Research Culture Action Plan

People are at the heart of everything we do, and as a university, we want to create environments where people and their ideas can thrive. Whilst there are examples of great teamwork and people supporting the careers of others, this isn't everyone's experience. Evidence from consultations across the institution has identified a need to improve behaviours in some areas and better understand how instances of bullying, discrimination, prejudice, and other kinds of inappropriate behaviour have been tolerated in others. 

We are working closely with our community on an ambitious two-year project, endorsed by the University’s Executive Board, to tackle inappropriate behaviours and promote positive ones across the organisation. This builds on established positive activity in this area, including our 'Leading Through Values' and 'Bystander Training' programmes, as well as the development of our online EDI Toolkit. Taking a holistic and bold approach, the project tackles difficult issues head-on with the aim of creating lasting cultural change. 

The initial work is centred on three key themes:  

• ensuring our policies and procedures are fit for purpose 
• developing resources and networks to power culture change  
• raising the visibility of this issue and the challenge we're taking on 

Open Research applies the principles of openness across the research cycle, from inception and design, to data collection, analysis, and dissemination. Adopting these practices is important to us as it increases the rigour, transparency, and reproducibility of our research, promotes collaboration and inclusivity, and enhances public trust in the research we do.  

As part of this work, we are: 

• implementing a comprehensive training programme in open research practices
• collating existing University training and resources, as well as developing new training through engagement with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) Open Research Programme  
• recruiting colleagues to participate in UKRN-accredited train-the-trainer courses, enabling them to deliver open research training across the University  
• establishing a flourishing network of Open Research Champions 

Consultations with our research community have highlighted that time is a major barrier to enabling and sustaining a positive research culture. We want our community to have quality time to nurture creativity, solve problems, and pursue professional development opportunities.  

The project explores ways to support researchers in protecting time for research and research-enabling activity.  

Initiatives include: 

• internal and external research retreat opportunities 
• co-creating an accessible online guide and a dedicated workshop for retreat facilitation 
• developing a vacation scholarship scheme in collaboration with the Developing Excellent Researchers Group 
• sharing and promoting innovative ways to 'release quality time' across the institution, starting with an event to engage academic unit leaders 

Research integrity is key to the research we carry out at Newcastle. The Concordat to Support Research Integrity define research integrity as a set of individual and collective behaviours that define good research practice: honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability. 

This project supports research practice by promoting and enhancing training, tools, and resources that help researchers embed integrity throughout the entire research lifecycle. 

It focuses on five key areas: 

• research integrity training  
• authorship practices  
• promotion of ORCID IDs 
• responsible use of generative AI in research  
• the responsible use of research metrics  

The Research Space is a new and evolving one-stop shop for training, development, and research support. Built on Microsoft Teams with a modern SharePoint front end, the platform brings together existing resources aimed at the training and skills development of our research community in a more accessible and user-friendly format.  

 The Research Space is designed to support career development and foster collaboration across disciplines, empowering researchers to achieve their goals and maximise the impact of their work.  

We’re committed to evolving The Research Space based on user feedback and the changing needs of our community. Over time, the platform will grow to reflect community input.

Funded by the Wellcome Institutional Fund for Research Culture (IFRC), this project is developing and evaluating new ways to support and reward leaders in research to create individual and team relationships through which people and research can thrive. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), we have welcomed leaders in research from across our community to join us as ‘co-researchers’ and pilot a six-month leadership development programme based around reflexive practices.  

Whilst the project is funded by Wellcome and focuses on research leadership, we will consider how our learnings can be embedded into other leadership programmes at Newcastle, making them available for a wider range of colleagues. We intend to share our project tools, resources and knowledge with the wider sector.  

Five focus areas for 2025 are: 

• regular workshops with our Participatory Action Research Group - exploring opportunities for how leaders can create psychological safety and inclusion at Newcastle University, using the PAR methodology 
• engaging with our first leadership cohort in collaboration with our Organisational Development team 
• developing a draft framework for the new Reward and Recognition practice 
• engaging with the wider sector to gather feedback and help shape our intervention work 
• refining our plan for evaluating the impact of the project across all work streams