RESEARCH MANAGEMENT support package & Coaching (REACH)

Researcher & Research Team
Support package & Coaching

Monthly coaching webinar
preparations

  1. Agree on a date for monthly zoom meetings with HR&S and
  2. set up a joint WhatsApp chat-group, (with time we will have our own platform).
  3. Compile the names of the participants in the team, their affiliation, degrees, and their different roles in the group.
  4. Local leaders compile;
    • i) time of entry to the coaching programme for each team member and the expected duration,
    • ii) exactly which type of support that is planned to be provide to each of the team members and the related budget line (if any),
    • iii) the expectations of what the supported team member will achieve as a result of the support,
    • iv) the actual achievements in relation to the expectations at the end of each year, and
    • v) the expected impact from the coaching.
  5. Set up a Trello.com board and a Slack.com platform. The Trello board has one note for each ROPE parameter.

Progress markers

The progress markers are adjusted reflecting the context of the site of the coaching.

LevelONE

Each team-leader

  1. Each team-leader attends minimum 10 SfC coaching sessions per year and is active.
  2. Each team-leader provides a clear compilation of team members, and updates this 1 January every year.
  3. Each team-leader develops an annual report describing the programme in general, the output, the progress markers per team-member, sustainable impact and a financial report. Due 15 February.
Each supported researcher
  1. Attends minimum 10 ROPE coaching sessions per year, and speaks at each session.
    • With good internet connection and the video on.
  2. Has access to internet:
    • A personal hot spot
    • A reliable internet network at campus.
  3. Has access to a quality computers
    • Procurement procedures are in place.
    • Service and maintenance procedures are in place.
  4. Has access to scientific literature and literature review
    • Has access to password for databases available through the librarian.
    • Has developed an efficient search profile with support from a librarian.
    • Has access to EndNote or other reference soft ware.
  5. Benefit from the resources available through AuthorAid.
    • Information on manuscript writing.
    • Information on grant application writing.
    • Attend the AuthorAid on-line training courses. https://www.authoraid.info/en/e-learning/. https://youtu.be/mg5uhGJHTMQ
    • Links to a mentor.
  6. Has a written time management plan.
    • With good meeting performances
    • Time set aside to do key work such as write grants application and paper manuscripts.
  7. Keeps a personal updated ROPE road-map.
  8. Gives minimum one presentation per year to the team.
    • For example from the AuthorAid resources.
  9. Attends minimum 10 local support meetings per year, and contribute actively to the manuscript or grant application reviews.
    • Acts actively as an expert on the topic for the presentation given to the team.
  10. Has connected to one external mentor (maybe through Author Aid) or formal supervisor and discuss with them minimum six times per year.
  11. Has access to the scientific equipment required together with glassware and consumables.
  12. Has access to transportation to and logistics around field sites.
  13. Each supported researcher submits two grant applications per year.
  14. Each supported researcher submits two manuscripts per year.
    • The financial supporter is always acknowledged.
LevelTWO

Each team-leader
  1. Each team-leader keeps an updated SfC Road-map for the team.
  2. Each team-leader keeps record of what motivates each team-member, and acts to empower the researcher in the relation to the motivation.
  3. Team-leaders present a written vision and mission for the team concerning international equal partnership.
  4. Each team-leader presents in writing and implements accounting, accountability and transparency procedures.
  5. Team-leaders presents and follows-up on business plans.

Each supported researcher

  1. Each researcher keeps an updated SfC Road-map.
  2. Each supported researcher presents scientific findings at one conference or meeting per year, or more often..
  3. Attends minimum one external training per year.
    • For example one of those provided by AuthorAid.
  4. Train trainers_ Researchers with training ambitions give training sessions on a topic chosen by the researcher every year. External participants pay a small fee. Giving reference to the coaching.

LevelTHREE

Each team-leader

  1. A stakeholder analysis is made that describes the how to manoeuvrer the team SfC road-map within the institution.
  2. A scientific survey is made on outcome challenges and motivation factors.

Each supported researcher

  1. Researcher with entrepreneurial ambitions implement scientific findings through social enterprising, within one year after having published three papers on the topic.
  2. One project, or more, within the team benefits from sustainable economy.
Sustainable impact
  1. The team benefits from a sustainable economy.
  2. Scientific capacity strengthening procedures according to the above are part of the institution curriculum and annual reviews shows that the progress markers at levelTWO are met.
 
 

TestE

  • The Base line is measured at 31 December of the starting year.
  • The progress markers are measured 31  December every year.

Coaching Agenda & Support package

Opening session

Introduction to the REACH Support package & Coaching

  1. Cecilia presents the REACH tool.
  2. Team-leaders introduce the team-members.
  3. Each team-member present their individual ambitions and outcome challenges.
  4. The team identifies common or joint outcome challenges and make them team ambitions and challenges.
  5. Progress markers are agreed on for each team-member and for the full team together.
  6. Cecilia  supports with developing a draft road-map.
  7. Agree on Monthly coaching meetings
    The team agrees on a time for monthly REACH coaching meetings, maybe one hour, when the team-members are coached on developing and revises road-maps and where progress markers are measured.
  8. Agree on Monthly local meetings
    The team agrees on a time for monthly meetings, maybe one or two hours, when applicants presents their work related to progress markers (grant applications and manuscripts) to the team and benefits from team-review.
    • The monthly meeting gets a name, maybe “Monthly internal review workshop” or “Monthly review club” or….”.
    • The time, venue and name of coordinator (circulating) is noted in the Road-Map.
    • Refreshment is served if possible.
  9. Team-member expert committee
    • Each team member will become an expert on topics they have presented to the team (from the AuthorAid and Research4Life resources) and guides their colleagues on this specific issue.

  10. Annual reporting, Due 15 January.

    • Each team members reports scoring of their individual progress markers and if scoring is low and adjusted road-map; maybe new identified outcome challenges and related activities and mile-stones. Include
    • Attends minimum 10 ROPE coaching sessions per year, and is active during the sessions
    • Has access to internet and stable network.Has access to a good enough computer
    • Has a written time management plan
    • A certain amount of hours are set aside per week for grant application and manuscript writing
    • Measure Baseline, 31 December the year prior to the the start of the coaching, of the above parameters.
    • Each team-leaders reports as above on the joint team progress markers.
  11. Link to the institution management.

Sustainable economy & institutional capacity

Besides topics arising from specific situations, knowledge will be shared around:

  • Access to quality internet and quality network.
  • Access to good enough computer. Maybe establish a pool of computers that team-members can borrow, while being part of the team.
  • Access to reference manager software.
  • Access to Web of science.
  • Pictures: Bio render
  • Ensure each team-member can cover the tuition fee, through ISP or elsewhere.
    Staff do not need tuition fee, but they also have less time.
  • Efficient communication
    • Zoom meetings, WHAP chat, Trello, Slack
  • Efficient time-management.
  • Positive and supportive team spirit.
  • Local, targeted and international networks.
  • Stakeholder empowerment and motivation.
  • Transparency and accountability including trust, accounting, auditing.
  • Research ethics.
  • Cross-cultural awareness raising
    as key to the success of the event itself is cross-cultural mutual understanding between the participants this be an aim of the coaching.

The research projects

  • The scientific niche of the scientific institution and the team/department is presented as well as
  • the scientific project of each team member.
    • Literature review
    • Hypothesis
    • Method including the evaluation of data
    • Budget
      • Items available and items that needs a research grant.
    • Time-line

The scientific method

Training.
It is key that each researcher has a perfect understanding of the scientific method.
With such understanding, the researcher can by her/him-self reply to many questions, make successful plans and take the right initiatives.
It is also key to time management at a personal level.

    • Cecilia offers presentations on the “Scientific method”.
    • Resources on the topics available on internet are compiled, shared and used. Interested team members make presentations on the topic, and become Team member experts.
    • Participants develops or improves their own research plans.

Literature review

Exercises & annual training by librarian
Addressing the progress marker, submitting two manuscripts per year.

  • INASP (https://www.inasp.info)
    INASP Aims to strengthen the capacity of individuals and institutions to produce, share and use research and knowledge in Africa,
    Asia and Latin America. We work across the research and knowledge system. INASP negotiate with publishers across disciplines to provide researchers and libraries in developing countries with the journals, books and databases that they need at affordable prices.
  • Research4Life resources  (www.research4life.org)
    Research4Life provides institutions in low-and middle-income countries with online access to academic and professional peer-reviewed content. Research4Life content is grouped into the following collections: Hinari is one of the world’s largest collections of biomedical and health literature. AGORA  is an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food and agriculture. ARDI gives access to scientific and technical information. GOALI focuses on law and social sciences, including politics, economics, philosophy, history and more. OARE collects information resources on environment, including ecology, geography, energy and more.
    • Take time to do the exercises, https://www.research4life.org/training/authors-hub/, either individually or during the internal monthly meetings.
    • Sign up for the Research4Life MOOC and webinars, watch videos on Youtube.
  • Ensure access to the databases available at the institution library
    • Develop a effective and efficient literature search profile. Reach out to librarian for help. Invite librarian to ISP monthly meeting or local meeting.
  • About Sci-Hub
  • Research Gate, Springer, ScienceDirect, etc
  • Sabinet African Journals encompasses the breadth and depth of African research content by offering the most comprehensive, searchable collection of full-text African electronic journals available on one platform. This service, which is easy to use and accessible anytime and anywhere, is a growing service — over 600 journal titles in 10 collections are available for individuals, corporates, universities, government departments, research institutions and law firms. Sabinet African Journals offers a user-friendly platform and encourages research efficacy. All international journal standards and statistics are adhered to and various business models are available.
  • Reference management tools: Mendeley, Zotero, and
    End-note (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUmAWEW6pBc).

Seeking research grants

Home work & participant presentations

    • Addressing the progress marker submitting two research grant applications per year.
    • Participants make an overview of possible sources of research grants.
    • Each team-members selects around three sources of research grants that fit with the individual research topic.
    • Author AID resources   (www.authoraid.info)
      Compile resources from AuthorAid that address the group challenges.
      • Presentation of resources: Each group member selects a topic and gives a presentation during the monthly meetings, the discussions are compiled into a small report.
        When each group members has presented minimum one topic each a compilation of the topics chosen is made. A schedule for addressing the resources identified in the internal monthly sessions is agreed on and implemented.
    • Monthly internal review workshops.
      Applicants presents their draft application to the team and benefits from team-review.

The publishing process

Assessing Journals

Shortlist journals that reports the best research in the field that will reach your target audience.

  1. Predatory publishing awareness Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not. Naive readers are victims together with researchers having their work overlooked.
  2. Indexed journals Indexed journals are considered to be of higher scientific quality as compared to non-indexed journals. An index journal is a brief indentation of information with a proper bibliographical citation. The ways in which journals are indexed online is essential to how they can be searched for and found. Inclusion in certain indexes is also closely linked to quality assessment, with research funders often requiring their grantees to publish in outlets listed in certain indexes.
  3. Citation analysis Journals with a higher citation frequency have a higher journal impact factor (JIF). Average citation record indicates a journal’s popularity. It is quantitative, regularly updated, calculated by a neutral party,  however, not all citations reflect good research, authors in the same network tend to cite each other heavily, English speaking countries are favoured since these countries host citation analysis databases, the type of article influences it as review articles tend to get more citations than original research articles.
    • According to Thomson Reuters, the Journal Impact Factor is the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in a particular year. A journal’s Impact Factor is determined by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years
    • Abulkhair the Thomson Reuters list is nowadays called Web of Science (WoS) or Journal Citation Report (JCR) from Clarivate (the new owner).
  4. Peer analysis: have experts in the field reviewed the articles?
  5. Circulation and coverage: consider if the journal listed with an indexing service that will reach your target audience?
  6. Journal Ranking: This is based on the citation record as well as the prestige of the journal. It gives the perception of the journal by researchers.
  7. Discussion Platform: The ability to discuss the merits and shortcomings of a paper adds value to the research community. Therefore, a journal that provides an online discussion platform could be given. This, of course, is only valuable if the research community makes contributions.
  8. Acceptance/Rejection Rates: Some journals publish these rates on their websites. A high rejection rate implies that a journal is very particular about the quality of the research that they publish. However, the disadvantage of this rate is that the journal does not give reasons for rejections. Also, a high rejection rate could simply be a matter of limited publication space.

Manuscript writing

Home work & participant presentations
Addressing the progress marker, submitting two manuscripts per researcher and year.

    • Author AID resources   (www.authoraid.info)
      Compile resources from AuthorAid that address the group challenges.
      • Presentation of resources: Each group member selects a topic and gives a presentation during the monthly meetings, the discussions are compiled into a small report.
        When each group members has presented minimum one topic each a compilation of the topics chosen is made. A schedule for addressing the resources identified in the internal monthly sessions is agreed on and implemented.
    • AuthorAid training events
      • Dates and topics of free training events by AuthorAid is compiled. A coordinator for external training is assigned. Group members registers for trainings and the coordinator keep track of the registrations.
        After each training the topic of of the training  meeting will be to share at the monthly meeting.
    • Monthly internal review workshops.
      Each team member presents their draft manuscript to the team and benefits from team-review.

Supervision

Awareness raising & training
It is key that each researcher has access to useful supervision. The supervisor must know how to inform about all necessary scientific issues, how to build teams of the researchers that shall publish together and ensure that their team members have access to ALL necessary input. With such understanding, the researcher can by her/him-self reply to many questions, make successful plans and take the right initiatives.

    • Make a scheme of researchers and supervisors.
    • Time-management review.
    • A separate mini road-map is created during the training to guide supervisors with their assignments.
    • Resources on the topics available on internet are compiled, shared and used.

Ethics in Research

Awareness raising and reflection

    • Good research practices rest on some fundamental principles: that one can be assured that research is of high quality; that research is conducted and reported in a truthful way and with respect to important societal values; and that researchers take responsibility for their research and its consequences.
    • Principles put differently: Nonmaleficence: not doing harm, Beneficence: doing good, Autonomy: promotion of self-determination of others, Justice: fairness, Universalisability: applicability in other such circumstances, Rationality: ability to give good reasons.
  1. Support for women_Coaching
    • Arrange with senior women role-model mentors for junior women who would like to have this. Set up a meeting schedule and rewards for the mentors.
    • In case the interest is large, coordinate a local network of lady support.
    • Possibly offer grants targeting women.
    • “Sex for grades” is addressed, if relevant.
  2. Review the ROPE road-map & measure progress markers_Coaching
    Reflect again on ambitions and outcome challenges taking the AuthorAid and R4L support into consideration. Score and re-reflect on progress markers. Consider as well:
    • Intrinsic motivation.
    • Stakeholder analysis.
    • International equal win-win partnership.
  3. Sustainable economy_Coaching, home-work and participants presentations
    Address the progress markers sustainable economy.
    • Sources of income
      The team brainstorms on possible sources of income related to defined ambitions; research grants, selling products and services to customers, crowd-funding, reach out to the Government with Policy briefs and round table sessions, reach out to the private sector with round table sessions.
    • Seeking research grants_Participant Presentations
      • Author AID resources
        Compile resources from AuthorAid that address seeking research grants. Group member selects a topic and gives a presentation during the monthly meetings, the discussions are compiled into a small report.The presenter now becomes an expert of the topic presented and shares about this in the internal monthly review meetings.
    • Selling products and services to customers.
    • Reach out to the Government with Policy briefs and round table sessions.
    • Reach out to the private sector with round table sessions.
    • Establish a financial plan_Team-leader presentations
      • Team-leaders presents how the funds available shall support the team and how new funds shall be generated. A business plan is developed.
      • Individual researchers presents how they shall financially contribute to their own research and to the team business plan.
      • Accounting, accountability and transparency procedures are agreed on at the team-level.
  4. The grant application review_Training & reflection
    • Cecilia offers training on the grant application review process.
    • Team-members discuss each other’s applications.
  5. Revisit the manuscript writing – Literature_Coaching & training.
    • Revisit the resources of Author Aid.
    • Connect again with the university librarian.
    • Seek support from  INASP.
    • Go through referencing software, including End-Note. Ensure that each researcher has access to End-Note or other tool.
    • Go though search databases including where to upload own publications and thesis.
    • Cecilia offers training on manuscript writing and manuscript peer-reviewing.
  6. Review the scientific method_Training & reflection.
    • Cecilia offers training on “Scientific method”.
    • Team reviews their research projects and refelcts on the scientific method.
  7. Laboratory work & access to advanced functioning scientific equipment (FAST)_Coaching
    The purpose with the “HR&S Functioning Advanced Scientific Equipment” (FAST) Support programme is to support laboratories and Scientific Institutions with the selection, transportation, installation, calibration, operation, maintenance, servicing, use and decommissioning of advanced scientific equipment. Each programme builds on the Real-time Outcome Planning and Evaluation tool (ROPE) which measures whether the support provided by the enabled the partners to be successful.
      • A. Equipment procurement and delivery.
      • B. Equipment use & maintenance.
      • C. Construction of laboratories.
      • D. Operational & Financial plan development.
      • E. Laboratory business idea.
    • Compile and share resources  from
      • the Royal Society of Chemistry, https://edu.rsc.org
      • Supplier websites
      • Each group member selects a topic and gives a presentation during the monthly meetings. A coordinator for internal training is assigned.
  8. Safety
    • Health and environment.
  9. International collaboration & Networking_Participant Engagement
    • Develop equal partnership relations with senior and junior researchers within the same discipline; locally, regionally and globally.
    • Join networks. When joining suitable network, be active. Join discussions, support colleagues, share knowledge, give advice.
    • Benefit from
      • https://commonwealthchemistry.org/
  10. Review the ROPE road-map_Coaching
    • Address progress markers.
  11. Presenting at conferences_Training
    • Preparing oral presentations and posters.
    • Resources available through AuthorAid.
    • Address the progress marker.
  12. Reaching out to policy makers
    • Develop and share policy-briefs.
    • Invite to round table sessions.
  13. Bureaucracy & hierarchy_Coaching
    Bureaucracy and hierarchy often make progress inefficient.
    • Make stakeholder analysis.
    • Involve policy makers in the ROPE work.
  14. Social enterprising targeting the implementation of scientific findings_Coaching
    • Reaching the target audience, value proposition & customer segment, the lean business model, performing customers survey interviews and analysis, get commitment from the first few customers / scale with new customers, business model, boot-strapping, strategy for change, start / scale-up loans.
  15. Review the ROPE road-map.
    • Measure progress markers.
    • Measure sustainable impact.