About research culture at UCL

Find out how we are building an inclusive, collaborative, and innovative research culture at UCL

Why research culture matters

Research culture describes the environment in which research happens. It's made up of expectations, values, attitudes and behaviours of the people within it and shapes how research is created, stored and shared. 

At UCL, we want to create a research environment that facilitates excellence and where we support one another to succeed. Our 10-year Research Culture Roadmap, created in partnership with the research community, sets out how we will develop a fair, collaborative, and inclusive research culture. 

UCL is currently delivering a programme of initiatives that will develop our research culture. They’ve been designed in conversation with our research community to make progress against the Roadmap.

The Research Culture Programme (RCP)

Background

Consultation (2021)

Over the years, the UCL research community has led many activities to support a healthy research culture. In 2021, UCL carried out a consultation of our research community that generated 2.4k survey responses, 30 hours of focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 135 colleagues. The findings from UCL's consultation were published in an internal report in December 2021. These mirrored the findings detailed in sector-wide reports such as those by Wellcome and the Royal Society.

Key insights of the consultation

• UCL researchers want UCL’s research culture to be less competitive and more inclusive, collaborative, supportive and creative than it currently is. Their ideal research culture would include a greater focus on  people, in addition to existing focus on outputs.
• Many researchers acknowledge that UCL is innovative, excellent and ambitious. However, this excellence is perceived as coming at the expense of workplace experience and wellbeing
• Problematic behaviours are largely driven by workload-related pressures, a system that is perceived to reward problematic behaviours and institutional systems and processes that are not considered fit for purpose.
• Management is pivotal in setting local culture in a large, devolved organisation. At UCL, it appears undervalued, and it is not incentivised as it should be. Workload was mentioned as a barrier to good management practices.
• Female researchers had less positive experiences than their male counterparts particularly with equitable and merit-based career progression. More data is needed to understand the varied experiences of minority groups, but responses generally supported the hypothesis that staff from these groups face additional burdens due to a backdrop of underrepresentation, societal racism and prejudice.
• The more senior the researcher the greater their job satisfaction. Early career researchers and established researchers reported the most negative experiences related to feeling valued, experiencing discrimination, bullying and/or harassment, support for wellbeing, and career progression.
• From March to July 2022, we took the learnings from the consultation, shaped them into a set of recommendations and launched 39 cross-UCL and faculty-led projects to enhance research culture. These projects allowed us to pilot new approaches and start responding to some of the things you told us were priorities. The projects were supported by Enhancing Research Culture funds. 

Enhancing Research Culture Programme (2022)

From March to July 2022, we took the learnings from the consultation, shaped them into a set of recommendations and launched 39 cross-UCL and faculty-led projects to enhance research culture. 

These projects allowed us to pilot new approaches and start responding to some of the things you told us were priorities. The projects were supported by the Enhancing Research Culture funds. 

Currently, the Research Culture Programme - based in RIGE, led by the Research Culture team, and in partnership with the research community - facilitates the delivery of the Research Culture Roadmap.

We do this by supporting projects and initiatives led by faculties and VP Offices while also leading our own projects. Some projects are led and/or funded by the RCP, while others are independently run across UCL and align with the Roadmap.

The RCP is Sponsored by Professor Geraint Rees, Vice-Provost for Research, Innovation and Global Engagement (RIGE).

Delivering the Research Culture Roadmap 

In 2022, we built on our previous learnings and successes of the ERCP to create the Research Culture Roadmap, setting out our plan of action for the next 10 years.

The Research Culture Roadmap provides the vision and strategic direction for UCL’s institutional efforts to enhance its research culture. It sets out five themes and three enablers to guide work at all levels of the institution. 

Since its inception, UCL has continued to deliver and support a programme of cross-UCL and faculty-led initiatives that deliver against the themes and goals of the Roadmap.

Explore the Roadmap

Current initiatives

From faculty-led projects to cross-UCL collaborations, our programmes, including the Wellcome and UKRN initiatives, drive meaningful change in forming a positive research culture at UCL.

Faculty-led and Cross-UCL Projects

We support faculties with funding to drive initiatives that enhance Research Culture internally. These projects address unique challenges and opportunities while contributing to university-wide collaboration and shared learning.

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UKRN Open Research Programme

UCL, as part of the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), received funding to launch the Open Research Programme 'Growing and Embedding Open Research in Institutional Practice and Culture’ in 2023.

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Wellcome Programme - Enabling collaboration and team science

With a funding of £1m from Wellcome’s Institutional Funding for Research Culture, this programme has been developed in response to evidence from UCL’s research community of significant challenges to collaborating in team-based research. 

The ‘Enabling collaboration and team science’ programme comprises of three distinct, but interlinked, interventions: 

• Creating collaborative connections outside UCL
• Talent management of research professionals 
• Collaborative research leadership programme 

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How does the Research Culture team work?

This enables us to adopt a holistic approach to creating impactful and lasting change.

Get in touch

Have questions or comments? Reach out to our team at researchculture@ucl.ac.uk. UCL staff and students can also access the Research Culture SharePoint for more information.