Open and Responsible Researcher Reward and Recognition (OR4)

Lead

Tim Newton, King’s College London

Background and scope

The Programme aim is to accelerate the uptake of high quality open research practices. The Center for Open Science theory of change highlights five types of action that can promote change. This project is focused on making open research rewarded and, in particular, making it rewarded via the recruitment, promotion,  and other recognition activities at institutions that employ researchers.

Aim

This project will reform the ways in which institutions recruit, promote and appraise their staff, to better reward open research practices.

Outputs:

Goals

Intervention outputs and outcomes

1. By September 24, resources published to support institutions reforming research assessment recognising open research, leading to case studies and others taking informed, consistent and measurable steps by August 2027.
2. By Mar 24, report published on current recognition practice and its effects on open research, leading to more targeted resources and better supported institutions / case studies by Mar 25 and input into UKRN and institutional reporting by August 27.

Evaluation objective and output

3. By Aug 26, report published providing evidence on the extent to which the project aim was met.

Activities

Schedule and relations between activities

Dependencies with other projects in the Programme

The ‘Management and sustainability’ project provides leadership, adequate resources, communications and other relevant support to the project.

The Programme website (an output from the ‘Sharing and integrating’ project) should host the project outputs in a way that enables institutions to share and learn from related practice.

The ‘Evaluation design’ project should provide insight into researchers’ experiences of recognition and reward for open research practices at their institution.

Ideally, the ‘Training’ project would produce instructor training to build institutional capacity to meet the project aim.

The ‘Reward and recognition”, “Training” and “Integration and sharing” projects are all supporting communities of practice, and coordination will be needed.

Communications and engagement

Events will be organised to enable staff at case study and other institutions to develop into a community of practice

Current position

In April 2024, we published a report with the results of our institutional survey, completed by 59 UK HEIs and one research institute. The report summarised the current landscape of reward and recognition for Open Research and reported on the institutional requirements for support from the OR4 project. Some of the highlights from the report include:

• The majority (~75%) of institutions were found to be undertaking strategic activity to address research assessment reform
• Current policies and statements on Responsible Research Assessment (RRA) are primarily focused on the responsible use of metrics
• Most institutions have yet to adopt a broader definition of RRA which includes recognition of OR practices
• However, 35% of institutions were in the process of integrating OR criteria into assessment frameworks
• RRA reforms so far have had a limited impact on the recognition and incentivisation of OR practices
• There is still considerable lack of awareness, understanding and prioritisation of RRA and OR among many key institutional research stakeholders

The report also put forward recommendations for both institutions and the OR4 project resulting from the survey findings The full report can be accessed here.

Our community of practice has grown steadily, and currently there are 14 case study and 35 community of practice institutions working with us. The community of practice is still open to any institutions who would like to join. The case study and community of practice institutions are listed below.

At present, the case study and community of practice institutions are piloting and providing feedback on our resources, including the maturity framework, the self-assessment tool and the guide. The OR4 project is supporting institutions undertaking a self-assessment exercise by providing pre-self assessment briefing and post-self assessment de-briefing sessions.

This first phase of piloting the resources ended in the summer 2024, and the first version of the Toolkit was published on 15^th October 2024.

On November 19th 2024 the OR4 project will host its first online event to promote the project outputs and activities, including our resources. Registration for the event will start soon.

Case Study Profiles

Case studies:

Loughborough University
Nottingham Trent University
Queen’s University Belfast
Sheffield Hallam University
Swansea University
University of Bristol
University of Derby
University of East Anglia
University of Leeds
University of Liverpool
University of Reading
University of Suffolk
University of Sunderland
University of Leicester

Community of Practice:

Anglia Ruskin University
Bath Spa University
Birkbeck University
Brunel University London
Cardiff University
CRUK Scotland Institute
Durham University
Goldsmiths University
King’s College London
Lancaster University
Leeds Beckett University
Liverpool Hope University
Liverpool John Moores University
Manchester Metropolitan University
Newcastle University
Queen Mary University of London
Royal College of Music
The School of Advanced Study, UoL
Staffordshire University
Teesside University
Ulster University
University of Aberdeen
University of Birmingham
University of Cambridge
University of Central Lancashire
University of Dundee
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow
University of Greenwich
University of Plymouth
University of Portsmouth
University of Salford
University of the West of Scotland
University of Warwick
University of York
York St John University

Contact details:

Dr Robert Darby, University of Reading, R.M.Darby@reading.ac.uk

Dr Banaz Jalil, University College London, b.jalil@ucl.ac.uk