African universities have been tasked by their governments to develop and build research capacity, performance, and output, which puts a focus on university research management. Paying attention to research management is very important for any country trying to improve its research performance. However, university research management is an area…

The field of research impact assessment (RIA) has seen remarkable growth over the past three decades. Increasing numbers of RIA frameworks have been developed and applied by research funders and new technologies can capture some research impacts automatically. However, RIAs are too different to draw comparable conclusions about what type of…

Research ethics committees (RECs) have a crucial role in protecting children in research. However, studies on REC members' perspectives on paediatric research are scarce. We conducted a qualitative study to explore Swedish scientific REC members' perspectives on ethical aspects in applications involving children with severe health conditions. The…

The mission of the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) is to contribute to the best practices and science of implementation, organizational change, and system reinvention to improve outcomes across the spectrum of human services. As such, it has been involved in advancing implementation practice through numerous initiatives over the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of overhead rates on research application award success. The pressure to maximize overheads to fund the indirect costs associated with operating a research-intensive university and the perception that higher overhead rates disadvantage research proposals create an unhealthy tension between…

While an increased number of industries with business operations have been shaping their use of data analytics, the use of such tools and methods within the higher education research domain, specifically research administration, is still in its infancy. This mixed-methods study collected data to identify best practices in how universities and…

Anonymity is an unquestioned norm in education research, yet few scholars have theorized how this methodological standard reaffirms structural racism. This practice is critical to question given the presiding mismatch between the rhetoric and practice of racial diversity across educational contexts. Using Derrick Bell's interest convergence as a…

Background: Embedded research involves co-locating researchers within non-academic organisations to better link research and practice. Embedded research initiatives are often complex and emergent with a range of underlying intents, structures and processes. This can create tensions within initiatives and contributes to ongoing uncertainty about…

Neoliberalism has become a highly dominating and taken-for-granted way of organising the university sector around the world. In the critical educational literature, this market-based rationality has been scrutinised in detail over the past decades. However, rather scant attention has been directed to how university managers and administrators,…

This collaborative and reflective inquiry-based paper critically examines accessibility within the research realm. We focus this inquiry on the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion and specifically address the challenges of establishing accessibility as part of the research enterprise. We acknowledge and reflect on the pivotal role…

Complaints by educational researchers about problems with the human research ethics review process are not new. In this paper, we add to the growing body of literature critiquing contemporary ethics review processes. We outline the nature and extent of scrutiny our sexuality and relationships research project was subjected to during a drawn-out…

This article explores the state of higher education studies today, suggesting that in many ways it can be considered a vibrant field. In the UK, this is evidenced by the relatively large number of REF2021 submissions that had a higher education focus, and the emphasis higher education institutions are increasingly placing on conducting their own…

The current system of ethical oversight in the United States is based on Institutional Review Board (IRB) review. The system was established in response to well-known and egregious mistreatment of subjects in both biomedical and social and behavioral research. In the decades since the research regulations were enacted, reaction to the burden of…

Higher education institutions are moving towards highlighting the importance of research. According to the Department of Higher Education and Training in South Africa, the status of higher education institutions will be determined by the extent to which they are engaged in research and research-related activities. Higher education institutions…

Newly appointed lecturers joining teaching-focussed environments can encounter significant challenges to sustain a successful research career. Some of these challenges pertain to the existing work culture and the suitability of mentoring. At the same time, success in academia is typically associated with the "academic super-hero" model…