IoPPN Research Culture Insights: Professor Mitul Mehta

What do you think of when you hear 'research culture'?

We can find definitions of research culture online, like the Royal Society one, which is about behaviours and attitudes, norms and expectations. It might feel quite nebulous, but I think it does cover the right areas. I find a good way to understand research culture as a concept is to dig deeper into values and expectations and norms within specific areas to see how they affect your behaviour as a researcher.

The most obvious example I can give is open research, which encompasses things like preregistration, data sharing, sharing of code, etc - all to allow people to be aware of your methods and replicate them. It aligns with the broader aim of having integrity in your own approach to your research: you want to be driven to do the best research within the constraints of the resources available to you, to do research which you can stand up on an international platform and defend, and that will be recognised and valued and replicated.

That's a positive side of research culture, a utopia we want to achieve. But I think what such a goal could give you in your day-to-day practice captures research culture really well, because you want to be in a group where someone can leave, someone else can come in, and there's enough material available that actually you don't feel that loss so sharply.

You also want to have an approach whereby errors in the work that might be discovered by the most junior person in a group, for example, are not met with fear. Errors might be met with a bit of shame and embarrassment, and all the normal emotions, but if your most junior group member can come and speak to you, and you can come up with a solution together, that’s great. Collaboration and openness could potentially define what the best research groups could be as well.

So that's what I see as research culture, but it extends to many, many other areas, including your career development, your collaborative potential, and how you interact with and value opinions from people of all different backgrounds, as examples.

What aspects do you think are done well in IoPPN?

I think the IoPPN is very good in many areas. For example, the IoPPN has employed a Research Culture Support Manager to help us understand our research culture better and what we do well and where we could improve. The IoPPN has been pioneering within King’s in terms of CED&I and valuing staff, staff representativeness, and inclusivity. I think the IoPPN has been very good at celebrating research – I'm a bit biased because I chair the Research and Innovation Committee, but a lot of things we do, we did before I chaired it, and I've continued with them because they're great contributions, like the Research Festival.

With the courses we run for staff and the events we run, like the innovation events, we try to bring people together from different backgrounds and areas. For example, we've looked at AI and we looked at neurotechnologies.

What I've said about the culture and everyone belonging and contributing, that all sounds great and aspirational, but what are we doing at a department level or even within my group? I think this is where one can have the most influence and within my group I try to create an environment which is friendly, which is open, where we really care about each other, we really care about the research we do and the data quality.

We employ people that embody these values, and we try and develop them in the group as well. And we are a group – of course, it's my group and I'm responsible at many levels - but we have to work as a group and everyone's going to contribute something different. If you don't acknowledge that and you don't let people have their voices and their opinions and really reflect on all these ideas, then you're not really tapping into the talent that you have in front of you, and the fact that people are wanting to commit to research, whether it is for a short or longer term.

Going forward, what do you want to see in the research culture space?

In any large institution that has a strong history, you could develop an approach to research which continues to deliver good results without necessarily embracing a positive research culture, and it's hard to know what the costs of that could be. You might, for example, lose great ideas from a postdoc if you don't have strong diversity and openness in your group. Whether it's academic or industry or government research, you could potentially create a whole bunch of fantastic results which ultimately are not replicated, or people struggle to replicate because you're not sharing enough.

So, it's hard to know where the improvements should be, but I think transparency and openness are a really important core. Also, I think we've got pockets of really good practice, but we don't really know how many we have and where they are or even what they are.

I also think there's a very uneven landscape in terms of our research culture: how much people engage with CED&I, positive research integrity practises, knowledge transfer opportunities and thinking about impact in their work. There are disparities in whether people are really engaging with nurturing talent in their groups rather than just thinking of their group as a bunch of fantastic friendly research workers who have to deliver a project, and I think these are areas where we can definitely improve. We've had cultural conversations and surveys, and we know there is room for improvement in those areas.

But how do we reach everyone? It's a real challenge and I think we do this by creating a positive culture everywhere and positive opportunities everywhere. And those opportunities might be picked up by Heads of Department, by Deputy Heads, by Heads of School, by Professional Service staff, by research assistants, by postdocs - if there are things available at every level and every angle from which you come to research, then it will have an influence and the influence of people who are acting against the positive research culture will just be minimised over time.

And in the future, what can we do to improve the research culture? I think we are doing lots already. We have different projects ongoing; we're trying to recognise positive culture more, we've got prizes and awards for positive contributions to research culture. I think we're helped by the REF increasing their percentage contribution for research culture. It’s a cynical view, but I think people will notice it more when there's money attached and if it means that people have a better experience here and we have a better culture, then so be it. Whatever it takes. But I think that people have to recognise the value and it has to be integral to research.

What I see the future as is a place where research culture is not something separate from the research. It's something that's part of the research and people recognise it. At the moment, I still feel as though research culture is kind of seen by many as separate from the research or something you do in addition to the research which might allow you to tick some boxes and maybe enhance some of your practises or your standing or whatever, but I think a future in which we don't talk about research without including research culture is where we need to be.

This blog is part of a ongoing series looking at research culture at IoPPN. If you would be interested in contributing, please contact aneita.pringle@kcl.ac.uk.