In a series of articles, we will present the newest in research administration from the Journal of Research Administration. To read the full JRA, please see here.
Authors:
Gerben Kristian Wedekind, MSc MA, Ernst & Young LLP; Simon Patrick Philbin, PhD MBA, Imperial College London
In order to facilitate successful research outcomes, universities and public research institutions are increasingly focused on providing adequate capacity in research administration and management. (Nguyen and Meek, 2015). In this context, faculty members and their research teams work with support and administration colleagues to enable the delivery of research projects that may be supported by a range of different funding sources, such as governmental agencies, industrial companies and charitable foundations. Indeed, the process of managing the research grant itself may involve a number of professional service teams and departments at a university or research organization, such as a central research office, sponsored programs office as well as administration teams that reside at the departmental or divisional level. Moreover, faculty members increasing face pressure to secure research funding and especially where tenure is being sought (Reiser et al., 2015). Therefore, faculty members are required to work alongside research administrators, maintaining communication channels and a two-way flow of information if they are to successfully navigate the world of research grant management. This is required from the initial ideation stage through to proposal development and possible award of the grant followed by the eventual delivery of the project.
This process can run smoothly due to the joint working adopted by research administrators and faculty members, and especially in the case of more straightforward research grants, e.g. a research project based on the work of a single graduate student (i.e. at PhD level) or post-doctoral researcher. However, in the case of more complex projects, such as those involving large scale consortia with several research partners, there may be a number of challenges encountered (see the work of Philbin and Mallo, 2016). Such challenges include a lack of planning of how to engage all the partners, the need for financial and commercial work to be undertaken rapidly and in parallel with the development of the technical (academic or scientific) case, as well as the difficulties in estimating the true costs for complex research projects.
To read the full manuscript, please click here.
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