Elinor Toland is the Research Integrity Adviser (Training & Communications) based in Research Services and here she reflects on her first 3 months in the role.
Last year, I heard about something called PubPeer for the first time. My friend was visiting Glasgow and telling me the latest about his research work. He mentioned this online platform where people could flag issues with scientific papers, and I was intrigued! Now that I work in Research Integrity, I’ve discovered how important this type of forum is to the research community.
PubPeer didn’t exist when I was involved in research – I originally worked in microbiology, and later retrained as a librarian. With my science background I was drawn to working with researchers, and in over 10 years of library research support, I gained experience in open access practices, training, supervising staff, and was involved in several REF exercises.
Changes in research support and management
With the field of ‘open research’ (one of the University of Glasgow’s five Research Culture Priorities) constantly evolving, I’ve seen first-hand over the last decade how the support for researchers also needs to change as a result. I’m really interested in the new roles that are being created to do this (my own is just one example!) I’ve also seen that the boundaries are starting to blur between professional research support services, with staff often having to adapt within their existing roles, and to expect further changes in the future.
Some of the major factors influencing this changing landscape in research support and management are funder policies including the REF, the global open research movement, and responsible metrics and research assessment. Research integrity is another key factor gaining wider attention, and which happens also to be another of the University of Glasgow’s Research Culture priorities. For the next REF, there has been much discussion about increased weighting for research culture (meaning that the culture research is conducted in, is now more closely linked to how much funding a university receives) – I’ll be watching this closely, to see where we could collaborate with other teams and contribute to this at Glasgow.
Working in Research Integrity
From my first 3 months in the post, I’ve found that it’s a fascinating and immersive field. In a similar way to open research, research integrity is still a relatively new and developing area. A central part of the team’s research integrity work is to tailor policy requirements for researchers and facilitate responsible research practice. At the same time, good research integrity helps to maintain the university’s reputation for high quality research. I like this statement from the recent UKCORI report Research Integrity in the UK:
“Placing integrity at the centre of all UK research enhances and protects the quality of research and safeguards confidence in it.”
Building up my specialist knowledge is a big priority, and there are plenty of resources available that discuss best practice and give examples of issues in research collaboration, reproducibility and publication. I’ve noticed that a strong message across policies and guidelines is that all stakeholders in the research community have a part to play in responsible research practice – a key tenet of taking a cultural approach. In the UK’s national framework, the Concordat to Support Research Integrity (of which the University of Glasgow is a signatory) it acknowledges that:
“Ensuring research integrity requires all stakeholders to play their part. The concordat describes the responsibilities and accountabilities of each of the key participants – researchers, their employers, and funders of research”
What I’ve enjoyed the most about this new environment is working in the Research Governance and Integrity team and meeting colleagues from across Research Services. There is a high level of expertise and diverse career experience, and I’m glad to be part of it. Some great initiatives are going on (for example the Research Staff Assembly, Researcher Development programmes) and this presents scope for future collaborations which I’m excited to explore.
There are of course challenges in moving into a new field. There are many policies to learn, and having a current awareness of the subject is essential. To help me understand how all the strands link together, several questions have cropped up. How are we fitting in to the requirements of the UK guidelines? What are the recommendations from reports such as the UKCORI report mentioned above, that we could implement? How will we get feedback from researchers on what works? And how does all of this impact on researchers? I think these points highlight the value of working with researchers in research support, and when my friend visits next, I’ll be asking him some of these questions!
The Auditorium: a research culture and researcher development blog 