Christopher Daley

Responsible conduct of research (RCR) is imperative for the quality and trustworthiness of research, and the proper functioning of the whole research system. However, the extent to which RCR differs across disciplines is not clear. Currently, many approaches to research and training in RCR are either presented as universally applicable (e.g., international frameworks on research integrity) or discipline-specific. This Delphi study aimed to expand the current (underspecified) frameworks of RCR to develop a more diverse and comprehensive concept of what constitutes RCR across disciplines. Relying on the expertise and knowledge of a carefully selected multidisciplinary panel of RCR scholars and practitioners, we conducted a modified reactive Delphi, in which panellists progressively refined their judgement of the importance of individual dimensions of RCR for their respective disciplines, starting from a provisional list of dimensions derived from previous literature and interviews. In total, 56 panellists from a wide variety of research disciplines took part. All dimensions were rated as important, although they varied substantially both in perceived level of importance and in the degree of dispersion of responses. We classified the dimensions into three broad groups. The first comprised a core set of dimensions (18/38) rated as clearly important with relatively low dissent; the second set (9/38) included dimensions whose importance was generally endorsed but accompanied by nontrivial dissent, often due to perceived lack of applicability in some fields; and the third set (11/38) consisted of more contested dimensions characterised by complex or polarised rating patterns. Exploratory comparisons across four broad disciplinary groupings suggested that panellists in, on average across dimensions, Medicine, Health, & Life Sciences and in the Social Sciences assigned higher overall importance ratings than those in Arts & Humanities and in Physical Sciences, Engineering, & Mathematics. In addition, qualitative and quantitative evidence pointed to substantial heterogeneity or ratings within disciplines. Taken together, these findings indicate that although a shared core set of RCR dimensions can be identified, many aspects of responsible research practice are interpreted and prioritised in discipline- and approach-dependent ways, even susceptible to variation among experts in the same discipline. These findings offer an empirical basis for approaching RCR as a shared endeavour with multiple recognised expressions and provide a concrete mapping of where common principles hold and where discipline- and context-specific interpretation makes a greater difference.

This article provides a retrospective on the formation of the Engaged Humanities Lab at Royal Holloway, University of London. It sets the lab’s development within the broader history of labs in the humanities, setting out how the Engaged Humanities Lab aligns closely with Pawlicka-Deger’s description of “infrastructure of engagement” rather than the physical spaces that characterise science laboratories. We also explain why the sub-category of “engaged” humanities was selected over the broader and more established “public” humanities. The second half of the article provides reflections on the activities and achievements of the Engaged Humanities Lab, focusing on how intra-institution collaboration between an academic school and the Research and Innovation Department supported the formation and governance of the lab, allowing for ongoing dialogue and co-creation between subject area experts and research management professionals with expertise in research funding, policy, and knowledge exchange. This article also illuminates what is needed from university leaders to ensure the success and longevity of infrastructures of engagement like the Engaged Humanities Lab.

The UK open access (OA) policy landscape simultaneously preferences Gold publishing models (Finch Report, RCUK, COAF) and Green OA through repository usage (HEFCE), creating the possibility of confusion and duplication of effort for academics and support staff. Alongside these policy developments, there has been an increase in open science services that aim to provide global data on OA. These services often exist separately to locally managed institutional systems for recording OA engagement and policy compliance. The aim of this study is to enhance Brunel University London’s local publication data using software which retrieves and processes information from the global open science services of Sherpa REF, CORE, and Unpaywall. The study draws on two classification schemes; a ‘best location’ hierarchy, which enables us to measure publishing trends and whether open access dissemination has taken place, and a relational ‘all locations’ dataset to examine whether individual publications appear across multiple OA dissemination models. Sherpa REF data is also used to indicate possible OA locations from serial policies. Our results find that there is an average of 4.767 permissible open access options available to the authors in our sample each time they publish and that Gold OA publications are replicated, on average, in 3 separate locations. A total of 40% of OA works in the sample are available in both Gold and Green locations. The study considers whether this tendency for duplication is a result of localised manual workflows which are necessarily focused on institutional compliance to meet the Research Excellence Framework 2021 requirements, and suggests that greater interoperability between OA systems and services would facilitate a more efficient transformation to open scholarship.

Written from within the last “hot” period of the Cold War’s near half century span, Martin Amis’s 1987 essay “Thinkability” articulates how nuclear weapons embed…

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In 1984, the journal Diacritics set out to define what it labelled as the developing academic terrain of ‘nuclear criticism’. The opening section of the journal entitled...