Research Culture
We want our research staff to work within a thriving research culture and our commitment to improving our research culture to enable all our researchers to succeed. This commitment is reflected the following institutional agreement and awards. We are signatories to:
- The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). This is a statement on the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of research are monitored and evaluated. This agreement is held in high esteem by the funder of research and at Exeter is being complimented and promoted via a group of Responsible Metrics ‘Champions’ led by Prof. Rob Anderson.
- The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers: a long standing commitment for which we have maintained a European HR Excellence in Research award for the past 10 years.
These combined activities are increasingly being expected by research funders and considerably strengthen our research outputs, such as our REF Environment Statements. In addition, they reflect the values expressed in our new Research & Impact Strategy, allowing us to enhance and deliver a vibrant, world-class research culture.
Benchmarking where we are
During the latter part of 2020 and 2021, the Researcher Development and Research Culture team, based in Research Services, ran 30 workshops with teaching and research, and research staff, from across all university departments. The aim was to ensure colleagues were aware of our institutional commitments in relation to research culture, identify positive elements of our research culture, and where improvements can be made.
The outputs from these workshops were analysed and reports were drafted and shared with departments in early 2022. Later in the year, departments were asked to create Research Culture action plans. These plans will be reviewed annually as part of the June departmental Research Meetings. View the key priorities areas and example actions arising from the first action plans.
The departmental level action plans will also be used to shape and refine a draft insitutional Research Culture Action Plan.
Research culture SharePoint site and Research Culture in Grants toolkit
We have created a new Research Culture SharePoint site which draws together key elements of our research culture and how we support this at the University of Exeter. The importance of a positive research culture is also something our funders are increasingly expecting to see as part of grant bids. In order to help you integrate research culture into successful applications, we have created a Research Culture in Grants toolkit which will help you to consider funder requirements, your role, the university's role along with wider trends and resources.
Research culture is a shared endeavour and everyone involved has a part to play. We encourage you to join our Research Culture Viva Exchange (Yammer) group as we'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions, share best practice or relevant events which may be of interest to our research community.
Please contact researcherdevelopment@exeter.ac.uk if you would like to know more.