6. Research

Provost's Green Paper

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6. Research

UCL will enhance its position as one of the world’s leading research institutions with a continued focus on single and cross-disciplinary research and a commitment to the application of new knowledge to addressing major societal challenges.

Why research?

Research is fundamental to UCL's mission and we are recognised globally as a research powerhouse. Its significance is reflected in the accounts: annual research income – all of it earned through competition – is twice tuition income; and government research funding through block grant and research council awards is three times government support for teaching. The latter ratio will change as direct teaching support declines over coming years.

UCL's research ranges across all disciplinary areas. It extends from fundamental biological research that develops our understanding of the nature of life, or from philosophical discourse, to applied engineering and biochemical manufacturing, to clinical practice and drug discovery. Research intensity is ubiquitous across the whole institution.

UCL's performance in the national 2008 Research Assessment Exercise was outstanding, and competitiveness has continued to increase.

UCL's current position and future strategy

UCL is well positioned to thrive in the tight funding environment of the coming five years. By any metric, our research performance has become increasingly competitive and powerful in recent years. It is reflected in our competitiveness in winning research grants, by the impact of our research in terms both of its scientific, social and economic impact, and in terms of its innovativeness and cross-disciplinarity.

Table 1: research funding at the top 5

Of the many exciting research developments at UCL, two major investments will result in significant research breakthroughs in the next 10 years, and go a long way to securing UCL’s leading position in Europe in life and medical sciences:

the UK Centre for Medical Research & Innovation – a partnership with the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust – is the most exciting scientific development in the UK. It provides a unique opportunity to extend and enhance UCL’s scientific impact and for us to make a major contribution to the further development of translational medicine in the UK at a time when it is seriously under threat

the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits & Behaviour. UCL was chosen through a competitive process to host this innovative Centre on the strength of its neuroscience and its strategic vision. Capital funding for the building is being contributed by the Sainsbury family’s Gatsby Trust and the Wellcome Trust, and the centre will comprise a partnership between them and UCL. It will bring significant additional strength to UCL’s world-leading neuroscience.

UCL is positioned to pursue a research agenda that is both extraordinary and in close alignment with our fundamental values. The principles of this approach are laid out in our 2011 Research Strategy and Implementation Plan, Delivering a Culture of Wisdom, which explains the rationale behind “a culture of wisdom”, describes the UCL Grand Challenges as a mechanism for delivery and highlights UCL Public Policy as a key agent to influence decision-makers.

The delivery of a culture of wisdom over the next 10 years will depend on UCL’s ability to:

continue to foster excellence in discipline-based research;
expand our distinctive cross-disciplinary research, collaboration and partnerships;
increase the impact of our research, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

These aims are described in more detail below, as are the practical steps needed to enable UCL to seize the opportunity – and live up to its obligation – to improve the circumstances in which the people of today and future generations live.

Focus on excellence

The excellence – of all kinds and across all disciplines – of its staff and their research activity is a prerequisite for the delivery of UCL’s research vision.

Expectations of individual academic staff

UCL has defined both its expectations of academic staff and its obligations to them. UCL expects academic staff to undertake research meeting international standards of excellence and to disseminate the results of that research through appropriate channels, including publication, teaching, commercialisation and engagement with policy and the public.
The forthcoming Research Excellence Framework provides definitions of standards of quality that, although not unproblematic, are widely accepted across the research community. They help us to define an overall institutional aspiration: that all academic departments aspire to the top levels of research activity, and that all academic staff undertaking research should aim to achieve a rating of "internationally excellent".
Our target is that more than 95% of UCL academic research staff should attain this level of excellence.

Excellence across a broad research base

UCL will build on its existing world-class profile by creating international leadership in selected areas where it has demonstrably outstanding strengths and critical mass, while maintaining a broad base of fundamental academic disciplines through which future priority areas can be developed and nurtured.
UCL’s research aspirations will be underpinned over the next decade by consolidating (and more explicitly codifying) best practice, as well as being open to experimentation and innovation.
Even in the context of financial constraints, UCL will not allow its aspirations regarding the expansion of knowledge to diminish. Utility is central to its concerns, but not the extent of them. The university will value, and continue to support, research that asks the most fundamental questions.
The realisation of UCL’s research vision requires thriving and engaged communities across the board, from arts and humanities to the basic and applied sciences and medicine.
We will support a UCL Research Frontiers programme – running in parallel with UCL Grand Challenges – of cross-disciplinary enquiry into areas that have the potential to change fundamentally the way humanity understands important subjects, such as the origins of the universe, life, humanity, consciousness, aesthetics and language. Support will be given to such research initiatives as well as to the dissemination of findings in order to maximise their impact.

Recruitment

UCL must have in place effective mechanisms for the identification and recruitment of outstanding individuals and research groups in all areas of academic endeavour and from around the world. Appropriate candidates are not restricted to those within academia but also from industry, commerce and public bodies.
In order to attract the best researchers worldwide, UCL must be able to offer appropriate incentives. Competitive salaries form only part of this. Equally important are aspects of the research environment: space, cutting-edge equipment, access to gifted and ambitious graduate students, freedom from excessive and burdensome administrative duties, appropriate support for teaching responsibilities and a culture in which both discovery and application are cherished.

The next generation

The recruitment and training of high-quality early career researchers are critical to the university's long-term success. These individuals can generate the vibrancy and vitality of UCL’s academic life today, with many becoming the leaders of tomorrow.
UCL will support a 'whole career' approach and create opportunities for younger researchers to take leadership roles around new initiatives.

Research students

UCL will seek to increase opportunities for the most promising young minds from the UK and overseas, many of whom will become the next generation of researchers.
A particular focus will be the development of strategic and innovative programmes – such as four-year PhD and EngD programmes, and centres for doctoral training – especially at the interface between disciplines. Cross-disciplinary awards will be used to encourage research students to strengthen their research in areas other than their primary discipline.
Support for career skills development is important to allow our research students to flourish. UCL will continue to review and enhance the UCL Graduate School's comprehensive skills-development programme for research students, providing courses that augment academic studies and enhance life skills and future employability, complementing the graduate training offered by departments and individual research supervisors.
The university will also work with sponsors from public, charitable and private sectors, and with national and international agencies, to offer scholarships for graduate training. UCL recognises that there is a need for high-level, long-term engagement with non-academic research institutions to consolidate new funding streams.

Ethical framework

Research can only be excellent if it is conducted within an ethical framework. UCL is committed to maintaining the integrity and probity of scholarship, and to ensuring that all research is conducted and disseminated honestly, accurately and in accordance with the highest professional standards and statutory requirements.
Researchers’ responsibility to conduct research ethically is complemented by an institutional commitment to the academic freedom of those undertaking research, provided that such freedom is exercised within national and international law.

Cross-disciplinarity

Strengthening impact through cross-disciplinary research

Outstanding problem- and curiosity-driven research conducted by individuals and small groups is the bedrock upon which a culture of wisdom is built. Through interaction across the disciplines, UCL’s collective subject-specific knowledge can be made greater than the sum of its parts.
It is through such interaction that our research is then best placed to yield solutions that can address effectively aspects of the major global issues of the 21st century.
UCL will, therefore, increase and strengthen as appropriate cross-disciplinary research: bringing our excellent specialisms together and optimising their joint impact. This interaction requires a more directed and proactive approach:

sustaining a broad and excellent research base;
supporting those academic departments that already adopt a multidisciplinary approach;
establishing new academic departments to address problems demanding diverse expertise;
providing thematic contexts for cross-disciplinary interaction;
forming thematically focused centres that draw on expertise from across our academic departments;
facilitating and promoting research through UCL Grand Challenges;
research which transcends faculty and departmental boundaries will be further encouraged. When gaps in expertise spanning a number of fields are identified, departments and faculties will be encouraged to adopt a cooperative approach to joint appointments. Any organisational or financial factors that currently impede such activity will be minimised.

A set of UCL Research Themes has been identified in order to encourage cross-disciplinary interaction. To facilitate collaboration and the formation of communities, researchers and research groups can affiliate themselves to one or more of these themes in the online UCL Institutional Research Information System.

UCL Grand Challenges

Overarching all cross-disciplinary collaboration are the UCL Grand Challenges, the mechanism through which concentrations of specialist expertise across and beyond UCL can be brought together to address aspects of the world’s key problems. It also provides an environment in which researchers are encouraged to think about how their work intersects with and impacts upon global issues.
UCL will expand activity within the initial four Grand Challenges – Global Health, Sustainable Cities, Intercultural Interaction and Human Wellbeing – developing within each a variety of thematic strands.
UCL Grand Challenges create networking opportunities (building community across disciplines), provide spaces for debate (to stimulate novel questions), facilitate innovative research and, ultimately, influences the improvement of policy and practice. The Grand Challenges both nourish ideas naturally arising from academics' concerns and curiosities, and coordinate institution-wide responses to external agenda. They also complement UCL Research Frontiers’ support of exploratory and curiosity-driven research.
UCL will expand the opportunities for involvement with UCL Grand Challenges, within and beyond the university. It will maximise the impact of the UCL Grand Challenges on policy and practice, and engagement with the public worldwide.
In this, the UCL enterprise agenda advanced in the next section of the Green Paper will be a major supporting factor.

Impact

Excellent cross-disciplinary research will generate relevant and robust solutions to aspects of the world’s major problems. UCL must now engage much more proactively in sharing these solutions and influencing their adoption through: scholarly outputs; public engagement; influence on policy and practice; enterprise activity; and translational research. We are also committed to maximising the impact of research that advances the frontiers of knowledge.

Outputs

UCL – already the 15th most-cited university in the world and the second most-cited in Europe, according to Essential Science Indicators analysis – must ensure that the products of its research are as widely available as possible.

UCL Discovery will act as an accessible online portal providing a complete record of outputs in terms of publications for the use of those within the institution as well as the external community. UCL will ensure that where appropriate all outputs are entered into the UCL Research Publications Service electronic system (and thus accessible through UCL Discovery). UCL will consider providing an e-publishing infrastructure for departmental use.

The functionality of the Institutional Research Information Service (IRIS), a fully inclusive database of all UCL’s research activities, will be expanded to maximise its utility both for internal planning purposes and as a resource for external stakeholders (such as potential academic collaborators and funding agencies) wishing to gain an insight into the extent of UCL’s activity in and across particular areas.

Strategic partnerships

As indicated in Section 3 above (Collaboration), UCL will form strategic partnerships – for example with other research organisations, with commerce and industry, and with healthcare providers – to enable the impact of our research to be widened and deepened.

UCL will advocate the concentration of research funding and doctoral education in those regional hubs offering a critical mass of research excellence, with which peaks of excellence in other institutions could collaborate as appropriate. The establishment of flexible part-time affiliations with UCL for suitably research-active academics at less research-intensive universities will be considered, as will the creation of pathways through which students could transfer to UCL as their research potential emerges.

UCL will further enhance existing international partnerships, and create new ones as appropriate, particularly those that have a bearing on social, environmental, legal and health issues globally, including capacity-building.

Influence

UCL will continue its commitment to public engagement, both as a method of being better informed about public concerns and attitudes, and as a means of influencing public opinion and understanding the barriers to adapting individual and mass behaviour. Without diminishing the profundity of its research, UCL must make it accessible and comprehensible to the public, and engage in responsible and mutually beneficial debate.

UCL will further develop its reputation as a source of high-quality research which can inform policymaking, and as a source of evidence-based policy solutions. It will fully exploit the opportunities offered by membership of and engagement with public bodies and seek to increase its contribution where it has less influence. In particular UCL will seek to bring its expertise in the arts, humanities and social and historical sciences to bear on matters of public, policy and commercial concern.

UCL will work with governments at all levels, as well as with non-governmental organisations, think tanks and others, to identify and respond to public policy needs. Through the institution-wide UCL Public Policy programme, the university will build on those existing connections between academics and policymakers, enabling external agencies to identify sources of relevant wisdom and UCL to better anticipate and respond swiftly to emerging policy issues. Public policy events and working papers, drawing on cross-disciplinary expertise, will be produced on a regular basis.

In recognition that corporate policies and practices have a significant impact on global issues, UCL will proactively share its research findings with business leaders through its thematic communities and institutes. This will in turn lead businesses benefiting from UCL expertise to view it as an exceptionally strong source of wise solutions.

UCL will build its connections with alumni and friends, many of whom are influential policymakers and practitioners. They will be engaged as potential advocates of wise solutions and as potential research collaborators, advisors and funders.

Proactive communications

UCL’s communications functions must continue to: raise the university’s profile – regionally, nationally and globally; ensure that UCL’s reputation reflects the quality and purpose of its research; engage with external events and emerging issues; and analyse key opinion formers' perception of UCL and their communications needs.
A major element in this will continue to be the public promotion of specific research outcomes as exemplars of institutional quality and purpose. However, the successful delivery of a culture of wisdom requires more than an excellent institutional profile. It requires a shift in emphasis from reputation management to influence. UCL’s communications tools must be developed and deployed as compelling delivery mechanisms of wise solutions to key decision-makers.
This will require the identification of audiences in more specific segments (eg by nature of the problems for which they need solutions), the framing of wise counsel in ways likely to influence them and the employment of appropriate channels to reach them (eg specialist media).
Channels must be developed to facilitate not just the dissemination of research findings, but also commentary on current and emerging issues in media considered authoritative by policymakers and practitioners. Any disincentives to academics engaging in this activity must be removed.

Research and the wider UCL agenda

It is essential that the strategy underpinning UCL research be integrated with the university's strategies for Human Resources, Scholarships, Estates & Facilities, Development & Alumni Relations, Information Services, Public Policy and Communications & Marketing, as well as the following.

International

UCL defines itself as a global university in terms of its impact, leadership and opportunities. This vision is particularly relevant to UCL’s research activities, many of which are international in nature, whether because of subject matter or partnership. UCL will seek out partnerships with organisations around the world where our strengths are complementary, and where we can help to build capacity.

London

UCL research must be brought to bear on the city that is its home. London itself poses a set of complex and systemic problems – for example, in the economic, environmental, health and cultural spheres – which can be resolved only through the deployment of cross-disciplinary expertise in collaboration with local communities, with governance structures and with other world-class London organisations. Our work in London will inform and inspire the development of solutions on a global scale.

Learning & Teaching

Learning and teaching at UCL has always been, and will continue to be, informed by its research activities and delivered by experts in the field. Students at all levels should be exposed to cutting-edge research and research-led teaching. The development, over time, of more cross-disciplinary undergraduate and graduate curricula will provide a virtuous feedback loop to research, as well an appreciation of the benefits of working across disciplines.

UCL must better articulate, define and demonstrate how learning and teaching is informed by research and scholarship. We will also fully exploit our characteristics as a research-intensive university in order to offer a high-quality education and the best possible value for money. In particular, we will ensure that students benefit from a high-quality and well-resourced research environment which offers access to world-class academics, equipment and facilities. Furthermore, we will seek to embed the ethos of the Grand Challenges in learning and teaching at UCL by ensuring that all students have an opportunity to engage in cross-disciplinary activity and learning beyond their dominant discipline.

Enterprise

Excellent research underpins the ability of UCL Enterprise to deliver impact through: education and training in entrepreneurship; social enterprise; corporate partnerships; industrially related and translational research; commercial research contracts; consultancy; continuing professional development; student businesses; commercialisation of intellectual property through spin-out companies; and licensing and product development.

Health

UCL is committed to the pursuit of research excellence in fundamental life and medical sciences and the effective translation of research outcomes into health benefits. UCL’s research strategy supports cross-disciplinarity across our life and medical sciences and beyond, and complements the UCL School of Life & Medical Sciences’ focus on generating enhanced societal and economic impact, and the forging of strong collaborations – including UCL Partners – in which UCL will act as the research hub.

Public Engagement

Effective public engagement is a prerequisite of research impact, both by understanding the public’s varied concerns, beliefs and behaviour, and by responding with relevant proposals. UCL’s programmes of engagement with communities – local, regional, national and around the world – must ensure effective two-way dialogue, through which wise insights can be applied effectively.

Enablement

Excellence is a prerequisite, but not a guarantor, of productivity. UCL will nurture a positive working environment and culture that maximises creativity and impact, while providing efficient and effective mechanisms of support for research activity. The potential impact of well-supported, excellent research can be maximised only in the context of pragmatic and flexible planning.

Infrastructure

UCL must provide researchers with cutting-edge infrastructure, facilities, equipment and resources in order to enable them to compete with the best in the world. Surpluses will be reinvested to replace previously available external infrastructure funding.

UCL will address the complexities of securing sustainable funding for research infrastructure. It will consider both shared and off-campus facilities where appropriate, as a cost-effective method of maintaining infrastructure while raising UCL's profile outside of London and providing the opportunity to work with centres of excellence in the regions.

Investment in cross-disciplinarity

Building on the UCL Research Themes, cross-disciplinary research networks, centres and institutes have been established through central and faculty investment and embedded within UCL’s governance and planning procedures. Whether physical or virtual, these research hubs create opportunities for building research communities around specific issues, forming new collaborations, facilitating the training of postgraduate students, responding swiftly to external funding calls, leveraging the acquisition of external support, optimising the impact of the resulting research and working with industrial and other partners to realise the economic and social potential of their activities.

Further communities will be formed and centres established as a result of horizon scanning. The identification of dynamic and imaginative leaders is crucial: individuals who will galvanise disparate groups from around UCL and provide long-term vision and commitment to the project, while existing centres and initiatives will continue to be overseen to ensure that they maintain their vitality and deliver on UCL’s objectives.

Funding

UCL will ensure that comprehensive, fully resourced and sustainable funding streams and mechanisms are in place for research activity, either from external agencies or from the use of internal resources.

There are three main activities through which UCL seeks funding for research to complement the QR block grant: grant applications, engagement with commercial partners and philanthropic fundraising. Mechanisms will be developed to ensure greater communication and cooperation between the individuals and groups involved in order to maximise funding opportunities and to help avoid overlaps and inconsistencies in approaches to potential funders and donors.

Grant applications: UCL will seek to increase the number and quality of grant applications especially for longer-term awards, by providing a greater level of support for applicants and removing any disincentives which make academics, especially in non-scientific areas, reluctant to apply. Such measures will include increased administrative support for the application process, alongside structured programmes of advice and mentorship, including support through the School Research Facilitators (SRFs). UCL will engage fully with the major funding bodies, both nationally and in Europe, including consideration of entering into framework or partnership agreements.

Social and commercial partners: There are significant opportunities for the UCL research community to provide expertise, skills, services and products to external partners, collaborators and customers. We will establish UCL as a leading research collaborator and provider of knowledge-based services to the commercial and voluntary sectors as part of our commitment to long-term impact and sustainable economic prosperity for the UK. UCL will respond to the priorities of business and industry and seek to maximise the mutual benefit of enterprise activities such as contract research, consultancy, licensing and continuing professional development.

Philanthropic fundraising: The Development and Alumni Relations Office prioritises fundraising in support of key institutional objectives. Indeed, this alignment is essential to make the fundraising case persuasive to potential donors. UCL Grand Challenges will provide an effective ‘narrative’ to engage fundraising prospects; presented alongside UCL Research Frontiers, it conveys the inherent value of excellent research of any kind, and the socially beneficial purposes to which that research can and must be put.

Beyond these three core funding streams, UCL will take every opportunity to extend and diversify its portfolio of research funding sources. Practical measures will be introduced to improve UCL’s competitiveness and to maximise its research income from all sources.

Administration

UCL will develop supportive administrative and financial structures that will facilitate and underpin research, enabling academics to use their research time to maximum effect, together with information networks to facilitate communication and inform strategy. Central coordination of shared facilities and complex grant applications will be enhanced.

The knowledge base and benchmarking

UCL will ensure regular, reliable and transparent reporting of appropriate research performance indicators, both quantitative and qualitative, at the departmental, faculty and institutional level. This will be particularly significant in the context of the Research Excellence Framework.

UCL will continue to integrate the systems in which information about its researchers’ activities are held, with the key principle being that a single data source – accurate, authoritative, comprehensive and secure – should be held centrally, and be simple to update and to use for multiple purposes elsewhere. Such a database will facilitate strategic and managerial decision making and provide information for the development of major cross-disciplinary funding applications.
UCL will set ambitious but realistic performance targets and benchmark its research performance against its major national and international competitors, with timeframes for improvement defined. UCL will improve its recording, measurement and evaluation of research impact.

Responsiveness, engagement and influence

UCL must respond to the needs for research and training of the UK government and the corporate community, as well as regional and local priorities. The university must be responsive to the strategic objectives of the major national and international funding agencies, both public and private.
Furthermore, UCL must play a prominent role in helping to inform and shape these research agendas. UCL will ensure that its representation on the councils and panels of most of the major funding agencies is maintained, extended to other agencies and used to improve mutual understanding.
UCL must both respond to relevant consultations and take a proactive position in influencing higher education policy. In parallel with using its collective research expertise to provide wise counsel, it must use its collective sector expertise to propose ways in which limited funding can be most effectively and efficiently invested.

Horizon scanning

Horizon scanning is the key to sustaining our pioneering tradition. UCL will adopt a more proactive and coordinated approach to planning by ensuring that the university is well prepared to respond effectively to future initiatives. UCL will increasingly seek to identify new directions in research and scholarship and to bring people into these areas, building up a critical mass where appropriate.

UCL has increased its horizon scanning, not just in response to potential funding opportunities, but as platforms for considering future research and strategic priorities. The university will build on activity to date, such as roundtables and town meetings, at which academics from disparate disciplines can be brought together to develop broad themes (eg the environment, energy and computational biology). UCL will increase the input and advice of external experts from both public and private sectors in the UK and internationally.

Governance

The UCL Vice-Provost (Research) – VP(R) – has responsibility for promoting, supporting and facilitating world-class research at UCL, and is responsible to the Provost and the Council for setting the research agenda.

Research priorities are determined at Faculty level by the Deans in consultation with heads of divisions, institutes and departments. Faculties identify their priorities – including infrastructure requirements – in their individual strategic plans, which are then considered by the Provost’s Senior Management Team. In the future, scarce resources will need to be directed to those developments with the greatest potential for profound impact, in line with agreed strategic priorities; greater cooperation will be required between faculties in making these decisions.

Research Excellence Framework

UCL will embed robust processes for making the submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 and subsequent exercises, including: appropriate consideration of equality issues in our staff selection policy; appropriate consultation with academic units; selection of high quality outputs; data collection and quality assurance; and developing impact case studies which offer a representative insight to the breadth of benefits UCL’s research directly provides to the global community. We will also ensure that we demonstrate the quality and vitality of the research environment at UCL.