Mapping Institutional Commitments to External Concordats to Support Meaningful Research Culture Change

Abstract

Over recent decades, most UK academic institutions have signed numerous concordats, charters and declarations to demonstrate their commitment to responsible practices in support of research. While these agreements provide essential accountability and direction, they also introduce administrative demands and, without coherent oversight, could lead to redundant actions that inadvertently divert resources from more meaningful research culture change.

Here we discuss a project launched at Loughborough University to map the range of actions, goals and responsibilities arising from the University’s participation across multiple concordats. This project sought to streamline responses to these commitments and explore their alignment with our institution’s unique research culture ambitions.

This paper presents our approach and shares key lessons we learned throughout the process to potentially help other institutions looking to simplify and coordinate their research culture commitments. Our hope is that by identifying synergies and efficiencies, the sector will be well positioned to better leverage its resources to continue to pursue even more impactful actions to enhance research cultures.

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Talent Match Summer Internship from Loughborough University for funding Megan English's time on this work.