By Dr Rachel Herries, Tommy Wong, and Dr Kay Guccione. We’d also like to acknowledge, credit and thank all University of Glasgow colleagues who were involved in the REF PCE pilot preparation, development, submission, feedback, reflection and future planning.
At the University of Glasgow, we understand that research thrives when all members of the research ecosystem feel that they are part of an engaging fair, and collegial environment in which people help each other to succeed. We firmly believe that establishing a good research culture, through Glasgow’s five research culture priorities: Collegiality, Research Integrity, Open Research, Research Recognition, and Career Development, is essential to our ability to do the best quality research.
Are research excellence and research culture connected?
“How are research excellence and research culture connected?”, is the question we are often tasked to answer – from our colleagues, and more recently by the sector. We are also asked “will doing research culture work mean I have less time to focus on my research outputs?” and “is research culture work worth all the effort?” and “while it’s a nice to have, will being part of a good research culture actually help my career?”. Whilst you may be shaking your head at these frank challenges to the validity of our work, we recommend that “what’s in it for me?” is a question that all colleagues should ask.
To many of us, and increasingly, the connection between research culture and performance is obvious, but it’s our job to translate, for those for whom it isn’t. As a quick exercise to imagine what we mean, let’s consider a working culture where you as a new starter are welcomed, shown around, are given clear guidance on how to use the systems and tech, are involved in dialogue about the expected tasks and standards for your role, observe others behaving respectfully and with integrity towards each other, are included in conversations and shown how decisions are made, are supported through challenges, are encouraged to step up, are supported to work at a pace you can sustain, are introduced to others who can help you, are mentored, developed, and valued for what you bring, and have access to what you need to do your job properly, including up to the minute new data and insights from your field.
Now compare that with a working culture where you as a new starter are on your own, have to find things out for yourself, are not taught how to use the systems, are left to assume the standards are the same as the last place you worked, observe others behaving disrespectfully towards each other, question your colleagues’ integrity, are not included in conversations, have no sight of decision-making, are humiliated for failing, have things imposed on you, never take a break, are deterred from stepping up, work in isolation without a support network, are not invested in, are dismissed, and have to spend time fighting for access to what you need to do your job properly.
So, which environment would you find it easier to do your best work in?
The issue with the second scenario is that it generates a great deal of waste. Wasted time and energy trying to find things, figure things out, following up wrong leads and following wrong guidelines. Wasted goodwill, patience and generosity as you come to feel others are not paying in to the system, so why should you. Wasted mental resilience and eventually mental health as you question why things have to happen the way they do, and why no one is listening. Wasted talent and wasted careers as you are fighting to find a stable role, feel you are not backed, not set up for success, and not valued for doing well at what matters to you. And, not least, wasted research funding in the form of untrustworthy or duplicated outputs,
A reflective approach to research culture
Not only is translating how culture affects performance an essential part of our work (and indeed part of building a good culture), we also need to ask additional questions of ourselves and our culture specialist colleagues, such as:
- What do we mean by culture, and why?
- What are the different problems we are trying to solve?
- How are these problems enabled to persist?
- Are we focusing on the right priorities?
- Are we looking at them through different lenses and perspectives?
- Are we able to articulate why we have chosen those projects, methods, and measures?
- Can we evidence that our work is making a difference?
- Where are we stuck, and what is blocking progress?
- What do we need to work on collectively?
- Have we got the right experts around the table?
- Are we saying one thing and doing another.
We see engaging reflexively with all of the above as essential to doing meaningful culture work, so when it was proposed that demonstrating a commitment to a positive research culture would become a strengthened element of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), we were exited for the opportunity to more systematically characterise the impact and value of our work, with tools developed by, and for, the whole HE sector.
We applied to be part of the PCE pilot exercise, firstly, as we considered that the least we would gain would be the opportunity to conduct a thorough audit of our progress, and discover new ways to enhance our culture work, and how we monitor it.
Secondly, we recognise the difficulty (and indeed challenge the utility) of measuring research culture ‘as a whole’, but we do have a lot of experience in measuring the impact of researcher and research culture development initiatives, and we wanted to feed that in.
Thirdly, we wanted to use the opportunity to connect with and learn from others internally and externally, and to expand our understanding of good practice in research culture work and the many teams at Glasgow who contribute to it. We were one of 40 HEIs who participated in the PCE pilot and we were pleased to work alongside other piloting institutions.
What we learned from the PCE pilot process:
Below, and it should be noted, ahead of any formal feedback from the Research England REF panels, we share our reflections on what we learned about ourselves. The overall experience of being a PCE pilot participant has indeed been an extremely valuable reflective exercise for Glasgow. We’ve learnt a lot regarding our approach to research culture work, our strategic perspective on the value of this work, and the mechanics of being prepared for a REF PCE submission (recognising that at the time of writing, we don’t know what a REF PCE submission will look like).
[1] A Collaborative approach works best
We’ve established closer working relationships between the Research Culture Team and Research Enhancement Team (who lead on REF for Glasgow), recognising that we need to draw on both REF experience and a culture perspective. We have gained a lot, and learned a lot through this strengthened relationship. The pilot has brought a positive attention to research culture work through internal REF networks, and fostered new conversations across central teams, at with out Colleges and Schools, in addition to the established Lab for Academic Culture. It has highlighted how we need to strengthen our cross-university partnerships to support information and data flow, and we have planned new ways to host cross-community conversations through 2026.
[2] Shared understanding matters, and needs our attention
We learned that we need to support much wider awareness of what culture enhancement means at, and for, Glasgow. Even with a significant focus on research culture activities, there is a persistent gap in how we support our community to articulate the rationale and interpret the effectiveness of research culture initiatives. Better literacy in the research culture space, is coupled with increased support for activity in the research culture space. To help our colleagues and communities to be influencers of change, we will use new community resources, to support them to speak the language and recognise what culture enhancement can look like for them and their community, in all its technicolour!
[3] Research teams need our support to value all contributors and contributions
A priority for Glasgow has been working to recognise and value all contributors and types of contribution (check out our Code of Good Practice in Research with reference to CRedIT, the Research Professional Staff Network and our approach to Open Research as examples of our practice). The PCE pilot highlighted the need to build a much wider awareness of ‘who’ we include in our research ecosystem (and therefore our REF narratives), specifically, the roles that specialists and research professionals play, the contributions they make to research success, the types of knowledge and the leadership they offer.
[4] The flow of data
The emphasis on ‘metrics’ within the REF PCE pilot was strong! For Glasgow the pilot exercise highlighted the need for and complexity in collecting, tracking and maintaining the relevant data, both quantitative and qualitative. The need for ongoing and strengthened communication with key data leads and data owners, and the production of data dashboards, report and packs, is something that we are now already working on.
Where next?
As the sector awaits the announcement of the dimensions of future REF cycles, we will strive to continue our culture enhancement work and share what we know with our allies. We are continuously inspired by our generous network of colleagues across the UK and Ireland, who help us ensure we make progress at Glasgow and contribute to culture development as a collaborative endeavour. We hope that creativity and innovation in culture work will find ways to remain important, against a background of challenges for the sector.
The Auditorium: a research culture and researcher development blog 