My research culture is better than yours | Wonkhe

"So whilst I disagree with Iain Mansfield that it’s a mistake to allocate 25 per cent of REF outcomes to research culture, we need to make sure this has the desired long-term effect. The risk of pitting us all against each other in some unholy research culture competition is that hyper-competition was always at the heart of so many of our unhelpful research cultures. In fact, a lot of the research culture challenges we face are outwith the agency and reach of individual institutions, leaving collaboration as our only mechanism to create real change.

One thing is for sure: if we don’t get this right and research culture does become the next big competition in HE, we all know who’s going to win: our large, old and wealthy friends, the Very Research Intensives. Not only do they do more research – a fundamental prerequisite when it comes to research culture – they also benefit from many other forms of social and economic ‘research capital’...."