Arc Welding

Arc welding (Photo by Pete Wright on Unsplash)

So today I start a new job. I'm taking on the role of Director of Eastern Arc.

If you've not come across Eastern Arc before, there's more on this regional consortium below. I'm really excited to be taking up this new challenge, and I think there's huge potential in this collaboation of three radical universities, born in a time of optimism and change, which form an arc across the outward facing prow of the UK.

Before I step up to this prow, I wanted a moment to take stock and share eight things I've learnt from my time in supporting academics with their proposals.

Fundermentals Top Ten 2018

A confused smorgasbord of wonder (photo: Max Pixel CC0)

Every year we make a list, check it twice, and work out who's been naughty and nice. Or at least most read. Which amounts to the same thing, right? 

If you're curious about what was tippermost of the toppermost in previous years, here's the list from 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014. Before that, well, you're on your own. 

Here's the lowdown on which articles were most read on Fundermentals this year.

EPSRC's 'Concept Auditions'

'Heeelllooo Swindoooon!'
Photo by James Barr on Unsplash

Last year EPSRC launched a scheme for which applicants had to sign up for a 'concept audition'. What's going on? 

What You Need to Know: How other Countries Assess Research

Two ends of the South African research assessment scale: kak and lekker.
Photo by Greg Bakker on Unsplash

In the UK the REF has become an unavoidable feature of the research landscape. But how do other countries assess research? We look at one example - South Africa - and their very different solution to the same challenge.

The Breathless Pursuit of Excellence

'Excellence of physique': soon to be a REF category
(Image: Wellcome CC BY)

The rhetoric of excellence has become all pervasive in higher education and beyond. We all aspire to excellence, but what does it actually mean? It's become an empty phrase that can mean anything to anyone - and that's its appeal.

What's on the Horizon?

Cue 'Ode to Joy' (photo: Phil Ward)

A proposal for Horizon Europe, the successor to Horizon 2020, is due to be published on 7 June 2018. However there have been plenty of hints, suggestions and straightforward leaks already, and the current plan is the worst kept secret ever. So what do we know so far? Well, unless there are significant changes in the next couple of weeks, here are the seven take home points.

What You Need to Know: the UKRI Strategic Prospectus

You will have read the Boiled down Basics on the Prospectus, but what’s it really about? Here are the seven take home points.

What the public wants: jetpacks, and lots of them
(photo: Samuel Johnson)

Boiled down Basics: the UKRI Strategic Prospectus

This week UKRI published its Strategic Prospectus, which outlines the new agency’s direction of travel. We’ve summarised the 55 page document for those who know it’s important but don’t have time to wade through it. What do you need to know, and what can you ignore?

Boiled down basics: 55 pages into 700 words
(photo: Larry & Teddy Page)

The Price of Prosecco

Kortrijk. Helps salve the horror of Brexit (image: R/DV/RS CC BY)

With more detail of the EU's next Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, crystallising in Brussels, it's time to look back at an article I wrote last year on the need for Britain's academic leaders to lobby MEPs and make the case for the UK's continuing involvement. 

When Theresa May wrote to Donald Tusk informing him of the UK’s intention to leave the EU, I made sure I was out of the country. It felt too dispiriting for a Europhile to witness this act of self-harm. I cycled down from my home in Canterbury and went through the Eurotunnel, emerging into the bright flatlands of Nord Pas de Calais and then cycling on to the Belgian border, stopping at the end of the day for a beer in the beautiful town of Kortrijk.

As the sun went down on the medieval square, I thought about the effect that the UK’s withdrawal would have on our engagement with the EU, and in particular how it would affect our work both in securing research funding and in encouraging the brightest European minds to work in our universities.

Conversion Conversations

Alchemy: like getting a research grant,
only easier (image: Wellcome CC BY)

Last week Alex Hulkes, the Economic and Social Research Council’s strategic lead for the insights team, wrote an interesting report on the council’s conversion rate for grants. This is the percentage of fundable grants that it is able to fund. In November he provided a similar analysis of success rates. Taken together, the two reports suggest that while the quality of applications has increased (the proportion of ‘fundable’ applications has risen from roughly one-quarter to half of the total), the success rate is pretty much where it was five years ago.

To Infinity and Beyond

Horizon Europe: an artist's impression

Those of you with long memories may remember the naming of Horizon 2020. There was a competition to come up with a shortlist of names. This was then put to a public vote. Horizon 2020 won by a mere 270 votes. The runner up was Imagine 2020, which frankly sounds more like a futuristic question than a bold title.

This time round they've eschewed a public vote in favour of a decision by an anonymous group, with an announcement slipped out in a blogpost written by Carlos Moedas. I really can't think *why* the EC may have been nervous about putting things to a public vote.

In Search of the Royal Society Success Rates

Somewhere behind the Palladian grandeur success rates lurk. Possibly (image: Steve Slater, CC BY 2.0).

One of my roles at the University of Kent is secretary to the Research and Innovation Board, which decides on policy and strategy. I’m not a natural bureaucrat, but the paper shuffling, agenda setting and minute writing are compensated for somewhat by the ringside seat I get for the discussions that decide the institutional direction on research and innovation. 

At the most recent meeting, the board looked at success rates for different funders. In readiness for this we had gathered data on how the university compared with funder averages. For the research councils, this was fairly straightforward. Success rates are produced annually for each of the seven councils, via Times Higher. You can see last year’s figures here.

Success rates for the Leverhulme Trust take a little more digging, but the figures can be found in its annual reports. The Wellcome Trust gives more global figures but does provide a comprehensive analysis by gender and age profile, disciplinary distribution and award rate over time. And the British Academy offers all of its figures when its officers give presentations, such as on these slides given to King’s College London.

So it came as a surprise when I could find nothing on the Royal Society’s website about its success rates.

Questioning the Cartel

Hotel Russell: Post-1892 (image: Tony Hisgett CC BY 2.0)

Anyone whose children are applying to go to secondary school will have been handed glossy prospectuses, with staged photos and talk of inspiring teaching and excellent facilities. Ignore all that and head for the back, where there are data on the destination of the leavers, showing how many have gone on to tertiary education and, of those, how many went to Russell Group universities.

The term is casually used as a shorthand for excellence, a sort of kitemark. There is an unspoken understanding that, while all those going on to universities are to be celebrated, only those going to RG universities matter. And I think that’s dangerous for UK higher education as a whole.

Broken Ranks

The only rank that counts (Image: Brett Jordan, CC BY 2.0)

A couple of years ago I wrote in the Funding Insight magazine about the modern obsession with league tables and how, while relatively harmless when used to bulk out a Sunday newspaper, they could be dangerously corrosive when attempting to compare universities globally.

I was heartened, then, to read a report published before Christmas by the Higher Education Policy Institute. This arrived with little fanfare, possibly because the world in general was torn between seeing the election of Donald Trump as the End of Days, and obsessively comparing and buying scented candles for their loved ones.

Trumping Science

Trump (photo: Wikipedia)

For the second time this year, I woke to news that winded me. As I left the house, the rain hammered against my face and coursed down the gutters. It felt that weather was a physical manifestation of the despair that many of us felt.

As the UK had done nearly five months before, the United States appeared to have voted for isolationism after a divisive, bullying, ill-informed campaign. Fear, anger and retreat had triumphed over hope, openness and inclusivity.

For the second time this year, I tried to imagine what this result may do for research and the funding that underpins it. The initial signs aren’t good.

Fundermentals Top Ten of 2017

As we stumble towards the end of 2017, our heads spinning with fake news and fake news about fake news, it's time to look back and think: well, we've got Trump and May, but at least Fundermentals is still doing lookalikes.

Yes, readers, the world may be a bizarre place at the moment but there are certain things you can rely on. And so, as 2017 shudders to a halt, we take a look back at what's tickled your fancy in the year of covfefe.

OA: Challenging the Status Quo

In some ways open access doesn’t do itself any favours. It should be a no-brainer: an idealistic movement to unshackle knowledge from the citadels that imprison it, making it free to all those who want to learn. A people’s movement to challenge power. It’s Robin Hood and the Peasants’ Revolt. It’s David and Goliath. It’s the Levellers and the Chartists. It’s the French, American and Russian Revolutions rolled into one. But without the oppression and the terror.

And yet. And yet it’s a hard movement to really love. Possibly it’s all those acronyms, arcane differentiation and complex licensing options.

‘What do we want?’

‘CC-BY! Or possibly CC-BY-SA. Okay, maybe CC-BY-NA at the very, very least.’

‘When do we want it?’

‘Wait! I haven’t finished. I really think we should push for Green OA, and use the CASRAI principles for the underlying data management. Oh, and using ORCIDs, of course. But that’s a given, right?’

‘Okay. Right. When do we want it?’

‘Now I’m assuming no embargo, yes? And are we going OA from date of publication or acceptance?’

Yes, it would be tough to spray paint that on a banner to wave at the barricades. At times it feels like a revolution for bureaucrats.

The Concentration of Mr Kipling

Alex Hulkes settles down for the winter

There’s something wonderfully autumnal about Alex Hulkes, the Strategic Lead for Insights at the ESRC. He has a comforting fireside tone, somewhere between Mr Kipling and JR Hartley. You can imagine sitting with him as the logs crackle, gazing, entranced, as he strokes his mutton chops, flicks crumbs from his smoking jacket, and talks about his exceedingly good cakes or fly fishing escapades.

His latest report is littered with sublimely arcane phraseology: ‘laudable curiosity,’ ‘one may conclude,’ ‘it is incumbent upon [us],’ ‘let us return briefly to the question posed at the beginning,’ and my favourite: ‘[it] pulls a thread that is weaved discretely into most of the analyses presented thus far.’

Hulkes is a national treasure, and not just for his cakes. He opens up what he himself admits is ‘the black box...of [the] Research Councils’ to reveal ‘the wiring [that] is hidden.’ Like modern cars, most of us are happy that they just work, but Hulkes wants to show you the wonder of the internal combustion engine, and revels in the interlocking genius of the carburettor, distributor, spark plugs and camshaft.

Understanding Athena SWAN

Jess Cockell is Research Manager in the Kent Business School. Before that, she worked on the Athena SWAN initiative, both at the University of Kent (where she supported seven schools to achieve Athena SWAN awards) and as Equality Charters Officer at the Equality Challenge Unit, which runs Athena SWAN. 

The Athena SWAN Awards recognise work undertaken to address gender inequality, in higher education and research institutions.  The Charter also asks applicants to consider how being black and/or minority ethnic (BME) and a member of an under-represented gender (a female engineer or male nurse) affects the experiences and progression of staff and students.

I know that right now - across the country - people in university departments and research institutes (RIs) are frantically writing Athena SWAN applications and cobbling together crafting evidence based action plans for the 30^th November deadline. 

Last month 85 self-assessment teams (SATs) heard that they’d successfully achieved awards,  including the John Innes Centre, which was the first research institute to achieve a gold award.

Now seems a good time to bring up to speed, researchers who’re new to the initiative, or who’re wondering ‘what can I do?’ and ‘why should I bother?’

Figures behind the Figures: Prof Paul Allain

Each term I feature a different Kent award winner in the Research Services newsletter, looking at their research and discussing their career path and funding track record. Earlier in the year I featured Prof John Batchelor. Dr This time the spotlight falls on Prof Paul Allain in the School of Arts.  

Few can say that they cut their research teeth by slipping under the Berlin Wall in the 1980s to join a Polish theatre group travelling to the provinces to perform. But Paul Allain, Professor of Theatre and Performance, did just that.

He had been a jobbing actor in London, but had signed up to do a PhD at Goldsmiths to explore the physical performance styles for which Polish theatre was known at the time. He subsequently worked as a movement director, using knowledge gained from his training with actors such as Jude Law and Simon Russell Beale.