RCUK plan to track grant winners' outputs up to 5years after the grant was completed
Branwen Hide
Friday, 17 April 2009 15:49 UTC
From SPIN :
According to an article in this weeks THE , RCUK is considering proposals to implement a new ‘Outputs and Outcomes Collection Project’, which would require researchers to continue to submit information on what has resulted from their Research Council-funded research for at least five years after the completion date of a grant. University officials have already expressed concerns over any increased bureaucratic burdens on research staff, and have urged “joined-up thinking” on how the project may overlap with the reporting requirements of the new Research Excellence Framework.
For the entire article click here.
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Replies
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Interesting. At least they’re thinking partly the right way I suppose. Same old same old when it comes to stumping up for the resources though. Presumably they see those with the most interest being most motivated to do it (but it is impractical if not impossible, as it would be a full time job to chase all use of one’s own research and even then you woldn’t be able to prove the negative that you didn’t miss something).
What irks me is the high-handed attitude that this sort of thing projects to experimentalists. It’s not “here’s how we can work together to improve our (the RCs’) awareness of the impact of your research”, it is just done as a ‘thou shalt’. The technology isn’t there to do this sort of tracking automatically and to do it manually is one hell of a job as I say For example, for large data sets in public repositories — are they really expected to track downloads from a public database that would struggle to even do such a thing itself, and then follow through with the downloader to get the goods? Until there is infrastruture, all they’ll get is what the generator did next, and some token stuff where random PubMedding turned up a paper that was good enough to cite them. Such a partial view is pointless at best.
So can we bin this please RCUK and hear how you are going to work with NBT and others to come up with a practical microaccreditation solution, and then come to the research community, with tools ready, and not this high-handed I-don’t-care-how-just-make-it-so-style edict?
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