Interdisciplinary research teams are crucial for tackling complex societal issues but often struggle with goal alignment, leadership, and communication. This reflective inquiry article explores expanding the role of Research Administration (RA) and Research Development (RD) professionals as team coaches to address these challenges and improve team…

In this essay, we explore the tension between research using continuous improvement (CI) paradigms, such as improvement science, and conventional research, and the role and regulation of Institutional Review Board (IRB) oversight. We argue that the current regulatory structure privileges traditional research and hinders collaborative inquiry that…

As governments and other organizations worldwide increase their investment in research, the demand for skilled research administrators grows. Researchers need knowledgeable administrators to provide guidance and ensure their projects are administratively managed according to required policies and guidelines. Institutions must ensure their audit…

Despite the increasing recognition for the scientific and societal potential of interdisciplinary research, selection committees struggle with the evaluation of interdisciplinary proposals. Interdisciplinary proposals include a wider range of theories and methods, involve a more diverse team, pose a higher level of uncertainty, and their…

A major pre-award administrative challenge research universities face is turnaround time for generation of high-quality NIH Data Training Tables for NIH training grants (e.g., T32, K12, TL1, KL2, R25s) which are required for training grant submission proposals to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Universities with dedicated training grant…

Among strategies that campus leaders and research administrators employ to spur interdisciplinary research in U.S. higher education, one of the costliest--and increasingly popular--is designated interdisciplinary research spaces and buildings. Yet while interdisciplinary research buildings, often focused on the sciences, stand as significant…

Little is known about the university-based professionals who facilitate research impact and the networks they form to build institutional capacity. This article explores the efforts of Research Impact Canada, a pan-Canadian professional network dedicated to building institutional capacity for research impact across disciplines. Based on interviews…

In this paper, we engage with the Research Excellence Framework (REF) -- the UK government's national policy tool for competitive allocation of scarce research funding. Success on the terms of the REF provides guaranteed income for UK Universities for a 6- or 7-year period -- and as a result, we suggest that the REF operates as an asset-like…

From an understanding of knowledge mobilisation as a set of strategies that favour responsible and inclusive research, the aim of this paper is to identify the obstacles or barriers to carrying out such research in higher education institutions, as perceived by researchers. In this descriptive study, content analysis is used to examine…

As data-informed decision-making continues to evolve across multiple disciplines in higher education institutions, and as the role of research administration continues to expand from proposal submissions, compliance, and managing research and development expenditures to a profession with an active partnership with investigators to support…

Conventional approaches to ethics in comparative and international educational research often entail researchers seeking institutional ethics approval; attempting to manage fieldwork's practical ethical dilemmas using institutional and disciplinary protocols; and 'writing up' methodology, primarily an account of the institutional ethics approval…

Research capacity building is a process by which individuals and organizations develop skills and infrastructure resulting in greater ability to conduct useful research. Frequently, research quality and productivity measures focus on outcomes, such as peer-reviewed publications or grants awarded. Such distal measures are not informative when…

The quality of a research study application sends a distinct signal to the institutional review board (IRB) about the skills, capacities, preparation, communication, experience, and resources of its authors. However, efforts to research and define IRB application quality have been insufficient. Inattention to the quality of an IRB application is…

I dedicate this paper to my friend and colleague, Mike Fetters, who served as senior co-editor of the "Journal of Mixed Methods Research" (JMMR). In this paper, I discuss key mixed methods developments over the last 35 years, my fortunate involvement in them, and my collaboration with Mike Fetters in several of them. The discussion…

This paper introduces the concept of 'hyper-ambition' in academia as a contributing factor to what has been termed a 'replication crisis' across some sciences. The replication crisis is an umbrella term that covers a range of 'questionable research practices', from sloppy reporting to fraud. There are already many proposals to address questionable…