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(UK) What’s wrong with research culture? – Chemistry World (Rachel Brazil | September 2021)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on October 16, 2021
Keywords: Institutional responsibilities, International, Research integrity, Research results, Supervision

The Linked Original Item was Posted On September 28, 2021

Artistic treatment of UK flag

A knotty mess of problems affects people doing academic research in the UK. Rachel Brazil tries to untie the tangle

UK research, including chemistry, punches above its weight. A 2017 report commissioned by government found the UK has 4.1% of the world’s researchers but produces 15% of the world’s most highly cited articles. This might then indicate a healthy and flourishing research community, but many say this output comes with too high a human cost. They point to a lack of diversity in academic appointments, a leaky pipeline that sees female researchers leaving the sector before they reach senior roles, and alarmingly high levels of bullying and harassment. In addition, early career researchers face years of temporary contracts and insecurity, with only 10% likely to gain permanent academic positions.

Even though this discussion is very much about what’s dysfunctional in the research culture in the UK, we have drawn upon its links and ideas in our work in Australasia.  We have included links to 17 related items.

‘Previously we’ve tried to tackle most of these issues in isolation,’ explains Karen Stroobants, a research leader at the policy research organisation RAND Europe. But it’s possible to see them collectively as the results of problems with the ‘research culture’. ‘[The concept] has recognized that there are really strong links between all these areas and there’s an interconnectedness to the system that we don’t fully capture when we try to address an issue in isolation.’ Stroobants was previously science policy lead at the Royal Society of Chemistry and part of the Royal Society’s research culture programme team. From 2017, the Royal Society started looking into a number of problems that together add up to an unhealthy research culture in UK universities, which often impacts laboratory-based subjects such as chemistry more than others.

The reality of the very competitive environment is you get collateral damage

So where did it all go wrong? According to Stroobants, one of the central issues is hyper-competition. ‘Competition can be good, but I think we are now in an area where there is competition to such extent that it is causing negative consequences,’ she explains. Mark Miodownik, a materials scientist at University College London, agrees. ‘The number of people who want to have a career in science has gone up exponentially in the last few decades.’ In recent years he has been interested in how we can improve research culture and chaired a 2018 Royal Society conference on this issue. ‘There is no way I would get a job now on the CV I produced to get my first job and I think if you talk to most academic my age, they will say the same thing,’ he concedes. But the problem isn’t restricted to hiring. ‘Once you’re in the department, if you’re not producing high quality research papers and getting grants, you’re under a lot of pressure,’ he explains. ‘The reality of the very competitive environment is you get collateral damage.’

What’s wrong with research culture?
A knotty mess of problems affects people doing academic research in the UK. Rachel Brazil tries to untie the tangle

Related Reading

(Australia) Gaslighting the world: Coalition pressured its own scientists to save reef from ‘at risk’ label – Crikey (Kishor Napier-Raman | September 2021)

(UK) “Positively Disrupt(ing) Research Culture for the Better”: An Interview with Alexandra Freeman of Octopus – Scholarly Kitchen (Rick Anderson | August 2021)

(Denmark) Danish researchers under attack ‘withdrawing from public debate’ – Times Higher Education (Ellie Bothwell | May 2021)

Can We Re-engineer Scholarly Journal Publishing? An Interview with Richard Wynne, Rescognito – Scholarly Kitchen (Alice Meadows & Tim Vines | March 2021)

(Russia) Unethical Practices in Research and Publishing: Evidence from Russia – Scholarly Kitchen (Anna Abalkina | February 2021)

Kindness alone won’t improve the research culture – Nature (Julie Gould | December 2020)

(UK) Science leaders lament ‘insufficient progress’ on tackling bullying – THE (Anna McKie | August 2020)

How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry – Issues in Science and Technology (Mark Neff | January 2020)

(China) China bans cash rewards for publishing papers – Nature (Smriti Mallapaty | February 2020)

Competition drives researchers to counselling – and exit door – Times Higher Education (Jack Grove | January 2020)

(China) Five ways China must cultivate research integrity – Nature (Li Tang | November 2019)

(US) NIH apologizes for its failure to address sexual harassment in science – STAT (Lev Facher | February 2019)

(US) Overdue: a US advisory board for research integrity – Nature (C. K. Gunsalus, et al | February 2019)

Harassment should count as scientific misconduct – Nature (Erika Marín-Spiotta | May 2018)

Why is so much research dodgy? Blame the Research Excellence Framework – The Guardian (Alex Jones and Andrew Kemp: October 2016)

The long march to open science – Horizons (Sven Titz September 2016)

‘Publish or Perish’ – The Wicked Problem Threatening Academic Research – The Ethics Centre blog (Virginia Barbour 2016)

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