Research Culture Action Plan

We want to ensure our research community has time to:

• nurture creativity
• solve problems
• pursue professional development opportunities
• develop strong collaborations

Releasing quality time is one of our priority action areas for 2022/23.

We will:

• improve the efficiency of systems and processes, and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy
• understand ‘what works’ to help release quality time in the University
• promote the adoption of successful activities across the organisation
• reduce unnecessary meeting time and promote more agile ways of working
• support development opportunities for individuals/teams through our ‘Enhancing Research Culture: People Fund’
• promote and embed 10 days of professional development for researchers and technicians
• develop a searchable database to help people find collaborators and interdisciplinary events
• seek to use accessible spaces (physical/digital) to help creativity, networking and collaboration
• enhance research and teaching synergy
• understand and tackle deeper cultural issues that will give people more quality time

We want our research community to have opportunity for:

• meaningful career conversations
• training opportunities

These should underpin personal and professional development for research-active and research-enabling careers.

We will:

• deliver the Skills Academy as a ‘one stop shop’ for training provision for everyone
• review and build on existing training offer to address current and future need
• establish communities of practice to foster skills and knowledge exchange
• map out and consider new career pathways that reduce precarity and retain core skills
• develop a University-wide bridging policy for colleagues employed on external funding
• be one of the first partners for Prosper in 2023, unlocking post-docs’ potential to thrive across a range of career pathways
• review and develop career development programmes for early and mid-career academics
• better equip professional colleagues to connect their roles to internal processes/systems, and the external research landscape
• roll out new annual appraisal process to frame positive career conversations across all job roles
• promote existing career mentoring schemes, and explore new opportunities for improving our current offer around research and innovation

We want everyone to feel:

• part of our research community
• their voices and ideas are heard
• they are offered equal opportunities to progress and succeed

We want our people to feel ‘safe to fail’ in a culture that views failure as a valuable part of the learning process.

We want to embed equality, diversity and inclusion in all research processes and practices.

Tackling inappropriate behaviour and building inclusive leadership is a priority action area for 2022/23.

We will:

• develop a preventative approach to discriminatory and inappropriate behaviour
• build on our ‘Leading Through Values’ programme to enhance psychological safety and performance
• translate our ‘Newcastle University Behaviour Framework’ into the research context
• publish and promote an online equality, diversity and inclusion toolkit for research leaders
• review membership of decision-making committees in research with a view to diversify representation
• improve transparency of decision making in internal funding processes and provide useful feedback
• develop research culture training to embed into inductions
• create a culture that normalises and embraces failure as a valuable part of the learning process
• continue to consult and use evidence to inform new actions to increase diversity and inclusion in research

We want our research community to embrace new opportunities. These would be offered through open research practices. We want to make research more transparent and reproducible.

We want to encourage and support people to:

• apply the best research practices in their area of work
• embrace opportunities to learn new methods and approaches to open up new research questions

We will:

• develop, deliver and promote harmonised state-of-the-art training in Open Research as an active partner of the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN)
• pilot and test DMPOnline as a tool to promote good practice in data management across the research life cycle
• review and update existing and develop new policies around research conduct
• promote the use of ORCID and its consistent use across internal systems
• promote good research practices through supporting a variety of community-led activities, including:
  
  • UKRN Local Network activities#
  • funding short projects to promote ethics and integrity
  • ReproducibiliTea Journal Club
  • a Research Ethics Seminar Series
• establish champions to facilitate and support uptake of good research practices
• catalyse ‘team research’ to foster more collaborative working across disciplines and job roles

We want all members of our community to:

• appreciate the diverse contributions colleagues and students make to our research
• feel encouraged to excel

We intend to clarify how we define and evaluate research quality as an organisation. We want to provide incentives that encourage positive behaviours and an inclusive culture.

Career progression and rewards is one of our priority action areas for 2022/23.

We will:

• embed responsible evaluation of research into internal processes, including recruitment, progression, and promotion
• develop training resources for the whole research community to enable responsible evaluation
• work to widen definitions of research excellence and feed this into rewards
• ensure rewards strike the right balance between recognising individual and collaborative successes
• develop guidelines for crediting authorship and contributions, and endorse use of CRediT taxonomy
• ensure all colleagues can be PIs on internal funding opportunities to build research culture
• recognise and celebrate the contributions of different members of our research community