Times Higher Education - Research intelligence - Now she'll work by her own rules

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-12-01

Summary:

As the research councils' dwindling flow of funding buoys up an increasingly select group of institutions, those listing on the margins could be forgiven for assuming that no senior research council figure would touch them with the proverbial bargepole. However, Astrid Wissenburg, former deputy chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council, declared herself delighted to have been appointed head of the office of the pro vice-chancellor for research, scholarship and quality at The Open University. But she is not expecting to be driven to repudiate any of the major policy decisions she helped to formulate and implement during her decade at the ESRC, including a two-month 'moment of glory' as interim chief executive in 2010.  'We were always conscious of how decisions would affect institutions both individually and collectively, but you are always aware what you are doing as a research council is from a national perspective. A particular institution may find a certain decision really annoying and disadvantageous, but that is just how things are,' she said. One decision that doubtless irked The Open University was last year's rejection of its joint bid with the University of East Anglia to host a doctoral training centre.  The confinement of ESRC doctoral studentships to just 21 consortia, involving 45 pre-1992 universities, was seized on by critics as proof that the research councils were pursuing an agenda of concentrating research in certain institutions. But Dr Wissenburg insisted that the councils' only intention was to concentrate funding on excellence.  She described The Open University - where she began work last month - as 'a very solid, mid-range research organisation' in ESRC terms, with funding levels on a par with the likes of the universities of Liverpool, St Andrews and Surrey. Nevertheless, she admitted that institutions outside the research elite faced 'hard choices' about how to leverage their areas of particular research strength to attract external funding. But she also conceded that a university such as The Open University - with a large number of students and a strong commitment to research-based teaching - needed to maintain a broad spread of research.  For this reason, a good performance in the research excellence framework (whose results will determine the allocation of quality-related funding beyond 2015) would be critically important for the research strategy that Dr Wissenburg will assist her pro vice-chancellor, Tim Blackman, to formulate and implement.  She was confident that despite the likely restriction of funding to research rated 3* or 4* in the REF, there would be little change in The Open University's place in the resourcing pecking order.  Dr Wissenburg's remit also includes overseeing the establishment of The Open University's fund for paying open-access fees, as required by Research Councils UK. As chair of RCUK's Research Outputs Group, she was instrumental in shaping its new open-access policy - not least in her capacity as RCUK representative on the Finch group, upon whose report the policy is based.  Many in the sector have expressed concerns about the financial implication of the report's preference for author-pays 'gold' open access over the repository-based 'green' option. But Dr Wissenburg defended the Finch report's choice, arguing that gold permits instant access and reuse, whereas green is not a 'sustainable solution' for publishers..."

Link:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=421949&c=1

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

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Date tagged:

12/01/2012, 16:22

Date published:

12/01/2012, 11:22