Research Management
British Embassy, British Council Uzbekistan, Istedod
January 2016
Jo Chaffer with
Dr Nick Colegrave, Dr Matt Studley, Dr Eamonn Molloy
1
A little about me
• Jo Chaffer
• International consultant (strategy, HE)
• Contract researcher / university researcher IFLAS (Lancaster)
• Work with universities & research institutes in 15+ countries
• Former Lead Trainer, program and materials developer Researcher
Connect
• Published author
• Also a mountain guide!
• www.korakoru.com
2
What will we cover?
• Strategic thinking
• People – the research team; stakeholder management
• Project planning essentials
• Different approaches; terminology; WBS practice; M&E, management
• PM tools and more
• Risk
• Financial planning
• Communication Strategy
• International Publication
What we won’t cover!
• Research skills
3
Strategy
What, why, when, where - how
4
Who are we?
& Why?
Simple strategic thinking
Where do we
want to go?
How will we get
there?
How long will it
take?
How will we
know when we
have?
5
Strategy – what is it?
What?
• Proactive; big picture; level up from management, asks big questions;
articulate the tacit – make assumptions explicit
When?
• Before, during and after
Who by?
• Everyone in your core team (and including stakeholders at some stages)
Why?
• Your turn….
6
Why take a strategic approach?
• Some possible answers
Stress
Failure rates
Crises
Likelihood of overspend
Communication
Rapport
Opportunities to grow
Internal support
Professionalism
Likelihood of achieving goals and
outputs
Enjoyment!
Smoother interfaces with externals
Mindset
change
7
• A research project is BOTH
managing the project AND doing
the actual research.
• The two parts make the whole
• Effort and time in both should be
equally valued
Planning,
managing
&
monitoring
Delivery
Doing the
research;
creating the
outputs;
having impact
8
Stages
• Strategic thinking
(asking the big questions, process)
• Strategic planning
(creation of the project plan – the
core tool)
M&E
• Strategic management (using and adjusting the plan, the
people, resources etc to drive the
research forward and keep it on track)
time
9
Strategic Thinking – the big questions
• WHY
• WHO
• WHAT
• WHAT
• HOW and WHEN
• HOW MUCH
• HOW LIKELY
‘success’ (whatever success is to you)
you, your stakeholders
changes, impacts you’ll create
you do (and don’t do)
project plan – timeline (research, stakeholder
management, communication)
finances – planning and managing
feasibility and risk
A summary of the answers to the above questions will be invaluable in sharing with stakeholders (‘a
business case’). It may become the ‘about’ for your website, blogs etc
10
Start at the end – define ‘Success’
Clarify and articulate what ‘success’ means to your team.
Describe this in terms of
• AIM (or objective / goal) – the big thing your research project should
achieve e.g. better understanding of how we develop leaders / excellence in
leaderfulness
• Outcomes or Impacts the overall change – the difference the
project makes e.g. new approaches to leadership development for
development professionals
• Outputs
what we actually produce e.g. research papers; 3
articles in peer reviewed high IF journals; career opportunities at Harvard
Business School for team members
11
Success! The end point
• Defining success NOW ensures:
• You all want the same thing (all aspects of it)
• Everyone’s hopes and dreams are ‘on the table’ – and have been
reality checked
• You can all describe the thing you want in shared language
• You put in place relevant metrics so you can measure what success is
(you know when you’ve reached your goal) and therefore your
progress towards it (and speed)
12
The end! The beginning. Then the way….
• You know the end point (success)
Success!
• Finally you can work out how to get from Start to
End – make a project plan
• The next step is to recognise and describe the start:
analysis of who you’ve got, resources you have….
And those you don’t yet have but need
13
‘Failing to plan is planning to fail’
14
Effective planning should be
competitive
coherent
Communicable
Clear
consistent
collaborative
confident
15
Strategic plan – an essential you can abandon
• A clear end point and known start are your guides in an unstable,
perilous and ever changing world 
• You know where you’re going and your resources are clear, now be
ready to abandon the plan at any time.
• Things change
• People leave / grow
• Money comes / goes
• Politics interferes…..
16
Who?
Your team, the stakeholders
18
The research team: build one
• Often the most overlooked but most important resource – and the
most likely to derail the research!
• Don’t assume you’re a team just because you signed a contract – like
any good relationship it takes care, work and time
• There are many excellent tools to use: MBTI, Belbin, NLP are just a
few
• Allocate TIME to build some solid foundations together
19
Who - stakeholders
• What do we mean by stakeholder?
“anyone who has an interest and involvement in the project”
• What else should we articulate (about them)?
“what they bring and what they need (the transactions);
their degree of influence on and interest in our project”
• Why is it important to strategize about stakeholders? To manage the relationships?
• To build good relations
• to avoid conflict (between stakeholders etc)
• professionalism
• to build platforms for future work
• and most importantly – your ability to create IMPACT
20
Levels of influence (on the outcome itself, or
on your ability to meet the outcome)
high
Influence / power
ACTION:
Prioritise
Low
then
Strategize
interest
high
21
Questions?
22
Project Planning & Management
A skill set worth learning
23
Project Management is….
• Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and
managing resources to bring about the successful completion of
specific project goals and objectives.
• The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the
project goals and objectives while honouring the preconceived
project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time, and budget
• Project Management developed as a discipline in the 1950s
• More details in the Handbook
24
• To the optimist, the glass is half full.
• To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
• To the project manager, the glass is twice
as big as it needs to be.
25
The classic project management conundrum
Time
What’s your priority?
Define this at the
start and stick to it
Quality
Cost
Scope
26
PM approaches
• Multiple approaches to Project Management used globally in all
sectors
• A research project is a type of project that requires planning,
implementing, managing and evaluating …. so use the principles and
borrow some of the best fit tools
• PRINCE2, SCRUM (Agile), Bond Logical Framework, Project
Management Institute (PMI)… and many more
• BUT research by nature is much more iterative and cannot be as
planned as some other projects….
27
The (original) AGILE manifesto
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the
items on the left more.
Created in 2001 by software developers who wanted to escape the
‘waterfall’ method
28
Agile style PM
29
SCRUM – one type of Agile – values based PM
• Focus
• Because we focus on only a few things at a time, we work well together and produce
excellent work. We deliver valuable items sooner.
• Courage
• Because we work as a team, we feel supported and have more resources at our disposal.
This gives us the courage to undertake greater challenges.
• Openness
• As we work together, we express how we're doing, what's in our way, and our concerns
so they can be addressed.
• Commitment
• Because we have great control over our own destiny, we are more committed to success.
• Respect
• As we work together, sharing successes and failures, we come to respect each other and
to help each other become worthy of respect.
• www.scrumalliance.org
30
31
Keys to Research PM success
• Use flexible tools and approaches
• always keep sight of your ‘success’ endpoint (this should be true even
if the research question changes, the claim fails or the research
analysis enters an unexpected area of discourse)
• Grow a strong research team
• With excellent communication internally and with stakeholders
• And of course pro-active, practical and consistent project
management
32
Common Research PM errors – a few
• Underestimating the time needed to complete a particular task
• Lack of contingency planning – no fail safes
• Only anticipating positive outcomes of results or of stakeholders /
collaborators inputs
• Not recognising Critical Control Pathways or Points
• Creating overburden – trying to do too many things in parallel
• Forgetting to plan around real life events
• Focusing on doing the research and not on managing it
• Lack of flexibility – not reacting to changes
• Saying ‘yes’ to influential figures – when really you mean no
33
Project stages / processes
• Initiating
• Planning
• Implementing / Executing
• Monitoring & Evaluating / Control
• Closing
• Reporting
• These happen in parallel, they loop back one to the other, they may
repeat multiple times. The path of a project is very rarely linear!
34
Project planning elements
• AIM / objectives
• OUTCOMES
• SMART GOALS
• OUTPUTS
• WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE
• CRITICAL PATHWAYS / POINTS
35
Work Breakdown Structure
The Work Breakdown Structure provides a common framework for the
natural development of the overall planning and control of a contract
and is the basis for dividing work into definable increments.
The WBS enables you to chunk down the Outcomes into manageable
‘bites’ (Work Packages):
• to tasks that a named person is responsible for;
• that the resources, costs and time can be assigned to;
• that you know when, where and how they’ll happen
• that you can use to measure progress
36
Common processes within a research project
Identify a research problem
Refine aim and objectives
Refine research questions
Conduct and document a literature review
Evaluate appropriate research methods
Design your research tools (survey, questionnaire, observations etc.)
Pilot test your data collection
Carry out your data collection
Compare and contrast data findings with the literature findings
Draw conclusions by evaluating your research questions, research objectives and
research aim
Reflect on limitations and potential further studies in the area
Write your documentation
37
Gantt charts
• Named after Henry Gantt (1861–1919)
• Visual representation of tasks/basic elements of the program
• Showing dependence
• Showing parallel activities and overlaps
• Showing milestones
• Building in constraints
• Many other project management features such as adding in costs;
dealing with resource conflict ...
38
A Gantt sample chart
39
40
Monitoring & Evaluation
Monitoring
Evaluation
• Is a continuous process
• Gathers data about the research
• Enables stakeholders to help the
research project stay on track
and meet its objectives
• Is largely operational / admin
• Is periodic
• Gathers information about the
project performance / value and
lessons learned
• Enables stakeholders to determine
project merit, benefits, relevance,
cost effectiveness etc
Both M&E are….
 the systematic collection and analysis of information
 learning processes (that are) central to effective research management (and
governance)
41
M & E for whom?
• Stakeholders – all the people watching, supporting and / or impacted
by your research project – what is it they want to know about how
effectively you are managing and progressing
• Your organisation – you’ll probably need to align your monitoring of
the project with your university or Institute’s research monitoring
system and therefore their metrics
• You and your team – individual / team monitoring will help keep the
project on track to achieve it’s goals whilst helping you learn about
your skills, capabilities, behaviours and how brilliant (or not) these are
42
M&E: By whom and how
• Decide who will be responsible, what authority, resource and access
they need – and how they will coordinate
• M&E takes time – to set up and to do well
• Gathering information takes time
• Analysing and interpreting takes time
• Feeding back in a useful way takes time
• Communicating out takes time
• Build in time 
43
Some typical areas of research PM M&E
Measuring in the following areas:
• Strategy and planning
• Implementation
• Communication
• Application / Impacts
On inputs (what you actually used, needed), process (how you
worked together, what happened), outputs (to what extent),
reporting (frequency, quality), communication (how, where, to whom,
how impactful), impacts (to the academy, stakeholders, the wider
world)
Against effectiveness, efficiency, relevance
44
M&E System in a
Research Project
From Monitoring, Evaluation &
Dissemination of Research Output, IDRC,
Association of African Universities
45
Effective metrics
• Measure impacts (good and bad)
• Measure achievements and progress towards them
• Engage and impress stakeholders and audiences (internal & external)
• Raise performance, encourage innovation (the virtuous circle)
• Are a good project health check
• Can create cost efficiencies and highlight new opportunities (or
threats)
• Need to be planned in (the data needed, how and who and when
you’ll capture it, how is will feed into the M&E system for analysis and
reporting)
46
Metrics must be useful!
• Don’t measure stuff you don’t need to know
• ASK: what information do you need, when, how often, to what level
of detail (scope, scale, formative, summative?)
• ASK: who are the best people to do the measuring (internal /
external)
• ASK: who else needs to know (and is it the same information, interval
etc)
• Consistent, timely, reliable = the essentials of good data
• Be realistic – metrics cost in money & time, make sure you get return
on this
47
Questions?
48
Managing the project!
Some tips:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Avoid blame! (“praise loudly, blame quietly”)
Don’t try to fix symptoms – look for the cause
Respond to risks and problems quickly – be proactive
Delegate and share
Do what you say you’ll do (in the time you said you’d do it); and if you can’t – let people know
before its too late!
Be ready to change or throw away the plan if it means you can reach ‘success’ better
Don’t assume things are going well for people – check in and ask
Ask don’t assume (about everything!)
Don’t avoid the scary stuff – ask for help
Think ahead, using what you learned from the past
Be flexible: a great juggler, an acrobat!
Document your mistakes and failings
49
communicate-communicate-communicate
• Be pro-active with team members and stakeholders
• Prevent blocks/ problems, fix them if they occur
• Agile PM requires a daily ‘stand up’ meeting – typically 15 minutes,
everyone attends and inputs, typically based around 3 questions
• What did I do yesterday?
• What am I going to do today?
• Am I blocked?
• Feedback and engage stakeholders regularly (Agile says at the end /
start of each ‘sprint’)
50
Tools for Research PM
Some digital assistance to choose from
51
Too many tools – too many choices?
• What options are there?
• Which areas of the research and / or the research project
management do you want to make easier?
• How much time / resource do you have to invest in acquiring and
learning how to best use new tools?
• What do you NOT want tools to change?
• Digital isn’t always best – pen and paper, stickies, real time tools work
better for some people and some tasks
• Excellent strategies, systems and process are still essential – tools
don’t replace these
52
Tools for what?
• Project Management
• Communication internally (collaboration) & externally
• Stakeholder management (CRM)
• Data management – storage, search, access
• All stages of the research process
• Time management (Calendars, Task and ToDo lists etc)
• Language translation
• Crowdsourcing – ideas, money, support
•?
53
Tips on tools
• Beware of the banal
• Beware of overburden (tools should serve you not the other way
round)
• Strategize your tool use – be explicit about which tools, why, when
and how and by whom in the strategic thinking and planning
• Set boundaries – particularly on PM and collaboration tool use
• Privacy – protect this
• Balance being an information connector (low burden) with a network
connector (high burden)
54
Some examples of the
many tools available to
support research
https://innoscholcomm.silk.co/
55
What about you? Tips on tools you use
Tools used
• Asana (project management)
Lessons learned
• Agree how you’ll connect – I felt
I was being ordered around
56
Utrecht University research
• Please help contribute to the research on useful tools at Utrecht
University by taking the survey
https://innoscholcomm.typeform.com/to/Csvr7b?source=ML
• And have a look at the results, the tools most commonly used and
much more here http://bit.ly/innoscholcomm-list
• And see trends here
https://101innovations.wordpress.com/tag/updates-insights/
57
Some tools to try
• Asana (PM)
• Base Camp (PM)
• ToDo List (time management and PM)
• Dropbox (file share)
• F1000 – research, publishing
• ResearcherGate and Aacademia. Edu
• Electronic Lab Note systems (ELN)
58
Questions?
59
Risk
Identify, assess, manage
60
Risk – define, assess, manage
A risk is an event which – if it happens – will have negative
consequences upon us.
In project management, risks are things which can stop us from
delivering
• the goal of the project
• on time, and
• within budget
First identify risks: brainstorm risks.
61
Step One: What type of risk
Every project has risks associated with it – common areas of risk are:
• Timing e.g. you underestimate time needed for one WP
• People e.g. team members don’t have the skills needed
• Resources e.g. key equipment unavailable
• Technology e.g. software or hardware fails
• Financial e.g. a funder delays payment
• Wider factors:
• PESTLE
• Organisational – new Pro VC for research demands review
• Stakeholder – suppliers delay; admin holidays; reviewers change policy
62
Step two: assess risk
Action area
Nature of risk
Probability of
occurrence
(high-3/ med 2/low -1)
Impact
(high /
med/ low)
Priority
(Score)
Someone leaves
2
3
5
impact
Another team publishes similar
work
1
3
4
data
Corrupted files / drives
1
2
3
Financial
Australian dollar exchange rate
drops
3
3
6
team
63
You can also map project risks this way…
Impact
Low
Medium
High
probability
Low
Medium
Team member leaves
High
64
Step Three: Manage risk
In general terms we have several strategies open to us to manage risks
• Transfer - a task to someone more skilled (e.g. technician)
• Defer - move risky activities till a later date in the project when
adverse effects may be reduced - especially relevant to external risk
factors (like weather, political instability etc)
• Reduce – probability or impact or both
• Accept – make some contingency plans!
• Avoid – change design, methods, something fundamental that
eliminates the risk (be aware this will probably come at a cost)
65
Some examples
• Beaten to publish
• Competitor analysis (reduce probability)
• Publish early (reduce probability & impact)
• Use multiple social media (reduce impact)
• Turn competitors to collaborators (avoid)
66
Questions?
67
Financial Planning
managing income, cash flow, payment schemes, in-kind resource
68
Finances – in parts
• Planning – identifying cost areas, bring in expertise (risk!)
• Income – finding it, managing it
• Tracking spend
• Managing cash flow
• Reconciling
• In kind value
• Assuming you or your team have identified potential funders the best
advice is to follow their guidelines on how to plan project financials
69
Income – sources, types, tracking
• Planning: have you considered additional income streams beyond the
main research grant?
• Do you need to include non cash income (in-kind) to show the overall
value of your project?
• Note the dates your funders will make payment – these are essential
to your cash flow (and existence!)
• Track when income arrives – and chase it if it doesn’t
• Be aware of bank charges and foreign exchange rate fluctuations
• Do you have a ‘cushion account’ you can ‘borrow’ from in case funds
don’t arrive when you need to make payments?
70
Planning costs
Check which costs you are directly liable for (and which your institute covers).
Some of these areas you need to plan and manage, some you’ll need to plan in only
(your institute might manage).
Commitments – you may have commitments to cover some of your costs beyond
the project time period e.g. software licences, tax etc
Your funder will almost certainly have guidelines on cost areas – check!
Which Financial Year (FY) are you reporting against?
Are you costing on a Full Cost Recovery (FCR) basis or just project costs?
71
Different cost areas
• Labour – salaries (direct costs) and indirect costs such as pension, NIC etc.
You might need to include a proportion of support staff salaries
• Materials costs (direct) plus any indirect costs (shipping, storage etc)
• Equipment costs – equipment can contribute to the outcome, or be used to
achieve the outcome
• Overheads - e.g. % of premises cost, other salaries etc needed to keep
your institute running
• Travel costs
• Data preservation, dissemination and sharing
• Inflation & currency exchange
• Contingency
72
Managing finances
• Track your spend! Report each month on Budget against Actual
spend. Track these across the FY
• If Actual is different from Budget adjust any areas this will impact on
including the total remaining Budget and Contingency!
• If quality, time or scope are your key project drivers, be prepared for
cost to increase…. Actively manage this
• Get help! If you are not skilled in managing finance ask the institute
to lend you some time with a talented finance person
• Communicate – keep the relationships with your financial
stakeholders alive and healthy.
73
Close down
• Consider your exit strategy:
• what will you do with any financial discrepancies? Money left over?
Overspend?
• Payments to make after the project closes?
• Commitments ongoing?
• Retrospective income?
• Who needs what reports?
74
Communication Strategy
Publications and beyond
75
Communication strategy consider:
• When and on what you aim to publish in the project lifecycle – which
points do you expect to be able to make an original contribution?
• Which and how many conferences do you intend to attend and / or
present at?
• Are any of your intended communications outputs or a means of
disseminating achieving an output?
• How else will you communicate your work and to whom (public
engagement, media, schools, industry, policy boards, societies,
funders’ meets, government)?
76
On publishing …
• Who will lead on each paper – and if you don’t decide now, what
mechanism for deciding on lead author do you have?
• What platforms do you wish to publish on?
• What platform (share space) will you use to produce and store papers in
progress? How will you manage version control? And reference style?
• How will you continue to coordinate on communications? Do you build in
writing team meetings? What happens if you are behind on deadlines?
• What is your review process?
• What is your authorship protocol?
77
Internal communication
Decide how you will communicate with each other to keep the project
on track and support each other
• What tools will you use?
• How often will you bring everyone together?
• Do you need to record communications? Email streams, minutes,
audio files?
• What will you do if things go wrong? How will you resolve disputes?
• Will anyone be the lead for this?
78
Aligning
• Do all the different parts of your project plan, your strategy, your tool
choices align?
• Vertically - horizontally
• Do they compliment each other? Or do they constrain?
• Are there any bottlenecks or clashes?
• Any points of resource strain?
• Any other life events coming up?
Plan. Be consistent. Be open to change. Be the success
79
Questions?
80
International Publishing
Some learning from around the world
81
Be strategic
• Do the research before you research!
• To collaborate or not?
• Build your publication goals into your research program plan from the start
•
•
•
•
•
•
Think carefully about:
Why you want to publish
And what format?
Who are your audiences?
What type of access?
Think if you’re ready to publish (originality, data evidence)
82
Foundations
Why publish – originality - argumentation
83
Why we publish
“The number of people who will read
your dissertation with whom you do
not share DNA or a bed is ordinarily
fewer than five.”
Prof. Leonard Cassuto, Fordham University USA
84
Academic writing – a quick check
• To build knowledge (NOT to display knowledge)
• To challenge existing knowledge
• To add new ideas
• To be critical (NOT descriptive)
• To evaluate and critique the work of others
• To have our work evaluated and critiqued
85
Why publish? Because….
• The bigger picture (knowledge base)
• Increase readership of your (team’s) work
• Build the knowledge base (academy / mankind)
• Test your ideas amongst the academic community – turn ideas into robust ‘theories’
and maybe even ‘facts’
• Challenge existing ideas / knowledge / work
• Reputation – yours, your institutes, your country’s (external profile,
international reputation, ranking lists, building partnerships )
• Career - increasing h-index, developing academic credibility, supporting
funding applications etc.
• Validation (funders), collaboration, competition………..
• Legacy - your work will live on after you
86
Originality
• The content MUST be original to the field (and beyond)
• (don’t write if you don’t have anything original to say!)
• What is originality? How do we know this?
87
Before you research…….
Check the existing literature for similar work going on in other
o Teams
o Countries
o Fields
• What’s new to you maybe old news to others!
• How can you check your thesis / claim is original and unique?
• Create a ‘key word’ list –
•
•
•
•
think wide;
think about synonyms;
think about different perspectives;
Think about what aspects, qualities, conditions, processes, materials make your intended
research program unique
88
Argumentation
• Ethos
• Pathos
• Logos
89
Academic argumentation
• All academic arguments usually contain the following elements:
a claim;
reasons derived from research that support the claim;
acknowledgement of views that challenge the writer's statements,
presentation of specific conditions under which either the writer's or
another scholar's point of view would hold true;
possibilities for future study.
90
Academic Argumentation
Justified – (was there a good reason to undertake this investigation at
this time?)
Defendable – (methodologies used) assessing, critiquing, justifying,
defending evidence and data presented
Reproducible - supported by data/experimentation, systematic
Complete – tangible, ‘tells a story from beginning to end’
91
Publishing options
Different Publishing platforms: the pros and cons
92
It’s not just journals!
• Publishing in peer reviewed
journals
• Open access journals
• Online only journals / web sites
• Themed issues of journals
• Writing review essays / articles
• Book reviews
• Peer reviewing – process, ethics
• Writing books – (arts)
• Writing chapters (of books)
• Collaborative writing (any format)
• Providing supporting information –
databases etc – availability of data,
providing materials to others
• Article supported, evidenced or
given entirely in multimedia
(permissions etc)
• Video articles – no written words,
entirely spoken
• Conference proceedings - collected
volumes / edited volumes
• Self-publishing
93
Different formats serve different purposes
• You have a choice – make it a well-informed one
• Choose according to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Your career stage (first time publisher or well-respected peer reviewer)
Your goal
Your institutes’ goals
Your intended audience
Your funders’ requirements
Your personal style / preference
• The key
• take a strategic approach
• Be clear on your publishing goal
94
Where and why do you want to be read?
Think about:
• Align your publishing strategy with your career strategy (personal
professional) and research strategy (personal institute discipline)
• Timeliness – who is ‘hot’ / where
• Do you want feedback – challenge from others?
• Do you want replication?
• Do you want collaboration – to cross fields?
• Do you want recognition?
• Do you want funding / resources?
• Do you want to move up the market-readiness scale?
95
Which journal?
• Aim and scope of the journal
• Metrics e.g. IF
• Timeliness – is the journal producing a
special themed issues or is there a
particular reason a publication might
want to consider your work
• Timeline: Length of time from submission
to publication
• 1 or 2 stage review process. i.e. how
complex and lengthy is the review
process likely to be?
• Acceptance percentage
• Format prescriptions of the journal e.g.
specific word limit, figure limit
• Readership of the journal – read by the
‘right kind’ of academic, policy maker,
professional user?
• Distribution–is it online only, available
only in specialist institutions, or
accessible from most Universities
• Access Policy -Is it open access or not?
• Do you regularly cite from that journal?
• Writing style similar to your own natural
style
• Fees: Are there any publication charges to
pay?
• Personal contacts
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Impact Factor
• Measure of reflecting average number of recent citations during the
preceding two years
• Journal metric, not a measure of research organisations or individual
researchers
• Can be used to compare different journals in a certain field
• Numerous criticisms
• Significant differences between fields
• A simple mean is not a reasonable proxy of citations - affected by 'outliers'
• Impacted by editorial policies e.g. review articles
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Issues and trends
Open access, funders & much more
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What is Open Access?
• Open Access (OA) = online access at no charge to the user
to peer-reviewed scientific publications
to research data
• For publications:
OA comes after a decision to publish
OA does not interfere with patenting
• Two main OA publishing business models
Gold OA: costs covered (by authors) immediate OA
Green OA: deposit of manuscripts immediate/delayed OA
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Open access – the trends
• Global shift towards Open Access
OA increasingly required by research funders
Developing picture - across countries, disciplines, funders and publishers1
Growing >50% of scientific papers published in 2011 and increasing2
1 - http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/index.html
2 - Press Release IP-13-786, European Commission, 21 August 2013
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Open Access Claims
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Access to the scientific literature for all - including access to knowledge for citizens
Increased visibility and impact for authors?1
Avoiding duplication
Enhancing research through increased text and data mining
Increased visibility and return on investment for funders?2
Access to knowledge for citizens - reduced costs of dissemination
Transparent business model for publishers
Benefits to economy and society?3
•
1 - See for example, A Swan, The Open Access Citation Advantage
•
2 - See for example, Costs and business models in scientific research publishing, Wellcome Trust
•
3 - See for example, J. Sheehan Open Access: What are the Economic Benefits
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How it affects you?
• So why should I be bothered about Open Access, what would this
mean for me and the internationalisation of my research profile?
• Why would my funders be interested?
• Isn’t this unrealistic – the current publishing model is best?
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Open Access Issues
• Different approaches amongst countries, funders, research disciplines
etc.
• Need for consistent development of open access models and
approaches
• Who controls quality?
• Who pays?
• Is the business model sustainable?
• Decision may be made for you - Mandatory Open Access e.g.
Wellcome Trust, Horizon 2020
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Open Access to Data
This is the next stage in OA; if we are looking at open science, let’s
make it fully open: not just publications but data too
Considerations
• Reproducibility
• Developing picture
• Subject of active discussions - European Commission, G8, OECD etc.
• Many current studies on the economic impact of open data in many
fields
• Data underpinning publications is a small fraction of data in
lab/research group databases
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Questions?
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What not to do…
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Avoid focus
Avoid originality and personality
Write long contributions
Remove most implications and every speculation
Leave out illustrations, particularly good ones
Omit necessary steps of reasoning
Use many abbreviations and technical terms
Suppress humour
Quote numerous papers for self-evident statements
• How to write consistently boring scientific literature, K. Sand-Jensen, Oikos, 2007, 116, pp 723-727
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