Research on Research, Policy & Culture

Based at the NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, at the School of Healthcare Enterprise and Innovation, University of Southampton, the Research on Research Registry Hub provides a forum for researchers, funders and organisations to register studies on the design, management, delivery and dissemination of research. The RonR Registry Hub aims to facilitate collaboration among researchers nationally and internationally, to increase sharing and comparability of evidence, and ultimately to support the better use and re-use of research. F1000 fully supports these efforts and encourages authors to register their research projects with the RonR Hub; registered projects are eligible for a discount on our regular article publication charges. 

Researchers remain at the heart of academic research, but increasingly there is an understanding that researchers operate in a much larger community of staff, administrators, knowledge exchange partners, publishers. Research culture is shaped by the attitudes, relationships, behaviours and ethics of this scholarly community. This Gateway Area explores that culture through examination of the motivations, aspirations and challenges the research community faces across career stages, demographic groups and geographies. The Gateway Area provides a forum to discuss effective training for researchers and staff, appropriate incentives, research administration, equal opportunities, and career development. Research on scholarly communities and networks is also welcome, as are papers on research ethics, and the appropriate ways to address errors or misconduct. And, of course, the culture of open research is a main focus of this Gateway Area, which includes articles on data sharing and collaboration, training, and the shift towards open scholarship.

The organizations, institutions and government programmes that fund and support academic research are critical components of the research ecosystem.  The policies, interests and motivations of these funding bodies can influence the direction of research projects, team selection, research outputs and impact.  Acquiring funding can significantly impact institutional rankings and individual researchers’ career trajectories.  While there has been an increasing focus on the assessment and evaluation of research outputs, we need to look more closely into the role that funding plays in the research process.  This Gateway Area hosts work that explores the role of funders, their policies, selection criteria, evaluation processes, and, especially, their influence on research outputs and impacts.  The Gateway Area also features articles on grant writing, academic fellowships and prizes, and the increasing professionalization of the research support and advising community.

Scholars in all disciplines are increasingly expected by funders and institutions to maximize the volume and impact of their research.  Researchers are consequently sharing a wider variety of research outputs, including preprints, data and datasets, research resource, software and code, methodologies, protocols, and case studies, alongside traditional research articles and mongraphs.  But how do we measure the quality and not just the quantity of these outputs?  This Gateway Area welcomes analysis of the research evaluation process, from the metrics used to quantify the validity and impact of individual pieces of research, to the roll that research evaluation plays in career development and grant applications. 

This Gateway hosts research on all aspects of the scholarly publishing industry and infrastructure, including peer review.  The concept of peer review—getting an expert’s opinion on a piece of research—has become embedded in the publishing process.  Given its importance in validating research, a growing number of scholars have begun to scrutinize the current peer review system.  This Gateway Area hosts articles that examine the peer review process, assess its effectiveness, and explore its limitations.  The Gateway Area also provides a forum for discussion of reviewer credit and recognition, peer review management systems, and reviewers’ own perspectives and contributions.  We are particularly interested in articles which suggest innovative alternatives or improvements to the ways in which we request, manage, and utilize expert peer reviews.

Developments in peer review aren’t the only changes affecting scholarly publishing.  While scholars continue to share their research in journals and monographs, almost everything about the publication of these media has changed dramatically in recent decades.  Scholarly publishing has been transformed by the rise of for-profit specialist journals publishers and the shift to digital distribution.  More recently, the advent of open access and open data, the introduction of journal impact factors and individual article metrics, and the emergence of predatory publishers have reshaped the publishing landscape yet again.  Articles on all aspects of the scholarly publishing industry and infrastructure are welcome.  Of particular interest are assessments of how innovation and experiments in publishing are working—or not—and studies on how publishers can best work with researchers to accelerate research and maximize impact.

This Gateway Area invites papers which examine the myriad ways in which academic research—of any discipline—influences and is influenced by society.  Studies may consider how we evaluate a project’s societal impact, and whether funders or institutions should prioritize studies with direct benefits for society, be they economic, political, or social.  The Gateway Area invites scholars to reflect on approaches to maximizing research impact, as well as strategies to ensure the responsible application of research or to mitigate potential negative consequences.  Articles may also consider how partnerships with business, policymakers, educators and end-users may influence research or enhance research impact.  Particularly welcome are studies of innovations in applied research, public engagement, collaboration or knowledge transfer.