Earlier this month twelve members of the UKRN Stakeholder Engagement Group (SEG) gathered in Bristol for their first in-person meeting. This included representatives from the British Neuroscience Association, European Bioinformatics Institute, Gorilla Experiment Builder, Jisc, National Centre for the Replacement Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, Only Good Antibodies, PLOS, Protocols.io, Research Libraries UK, UK Research and Innovation, UK Research Integrity Office and Wellcome. They were joined by UKRN chair Marcus Munafò, the head of the UKRN Open Research Programme, Neil Jacobs, UKRN coordinator Dolly Coates and Will Gawned and Diane Hird from the UKRN Community Project which funded the meeting.
The day was led by SEG chair Helen Clare with the aim of exploring how SEG members can work together and support existing UKRN partnerships and initiatives. Marcus Munafò provided a brief overview of current UKRN projects including the Open Research Programme, Community Project, STAR, Meteor and Story Arc, and gave an update on the UKRN vision, strategy and action plan. Neil Jacobs led a discussion on sustainability models for UKRN. SEG members provided feedback on the strategy document and discussed how best to align specific UKRN goals and challenges with the relevant stakeholders.
Jackie Thompson, University of Bristol, gave a presentation on a Registered Reports Funding Partnership with Cancer Research UK, Springer-Nature, Wiley and PLOS.
The afternoon session was led by UKRN Supervisory Board SEG representative Harvinder Virk with a discussion around developing collaborative opportunities across the SEG, and how UKRN can offer support and information to best enable SEG members to engage with UKRN projects.
We have begun to capture information on all SEG members centrally and Harvinder used this initial data to create a word cloud representing SEG activities. In addition to gaining a deeper understanding of each other’s aims and activities, SEG members will be able to use this shared platform to exchange ideas and collaboration opportunities both between fellow SEG members and UKRN projects. The meeting ended with action planning and agreeing next steps. Exciting times!
