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Recognising our ORCAs: Celebrating their Impact
A selection of ORCAs who have worked with UKRNFarewell and Thanks to our ORCAS
Some of our talented ORCAs, who have contributed greatly to UKRN, have now moved on to exciting new opportunities in their careers.
Anna Korzeniowska
This feature is on Anna Korzeniowska, who was the ORCA at the University of Surrey until October 25th 2024.
Anna Korzeniowska, is the ORCA at the University of Surrey.
Anna has had a varied career already, both within and outside of academia. She was enthusiastic about taking the ORCA role partly because it sounded interesting, even if the details were a bit unclear at the time, because it was part-time to fit with her PhD, it was at a university and because, at the interview with Emily Farran and others at Surrey, it was clear that she would be joining an excellent and very friendly team.
Her role within Surrey was split between being an ORCA and a range of other related work. That included: putting on major events; briefing interested staff including faculty representatives, librarians and the research integrity office; running the champions network; and drafting resources for the website. ORCA-specific activities at Surrey focused mainly on support for trainers – recruiting them and ensuring they have what they need. The work was very varied, never boring, if sometimes quite demanding.
Anna had a key national role with the Open Research Programme. She was the project manager for the OR4 project, which is a significant initiative involving 45 institutions reforming how they recruit and promote staff to better recognise open research. As is the case for all the central Programme teams, the OR4 team barely has enough members to do the work, and so the project manager is a vital and difficult role. It was rewarding though, because Anna could see how it directly contributes to a significant sector-wide change that will improve research practice – especially if open research is sensibly rewarded in REF2029. Managing this lean project with very busy academics was one of the things of which Anna is most proud as an ORCA, and its success would be the achievement she would most like to have contributed to in the Programme. Closer to home, she would like to enable Surrey deliver a good range of open research training.
As if all this were not enough, she works part-time on research culture at the University of Southampton, and is involved in the ManSpotlighyDogs2 project, which is a multi-lab collaboration to increase sample sizes in canine science and so improve replicability. Next career steps? Anna isn’t sure, perhaps more project management, or perhaps other things. Being an ORCA, and working with amazing and supportive colleagues such as Emily, will certainly help.
Adam Partridge
Adam Partridge is the ORCA a the University of Sheffield.
The University of Sheffield is fortunate in having Adam Partridge as its Open Research Coordinator and Administrator – ORCA – within the UKRN Open Research Programme. Adam joined Sheffield after managing the Brain Stimulation Lab at CUBRIC, Cardiff University where he was also the UKRN Local Network Lead. Before that, he did a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging at the University of York, with specific interests in brain stimulation and auditory processing.
He first learned about open research during his MSc and he used some open research practices such as preregistration and preprinting during his PhD. Like many early career researchers, he could see issues with the academic system and open research was gaining some traction as a way of addressing these issues. This was initially mainly with enthusiasts; these ways of working were not recognised more widely. He saw the ORCA role as a way of speeding up this process. He was familiar with the UKRN from his local network lead role and also saw this as an opportunity to build relationships across the network.
Adam’s overall role at Sheffield is the Open Research Training Lead. This encompasses his work on the UKRN Open Research Programme and local open research activities. There is therefore a lot of synergy between his ORCA activities and local activities.
The collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of open research itself is reflected in his work with wider teams at Sheffield. He is based in ‘Research, Partnerships and Innovation’ – part of professional services which includes researcher development and ethics teams amongst others. However, he also works with library staff (such as Open Research Manager – Dr Jenni Adams) and reaches out to departments too. The Sheffield Open Research Working Group has members spanning different disciplines and is led by their UKRN Local Network Lead Dr Jim Uttley. Adam is also a member of the more formal Open Research Advisory Group, giving him the chance to engage with senior academic and professional staff across Sheffield. He works most closely with Sheffield’s Research Practice Lead – Professor Tom Stafford – who is also Sheffield’s Institutional Lead for the UKRN and is based in the Psychology Department.
Across the Open Research Programme nationally, Adam has primarily been involved with the Training Project. This part of the Programme is responsible for working with training partners and institutions to enable delivery of the training. He has particularly enjoyed connecting with the training partners, learning more about their initiatives, and also getting to know the other ORCAs.
His deep involvement in the Programme has given Adam clear insights into its likely impact. The most immediate effect of the training project is increasing open research skills and capacity across the sector. However, Adam feels that many of the benefits go beyond the measurable outputs, for example ORCAs are able to start or strengthen conversations around open research and connect different teams within their institution. Further, he sees the Programme itself helping to normalise cross-institution collaboration on training. Training is often considered a core part of an institution’s offering to their staff, with efficiencies via inter-institution collaboration rarely considered. As a result, policies around the use of openly licensed materials and sharing materials are often absent or unclear and, even when they are present, collaboration is not normalised. One concrete benefit from changing the culture around the use of openly licensed materials is the potential to improve staff workload – which Adam anticipates might be welcomed.
Outside, but very related to, the Open Research Programme, Adam has just finished an ELIXIR-UK data stewardship fellowship, which involved developing training materials around open data and research data management. He is a FAIRsharing Community Champion, where his involvement so far has included developing an infographic and working to make institutional research data policies more FAIR-enabling. He also recently became a Carpentries instructor through the Programme. He is thus developing an international network and profile.
Reflecting more generally on the future of open research, Adam sees it becoming a more normalised part of the research process in more disciplines. He is particularly interested to see what open research looks like in the arts and humanities, where the values underpinning open research such as collaboration, transparency and rigour are important, but the research methods are very different. He expects to see a less siloed and more multidisciplinary culture with metaresearch being valued more, as long as academia in general takes the right path going forward. The foundations of traditional academia, like control of knowledge and prestige are being challenged by open research and the internet. Longer term, he also sees a more pluralist, decentralised and community-owned future, where research communities decide what they value and they can independently fund, review and publish work that fits with those values. Such a change will need changes in funding, procurement, business models, recognition and reward, and infrastructure.
As an ORCA, Adam is most proud of his contributions to the training team last year, when Sheffield led it. The team moved from having a list of training providers and list of priority training topics to delivering a train-the-trainer programme. Currently, delivering training is hard for individuals to prioritise, given the lack of incentives. A next step would be for institutions to better recognise and support the trainers and the training they deliver during and after the Programme. The training community of practice should enable trainers to maintain momentum, learn from each other, and create a lasting impact, while these incentives are being implemented.
Personally, Adam would like to continue working in the area of open research. Whether that’s supporting institutions to implement open research, conducting metaresearch, or a combination of the two. Being an ORCA has helped with this as it enabled him to learn more about the research and training ecosystem. It’s also enabled him to gain experience with project management and develop links with UK institutions and international partners. Finally, it has also enabled him to develop stronger links with other teams within Sheffield and gain a better understanding of the many different perspectives on open research.