Portsmouth Business School

Research and Knowledge Transfer Strategic Plan 2007-2012

Introduction:

This plan sets out the Portsmouth Business School strategic plan for Research and Knowledge Transfer (R&KT) over the next five years. It is based on the Business School Strategic Plan (2006-2008) and University of Portsmouth Strategic Plan (2007-2012) that aims to promote the discovery, development and application of knowledge through research whose quality matches the best national and international comparators. This plan also aims to build upon the PBS Research Strategy 2004-2008 and achievements set out in 'Implementing the Research Strategy for Portsmouth Business School (2005-2006)'. We strongly believe that research, teaching and KT are inextricably linked.

Implementation of the strategic plan will continue to be led at Faculty, Department and Research Group level. This document considers the first two levels. It will be coordinated through the Faculty Research Committee to which Departmental R&KT Committees already make reports (although their formal responsibility is through Departmental Heads).

In the autumn of 2007 we shall submit to the Research Assessment Exercise whose quality outcome will be known at the end of 2008 and whose funding outcome will affect us from 2009. Previous exercises have changed the pattern of quality outcomes and the balance of funding between subjects at the University and we shall need to re-examine aspects of our strategic direction if there are more changes in 2008/2009.

Headline Aims - PBS aims to:

  • develop and strengthen a distinctive research profile (both pure and near market)
  • ensure the sustainability of research and knowledge transfer
  • build upon its success in attracting international researchers and maintain a healthy and interactive research culture in which all staff research and scholarly activity is valued
  • further integrate research and teaching so that for all undergraduate and post-graduate students some of their units are delivered by research active staff and that unit content is informed by the current research of staff
  • review our faculty recruitment policy, including creating a fund to support new faculty to establish themselves in research/KT
  • actively encourage research through the effective management of workloads, mentoring support and internal research incentives, with special care for the development of early career researchers and
  • encourage interdisciplinary and joint research in the form of joint publications, joint grant submission and joint PhD supervision with other members of staff

Key Priorities:

The main objectives of the School's research strategy over the next few years include:

1. Attract, appoint and retain high-quality staff.

  • Research will continue to be a prime consideration in academic appointments to PBS. To ensure this is so a member of the Research Committee and/or a Professor will sit on all shortlisting and appointment panels for academic posts.
  • Our research active staff will continue to be provided with research allowances for reduction in teaching loads, subject to availability of funds and a minimum level of teaching in order to inform teaching by research.
  • The further enhancement of our research workforce through provision of support to early career members of staff through effective mentoring, appraisal and incentives for research.
  • To encourage new members of academic staff to develop an active research profile an allocation of £2,000 will be made to the relevant department. The fund will be used, on the basis of a research plan developed by the new member of staff in consultation with his or her mentor and agreed by the Head, to facilitate, for example, a lighter teaching and administrative load durig their first two/three years to enable them to establish their research. In agreeing the research plan, Heads will take into account the requirement that academic staff must have, or undertake, a relevant teaching qualification. Faculty R&KT Committee will receive and monitor the research and expenditure plans of each new academic.
  • There will be an allocation of £20,000, in addition to the existing staff development budget, to encourage members of staff to undertake doctoral studies.

2. Support established researchers and develop research teams where appropriate

  • Our research active members of staff will all be involved in teaching post graduate students and supervising dissertations. This will both enhance their research and enrich teaching material at Post Graduate level.
  • The continued development of a collaborative research culture in PBS department, through the encouragement of joint publications (currently around 20%). We will aim to reach 40% by 2012. This could be facilitated through joint postgraduate supervision, shared grants and jointly organised conferences and workshops. This will help to provide a wide range of academic expertise and to ensure continuity in the event of illness or staff changes.
  • Encourage research active members of staff seeking promotion to follow the PL Teaching and Research Route as identified by HERA and develop research teams. At the moment, active researchers seeking promotion follow the traditional PL route and get involved in administrative roles such as course management which can affect their research and scholarship activites. There are several evidences of scholarships related to research activities for example grants project management and being Director of Studies of PhD projects which are long term and involve elements of leadership and project management. The faculty will undertake a review of the mechanism in line with the University's policy.

3. Undertaking Research to appropriate standards

  • Departmental Research Committees will formulate a strategy and advice for publications that is clearly communicated to academic staff. This strategy will include information on the best outlets in which to publish and will include guidelines on the department's expectation of publication rates of staff. On average one publication per year of a 2* quality is expected per research active member of staff.
  • Heads of Departments, working in conjunction with departmental research committees, will seek to maximise the number of staff operating at international levels of excellence and develop mechanisms to facilitate this process. These might include: provision of funds to allow staff to travel overseas for collaborative work, ensuring mechanisms for providing quality research time for staff, including where appropriate sabbatical leave and conferences attendance, subject to available funds.
  • We will aim at maintaining accreditation to our post-graduate research programmes including ESRC, AMBA, CIPD, ILM and others and seeking further accreditation such as ACCSB and Equis.

4. Developing the productivity of research-active staff

  • Increase research grants submission rate while maintaining quality of submissions and encourage members of staff to use the newly introduced incentives scheme for submission of research proposals. Our target is to increase the level of external funding by at least 10% year on year to 2012. Such external funding for research may include but is not limited to: research councils, EU, Government, contract research and KTPs including Business+; our target is to increase the number of KTPs to a total of 15 by end of 2012.
  • Encourage members of staff to submit research grants proposals and to utilise existing incentive scheme (currently £30,000 distributed equally among the four departments)which aims to provide incentives to academics to submit research grants.
  • Issues arising from annual appraisals that relate to research issues (with the approval of the appraisee) will need to be fed back to the Chairs of the Departmental Research and KT Committees as well as to Head of Departments and Professors.
  • Staff Research Methods Session: Some of our staff need to be aware about current trends in research methods. An initiative will be co-ordinated to organise such events for members of staff across PBS.
  • Sustain vibrancy of internal sessions for activity centred topics across departments and research groups.

5. Enhancing the Visiblity of Research
We will:

  • Continue production of a quarterly newsletter on Research, Scholarly Activity and KT for dissemination to internal and external audiences.
  • Encourage and monitor our staff in gaining external acknowledgement for the standing of their work and themselves such as: editorships and participation in the work of advisory, review, funding, standards or planning bodies, keynote addresses at major conferences, fellowships or visiting appointments, prize winning publications etc.
  • Maintain the currency of our RDS database and Research Web-site. In order to maintain this updating beyond the RAE, it is suggested that annual appraisals of members of staff will refer to publications from the RDS database. Heads and Chairs of Departmental R&KT Committee will be provided with reporting access from the RDS database and staff will be encouraged to attach a print-out of their entry to their pre-appraisal form.
  • We will continue to organise and enhance our annual PBS Research and KT conference as well as our PhD symposium.

6. Sustain a thriving postgraduate research culture

  • The numbers of postgraduate research students will be increased. Our target is to increase the number of doctoral students to 100, including DBA students by 2012. The Faculty Research Degrees Committee will keep under review what might be deemed to be, on average, an appropriate number of research students per member of academic staff, drawing on national comparators where available, as well as maintaining a suitable balance between full-time and part-time research students.
  • Number of graduating students (completion rates) will be increased. An objective will be that each department to target graduating at least two PhDs per year.
  • We will work with the Faculty Research Degrees Committee to enhance and monitor our existing capability in terms of research supervision. This will be achieved through provision of training for PhD supervision and compilation of a database of our staff's capabilities.
  • Support research/doctoral students through:
  1. Monitoring and improving PhD student accommodation.
  2. Encouraging publication prior to completion and encourage publications between supervisors and students.
  3. Provision of funds to attend conferences by means of a Student Conference Fund (annual budget £5,000) to support attendance at conferences, to visit other researchers in their field, or to attend relevant external courses (such as ESRC Summer Schools).
  4. Encourage students to present papers during the PBS Annual Postgraduate Research Conference using the opportunity to present drafts of their work prior to presenting same in wider national or international forums.
  5. Students will be encouraged to submit posters to the in-house research conference and attend the departmental programmes of staff seminars.
  6. Prior to their viva, all postgraduate students will be offered the opportunity of a slot in the staff seminar programme - to provide critical feedback and thus support for successful thesis defence.

7. Enter into collaborations with other research-intensive universities, for mutual advantage.
Such collaboration may involve:

  • Research training.
  • Exchange of supervisory staff and/or postgraduate students.
  • Joint submission of research and KT proposals
  • Joint publications

University of Portsmouth Business School
Summary of Research and KT Faculty Targets

  • Increase the level of external funding by at least 10% year on year to 2012 and beyond.
  • Increase the number of KTPs to a total of 15 by end of 2012.
  • Increase the number of doctoral students to 100, including DBA students by 2012.
  • Each department to target graduating at least two PhDs per year.
  • A collaborative research culture in PBS department, through the encouragement of joint publications (currently around 20%). We will aim to reach 40% by 2012.