Recognising & Rewarding Responsible Research Practice
Recognising and rewarding responsible research practice is about taking action to support and encourage behaviours that promote a healthy research culture and in turn reliable and robust research.
James Parry, Chief Executive, UKRIO – Introduction
SPEAKERS
Dr Stuart Richie, Psychologist and a Lecturer at King’s College London, discussed perverse incentives and what to do about them. Those of us who are interested in reforming scientific culture often talk about the perverse incentives that push researchers away from reliable research and towards mere publication and prestige-hunting. In his talk, Stuart Ritchie described some of these incentives, gave examples of the unfortunate effects they have, and then talked about how we might change the incentives to prioritise high-quality research. You can find Dr Stuart Richie’s slides here.
Dr Karen Stroobants, Research Leader at RAND Europe, briefly reflected on why reward and recognition in academia needs to and, in several places, is starting to undergo a rethink. She shared some insights from her work at the Royal Society, with a new researcher CV template as an adaptable tool to reward a range of researcher contributions including responsible research practice. Finally, she discussed how different stakeholders can and are already contributing to a reimagining of research assessment practices, including opportunities for early career researchers. Find Dr Karen Stroobants slides here.
Dr Elizabeth Adams, Workstream Lead – Research Culture at University of Glasgow, talked through how we might recognise and celebrate support for the careers of others? In 2019, the University of Glasgow introduced awards for research culture. Elizabeth outlineed the thinking behind these awards and shared learning from their implementation. She also contextualised them within the wider framework of the University’s research culture action plan, considered the levers within the University system which enabled culture change. Either through removing barriers to make it easy to ‘do the right thing’ or by ensuring appropriate recognition for those less visible but no less vital contributions to academic work. Find Dr Elizabeth Adams slides here.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Dr Stuart Richie, Psychologist and a Lecturer, at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King’s College London.
His research focuses on human cognitive development, and includes techniques from neuroimaging and behaviour genetics. Since failing to replicate a prominent psychology research paper while he was a PhD student, he has also been interested in scientific integrity, meta-science, and the “replication crisis”. His book on that topic, Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science, is out now.
Dr Karen Stroobants, Research Leader, RAND Europe
Dr Karen Stroobants co-founded the research culture blog MetisTalk and is a Research Leader at RAND Europe. She previously was leading the Science Policy Unit at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) – the UK’s professional body for chemical scientists – and led the RSC’s policy development on open access and scholarly communication. Prior to joining the RSC, Karen worked on the research culture programme of the Royal Society – the UK’s national academy of science – and led the development of a new researcher CV template, the Royal Society’s Résumé for researchers.
Karen moved to the UK initially to conduct research on the molecular basis of Alzheimer’s disease at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge for which she received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellowship and a By-Fellowship at Churchill College. Prior to this she obtained her PhD in chemistry at KU Leuven in Belgium. Karen is currently a Board Member of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), and in this capacity supports the MCAA’s policy and advocacy work and represents the organisation at European Research Area stakeholder meetings and other policy-related activities.
Dr Elizabeth Adams, Workstream Lead – Research Culture, University of Glasgow
Dr Elizabeth Adams helped to establish the University of Glasgow’s Lab for Academic Culture in late 2020, where she is now the strategic workstream lead for research culture, working on actions to progress support for careers, recognition of contributions, research integrity and the future of research assessment. Dr Elizabeth co-convene the University’s Research Culture and Careers Group. Prior to this, she established and led the University’s Researcher Development team to deliver professional and career development opportunities for ~5,000 research students and staff across the Institution.