{"id":626,"date":"2018-06-07T11:52:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T11:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/?p=626"},"modified":"2018-08-01T09:45:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T09:45:11","slug":"impacted-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/06\/07\/impacted-wisdom\/","title":{"rendered":"IMPACTED WISDOM"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the REF looming, our leaders’ thoughts turn to imaginative strategies for increasing our research ‘impact’ other than simply adequately funding and allowing researchers the time to do it.. These range from University-wide projects such as IDEAS for Impact, to the neoliberalisation of funding via the sacred concept of competition. Across the faculties, FASS apparently likes impact from ‘mew’ projects (sic), and FHM pronounces a ‘Biannual Impact Audit and Report’. Leading the way is FST, which promises ‘Research Impact Fund-Grants of up to \u00a35000… to support academics in the generation, tracking and evidencing of impact, linked to excellent research… enhance the Faculty’s impact return to (REF)… supports the impact environment… internationally-leading outputs and a rolling set of impact cases’. Well quite. Here’s hoping they don’t roll away pre-REF.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, in order to assist going forward in the impact environment, what does the researcher have to do? Firstly, hold meetings (obviously) with departmental and faculty impact champions and managers, and fill in an application to be assessed by a committee ‘comprising the Faculty Impact Manager and 3 nominated members of a designated RESEARCH IMPACT FUND SUB-COMMITTEE of the FST RESEARCH IMPACT COMMITTEE’ (our capitals). In this example, a psychologist, an ecologist and a botanist could be judging an astrophysics project. Does anyone REALLY think that this is a sensible idea? Is the free market ethos so firmly embedded that just funding good research without introducing some element of competition is anathema to the facultocracy? Or are they simply accepting that they aren’t wise enough to take the decisions, so delegate to subcommittees in an attempt to show ‘due process’?<\/span><\/p>\n

Experience has shown that any success involves many follow-up meetings with both impact champions and managers, where beleaguered academics find themselves repeatedly explaining their work and why it has yet to feature in the FTSE index despite faculty assistance. Apart from the risk of funding inappropriate projects – the ones written by the best sales-people and not the best researchers – this policy has another unintended drawback (wasting huge amounts of time in form fillings and meetings is assumed to be regarded as a plus – a mutual job creation scheme for those who prefer talking to doing). Unfortunately, many good researchers find the meeting-heavy process so aversive they might just get on with their research and not engage with the process at all \u2013 possibly no bad thing for the march of progress but unlikely to be what our leaders intended.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the REF looming, our leaders’ thoughts turn to imaginative strategies for increasing our research ‘impact’ other than simply adequately funding and allowing researchers the time to do it.. These range from University-wide projects such as IDEAS for Impact, to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[365,361,364],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-impact","tag-issue-179","tag-ref"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99sHo-a6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":674,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/06\/21\/meowing\/","url_meta":{"origin":626,"position":0},"title":"MEOWING","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"June 21 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"In our piece on the forthcoming REF we reported that FASS apparently likes impact from 'mew' projects. A small but dedicated number of subscribers asked subtext to explain. Our first thoughts were that this was simply an acronym. Marketisation Educational Work. Multinational Experimental Writing. Multi-agency Economy Waffle. Research was clearly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"FASS\"","block_context":{"text":"FASS","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/tag\/fass\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":229,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2017\/11\/23\/breaking-cuts-to-funding-for-disabled-students\/","url_meta":{"origin":626,"position":1},"title":"BREAKING: CUTS TO FUNDING FOR DISABLED STUDENTS","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"November 23 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Lancaster University Disability Service released a statement yesterday (22 November) about the use of Educational Psychology Assessments: \u2018The university recognises that assessments for Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) (including dyslexia) can be expensive and we currently provide funding towards the cost of assessments undertaken on campus. Due to limited funds and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news"","block_context":{"text":"news","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1476,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2021\/02\/19\/taking-bailrigg-campus-by-strategy\/","url_meta":{"origin":626,"position":2},"title":"Taking Bailrigg Campus by Strategy","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"February 19 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest draft of the University's strategic plan for 2020\u20132025, released following an extended period of consultation with staff, students and stakeholders, is now available to view on the Intranet: https:\/\/portal.lancaster.ac.uk\/intranet\/news\/article\/first-look-at-the-new-university-strategy What sort of place does the Vice-Chancellor think Lancaster will be in four years' time? Whereas our previous two\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news"","block_context":{"text":"news","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1205,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2020\/02\/19\/casualisation-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":626,"position":3},"title":"CASUALISATION NEWS","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"February 19 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Casual readers may be forgiven for thinking that subtext's drones are embittered cynics whose philosophy can be summed up as 'D Floor bad, HR enablers of bad'. In an effort to challenge this notion, here's a vote of thanks for the new 'Fixed-term Contracts and Casual Working Policy and Procedure',\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news"","block_context":{"text":"news","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":719,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2018\/09\/13\/working-at-lancaster\/","url_meta":{"origin":626,"position":4},"title":"WORKING AT LANCASTER","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"September 13 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The University of Lancaster is preparing to undertake another staff survey. In order to ensure that the responses are as positive as possible, we at subtext would like to take a look back at where we went wrong in 2017-18 and offer some pointers. We could start by not doing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "history"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1224,"url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/2020\/03\/27\/letters-28\/","url_meta":{"origin":626,"position":5},"title":"LETTERS","author":"Johnny Unger","date":"March 27 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear subtext, As the most recent Head of Department of the late School of Independent Studies, I am assuming I can consider inviting myself to authorise my own access to the University's IT and email? John Wakeford *** Dear subtext, Reading the letters in subtext 192, I was struck by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "letters"","block_context":{"text":"letters","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/category\/letters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":627,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/subtext\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}