagnation spell the beginning of the end for the XRC?'
Does he know something we don't? Does he have access to lines of communication which are - frankly - supernatural? Is he, in fact, Robert Johnson?
We should be told.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
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 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.
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.
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.
Friday, 2 September 2011
Vive la Révolution! Oh, on Second Thoughts...
An interesting piece in this week's Times Higher had Paul Jump baying for the ESRC's blood as the Council announced its plunging success rates. The overall success rate fell to 16 per cent, 'a decline of one percentage point' screeched Jump, a modern day Tricoteuse, calling on Robert Dingwall to be his Robspierre and release the blade on the ESRC. Dingwall duly obliged. 'It may be time to put the ESRC out of its misery,' he intoned, sadly, suggesting that it might be just as well to distribute the money via QR funding.Dingwall's view echoes that of Baroness Greenfield, also quoted by Jump in the THE in May. 'Her "very heretical" suggestion...is to abolish the research councils and research excellence framework and divide the research budget, along with the "vast sums saved from the bureaucracy", equally among researchers.'
Is there some kind of agenda amongst the sans-culottes of the Times Higher? Part of me is quite attracted by these radical suggestions. There is a sense in the community that going for Research Council funding is now little better than a lottery. And perhaps Baroness Greenfield has a point: she suggests that we divvy the Research Council budget (c£2.5bn) amongst all those who submitted to the RAE. This, she calculates, would result in something like £82-£100k each per year. It would certainly save us all a lot of bother.
But hold on. A more sceptical - and balanced - view comes from Adam Golberg at Nottingham. He, generously, puts a lot of the rhetoric in the article down to old fashioned journalese. 'It certainly got my attention,' he wryly notes. We still need the Research Councils, he suggests: the benefit of the current, dual support system is that whilst the Russell Group fat cats gets the lion's share of research funding, the project funding offered by the Research Councils allow the 'pockets of excellence' to still get funding for quality projects, wherever they're found. In addition, he notes the difference between a success rate based on all applications, and one based on viable applications. Apparently some 43% of ESRC applications never even made it to panel, and were withdrawn by the office or shot down by assessors. So if the denominator is effectively halved, it makes a much more healthy success rate.
So put down the pitchforks and Phrygian caps, and pause for thought. Now, more than ever, we need to make sure that all have access to Research Council funding, and that there is a champion for the social sciences. The system might not be perfect, but it's better than the alternatives. Though I have to admit, 'vive le statu quo' doesn't have quite the same ring...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)