Four things no-one wants to admit about research culture

We all know that research culture is important to fix. And it’s integral to research quality.

And it is right that the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) is seeking to incorporate this into their periodic assessments and incentivise better behaviours.

However, there are a few truths about research culture that don’t seem to be coming up enough in our conversations. My worry is that we’re not really going to get to the heart of the problem if we don’t put them at the heart of our discussions.

What we define as “research culture” is not the thing we fix

The often-used Royal Society description of research culture defines it as the “behaviours, values, expectations, attitudes and norms of our research communities”. But when it comes to our research culture activities, these aren’t the things we address. We address policies, procedures and practices. That’s not to say that our culture isn’t made manifest in these things. But they are the symptoms, not the cause.

The truth is that it’s very hard to describe an institution’s values. And no, I don’t mean the five on their manifesto, but their actual values. And of course, part of the reason for this is that institutions, departments and research groups don’t really have collective values, attitudes and behaviours, only people do. Individual people.

Where most of us really interface with research culture is at the point we interface with another human. It’s about how one human treats another human. If you look lost, will someone offer to guide you? Will the rules be flexible when you really need them to be flexible? Are you given compassionate leave without a second thought?

And then at the grubbier end of human interaction: what happens when one human treats another human very badly? What’s the worst behaviour that the humans in power are prepared to tolerate?

The existence of a policy or practice that might ultimately make our lives better is due to the existence of a human who cared enough to pursue it (and likely fight for it) in the first place. But it’s ultimately in the application of that policy – is it applied kindly, generously, humanely, and thoroughly – that research culture happens. It’s the humans that make the culture.

The folk we employ to fix research culture can’t fix it

Research culture change is led, not managed.

Many UK HEIs now have research culture professionals, myself being one of them. Individuals or teams, often based in the research office, it’s the job of these poor souls to try and identify the biggest research culture issues facing their institution and develop programmes of activity to address them. And that will no doubt have some impact and it is certainly better than not having them.

However, when you look at the top three research culture issues facing most institutions, they are usually time, time, and time. Time to actually do research at all, time to do research well (to supervise well; to adhere to the best open and ethical practices, and so on. And time to lead well: to give people the time of day and make people-centred decisions.

And as we all know, time costs money. And the sort of money needed to really fix research culture on this scale is beyond the jurisdiction of most research middle-managers and sits right up there at the very top of the organisation.

But it’s not just money we need from leadership but, well, leadership. Principled, visible, value-infused leaders, who are not prepared to sacrifice what’s right for what’s lucrative. Nothing puts the kibosh on your research culture efforts more than one big ugly scandal involving a toxic research star the institution shied away from disciplining, or a research partnership with a company that doesn’t share the same values as those on your mission statement. And of course, these decisions are way above the pay grade – and often even the influence – of those nominally put in charge of “research culture”.

You need strong value-led leaders to really change your research culture – and the truth is that in the UK right now where 40 per cent of UK HEIs are running at a financial loss, most leaders are just trying to keep the lights on. And this leads to my next point.

The biggest institutional research culture issues aren’t institutional research culture issues

It’s very easy to point the finger at our beleaguered university leaders but whilst research is funded the way it’s funded, and assessed the way it’s assessed, there is a limit to what even university leaders can do. And no, of course it’s not nothing – they can lobby, they have networks, and there is plenty they do have jurisdiction over. But there is also plenty that individual institutions can’t fix on their own.

I’m talking the publish-or-perish culture which ultimately has its roots in publication-centric university rankings; the job precarity caused by short-term competitive grant funding; the gender and ethnicity-based inequalities which are prevalent in society at large; and of course the never-ending need to do more with less due to the financial starvation of the HE sector which, in England, is largely the result of the frozen student fee-cap.

This must make us question, whilst the Research Excellence Framework is focussed on holding institutions to account for research culture, who’s holding funders, governments and all other relevant parties to account? And who’s taking responsibility for bringing all those voices to the table?.

Research culture can’t be fixed in a REF window

Whilst in the UK we’re all scrambling to fix our research cultures in readiness for the 2029 REF, the truth is that an institution’s research culture has taken decades – or centuries in some cases – to build, and in many cases will take decades or centuries to rebuild. That’s not to say we shouldn’t start, but that the likelihood of seeing significant change from one REF to the next is pretty low.

For one thing, research culture is nested within academic culture which is nested within institutional culture which is nested in the national and international cultures of academia. And not only that, each of these cultures consists of many interconnected dimensions. And by fixing one, you might just break another.

So I’m not saying we can’t see the introduction of some better institutional policies, procedures and practices within a REF cycle. But true cultural change – the “we’ve always done it this way, and this is who we are” kind of cultural change – will take a whole lot longer.

So what?

So, I guess what I’m saying is, that if we really want to improve research culture, as a sector, yes we absolutely should start shining a light on it during REF exercises, but we really need to find a way to get to heart of what institutional research culture really is: the attitudes, values, behaviours and norms of those who work there, and especially of those who lead. This is a challenge for an exercise that insists on being institution-level, but the truth is, it’s individual people who make (or break) a culture.

We also need to focus not only on the stuff we’re doing inside our own institutions but beyond, to have an impact on the wider HE system where so many of our research culture challenges start. Institutions shouldn’t only be rewarded for getting their own house in order, but for promoting the systemic national and international reforms that will make institutional culture work so much easier.

Finally, we need to acknowledge that this is a long game. We’re not going to see much genuine research culture improvement in 2029, just a hell of a lot of frantic activity. It’s 2036 we should be planning for, and even that will be a staging post in what we’ve got to believe will be a journey worth making.

I’m grateful to conversations with Grace Murkett, Yolana Pringle and Helen Young which helped clarify my thoughts on these issues. All opinions and errors are my own of course.