Reflecting on the ongoing professionalisation of academic communication and increased opportunities for researchers to engage, Andy Tattersall argues researchers and research funders should be mindful of the communication requirements of their projects…
Category: Research funding
Two minds better than one – Does research funding and support for collaboration lead to more innovative research?
A central tenet of research policy is that funding and the ability to form research collaborations produces better research. However, whilst this may hold true for incremental research building on existing knowledge, does it also support novel research…
Research funders can tackle research waste – Lessons from COVID-19 research
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic promoted faster and more open research practices, it also revealed ongoing issues of research waste, and the widespread duplication of research efforts. Till Bruckner provides evidence for how research waste continues to im…
The Human Rights Case for Open Science
You’re writing a grant application, and you want to make a strong case for open science! You’ve seen colleagues use language from human rights treaties to support their arguments for open work in the past: but what does that actually mean? Does interna…
Simplifying Responsible Research and Innovation – A tool building in societal readiness into research
Researchers and research funders are increasingly seeking to ensure their work is aligned to societal needs and to prevent it from having foreseeable negative impacts, particularly in fast moving and ethically sensitive fields. In this post, Stefan de …
Do research priorities for mental health actually reflect the goal of fostering well-being?
Mental health research is a complex and inherently social field of research that cuts across traditional academic disciplines as varied as biomedical science and education studies. In this post, Wouter van de Klippe, Alfredo Yegros, Tim Willemse and Is…
As gender equality becomes a priority for EU research funding, does Europe need Athena SWAN?
As Horizon Europe considers the inclusion of gender equality criteria to its research funding activities, Jörg Müller and Charoula Tzanakou assess what can be learnt from the international experience of implementing the Athena SWAN charter and awards s…
We live in an age of projects – Research impact should reflect this
In the second of two blogposts exploring how research impact is increasingly dependent on expertise embedded within organisations rather than traditional research outputs, Rebecca Vine and Paul Nightingale discuss the role of projects as a focus for co…
The Unintended Consequences of the pandemic on Non-COVID-19 Research Activities
Covid-19 ushered in a shift in research priorities pivoting researchers’ energies away from on-going projects. Presenting evidence from a new analysis of business, management and economics scholars, James Walker, Chris Brewster, Rita Fontinha, Washika …
For Open Grant Proposals
David Lang makes the case that default open grant proposals benefit both individual scientists as well as the broader scientific community. Science is designed to move slowly. Debate, rigor, and peer review add layers of organized skepticism to new ide…