Discussion toolkits
Toolkits to help you start the conversation with your colleagues about the challenges and opportunities to create a better research culture.
Research & Innovation Enabler Café Culture toolkit
This toolkit is the product of a collaboration between professional bodies representing Research & Innovation (R&I) enablers who are passionate about giving a voice to their community. It is specifically designed to facilitate discussions around experiences of research culture by R&I enablers, and has been piloted in two Higher Education Institutions, University of Glasgow and Queen’s University Belfast.
It is freely available to download from collaborator websites and includes clear instructions, facts, figures and quotes to generate discussion, and a framework to identify solutions and pathways to realise these.
Wellcome Cafe culture
Café Culture is part of Wellcome’s initiative to build a better research culture. It’s a discussion toolkit that you can use to have conversations with your peers about some of the challenges you face and what a better culture would look like.
The Café Culture toolkit includes a discussion guide, activities, and information about how you can share your ideas more widely through our online forum.
You can hold your Café Culture session online using a video conferencing platform. Wellcome send you guidance on how to host a successful remote discussion. If you'd prefer to wait and hold your session in person, you'll also have the option to download and print a physical Café Culture kit.
Hosting a Café Culture discussion
Integrity in practice toolkit
Integrity in practice is a toolkit developed by the Royal Society for those who wish to continue to improve research integrity and support a positive research culture within their organisation. The toolkit features a series of case studies of positive interventions made by individuals and organisations from across the globe to improve research culture and integrity. It contains seven ways that could help individuals and organisations bring life to the codes, concordats and pledges they are committed to.
Integrity in practice toolkit (PDF)
Visions of 2035: workshop materials
Visions of 2035 is an innovative, highly flexible, modular futures workshop. It uses speculative design scenarios and the Museum of Extraordinary Objects to inspire new thinking about what an idealised research culture in 2035 could look like. This could be both in terms of big systems change, for example around the way promotion is managed within an organisation or how research integrity is embedded within everyday practice; to small changes such as research leaders leading by example when it comes to promoting good work/life balance or colleagues demonstrating a respect for a broad range of career paths.
The Visions of 2035 Facilitation pack allows individuals to easily run their own workshops, using a simple step-by-step guide.
Visions of 2035: workshop materials
Research Culture and Environment Toolkit
The Research Culture and Environment Tooklit, published by the Russell Group, offers pragmatic steps that universities, funders and publishers can take collaboratively to achieve our shared goal of ensuring the UK is one of the best places in the world to do research.
The toolkit collates practical ideas and suggestions how to improve rearch culture under the following themes:
- Research careers: career stability; career progression; recognition and reward
- The experience of working in research: wellbeing, management and support; visibility, sense of community and engagement
- Inclusive and respectful environments: equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI); preventing and addressing bullying and harassment
Research Culture and Environment Toolkit
Team Science toolkit
The Team Science Toolkit has been developed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and it provides resources to help manage, support, conduct, or study team-based research. The Toolkit consolidates information from multiple disciplines and fields in one accessible location, and its resources include practical tools and strategies for effective team science, measures and metrics to study team science, and scholarly articles. It also includes an introduction to team science.