Research Assurance and Accountability: 2024 returns
Introduction
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) gives universities around £300 million each year to support research. What do they do with it?
SFC’s funding is different from other research funding universities can apply for. We don’t tell them what they have to do with it (other than use it for research).
Universities can decide what is most interesting to explore, which might be something no-one else has even spotted or thought about yet, let alone put money aside to support. They don’t have to produce results within a short timescale, so they can look at things that take a long time to develop. They can make sure that the things that are needed for all kinds of research, like libraries, networks, expert technicians and support staff, rooms and labs and kit are all there. And other funders can build on that. Universities can choose to use SFC money to fill the gaps left when other funders’ research awards don’t cover the costs. And, for example, they can choose to keep people with promising ideas in jobs if there is a gap between the funding from other sources that pays their salaries.
We can see the value of the research that the Scottish universities do, built on the foundations of SFC money. We can see their ideas and knowledge being shared and used. We collect data every year on how the money is spent. Every few years, we assess the quality of the research that is done in all Scottish universities. But, although all that research is built on the foundation of the SFC money and what it buys, it can be difficult to show a direct link between the new knowledge and the broad funds we put in, often many years before.
In 2024, we asked universities to tell us about:
- How they make decisions on how to use the SFC money, and what are the main things they use it for.
- Examples of things that they have achieved using the SFC money.
This report sets out some of the answers we got.
It highlights the role and importance of core research funding in Scotland’s university research system, how it acts as a foundation to leverage further investment, provides for essential infrastructure and overheads, supports positive research cultures and translation of outcomes into impacts, and contributes to development of the pipeline of talented people and teams for Scotland’s future.
Background
SFC core research funding
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) provides core research funding for universities through:
- The Research Excellence Grant (REG) which provides the foundations for Scotland’s world-class university research base and ensures Scotland remains globally competitive, attractive to the best researchers and teams and making an impact nationally.
- The Research Postgraduate Grant (RPG) which allows universities to invest in a collaborative environment for research training and development in order to secure a pipeline of skilled postgraduate researchers and support their career development in a way that meets the needs of society, including academia and industry.
Research Assurance and Accountability
In 2024, SFC established a Research Assurance and Accountability (RAA) return, requiring universities to provide information on how core research funds are managed and deployed to support them in delivering their research strategies. The RAA return replaced the previous Outcome Agreement returns.
RAA returns have been insightful and informative, providing us with greater information on practice and achievements.
What we were told
Approach to distribution and assurance
The governance and distribution processes described to us by universities varied significantly, reflecting each institution’s individual characteristics and priorities. Some held and used funds centrally, while others disbursed funding to their colleges or schools, either entirely or withholding a proportion for central services and activities.
Uses of Research Excellence Grant
The reports identified a range of ‘top three’ activities supported by REG. The following case studies include examples under the most frequently identified headings.
Universities highlighted the importance of REG as a long-term stable funding source. This helps them in developing and maintaining external partnerships with government or policymakers, national and global partner institutions, and industry and other organisations.
Partnerships include collaborations with other Scottish universities. Partnerships and networks are particularly important in building the teams to meet global and national challenges and in competing for European and International Development research funding. The long-term stability also provides flexibility. It allows universities to flex and embrace opportunities, but also recognises each institution’s unique expertise and location, and allows them to pursue their own tailored strategy and priorities.
“An important feature of REG is that it offers financial flexibility, to invest in strategic research activities in a way that best suits our distinct strategic strengths and priorities, including those that might not attract targeted grant funding but are critical for inclusive economic growth, the wellbeing economy or a positive, healthy research culture.”
Queen Margaret University
Providing funding for cross-institution strategic initiatives
Strategic approaches help universities to grow and apply their own research strengths, and to work collaboratively across and between institutions, to make a difference – locally, nationally and internationally.
Universities describe how the long-term and stable nature of REG funding enabled them to invest resources in supporting interdisciplinary collaboration through large-scale, long-term endeavours.
For many, this includes forming cross-institutional research centres or knowledge exchange centres, to address priority challenges. REG enables long-term commitment to academic leadership, staffing resources and underpinning research, and to the key budgets required to support both the international networking activity and infrastructure development which are the foundation of world leading centres.
REG was instrumental in setting up and supporting continuing activities in Heriot-Watt University’s ‘Global Research Institutes’. These address key global societal challenges in Robotics and AI, in addressing Net Zero, in Earth & Environmental Science, and in Health & Care Engineering.
REG contributes to the University of Glasgow’s Glasgow Changing Futures (GCF) initiative, uniting the University community’s strengths in research, innovation, education, partnerships and influence to deliver solutions for the needs of global society through challenge-led research. The inaugural priority areas are ‘Sustainable Futures’ and ‘Healthy and Equitable Futures’
REG funding allowed the time and resources to grow the partnerships which enabled the foundation of two University of St Andrews’ Global Research Centres (GRCs): the GRC for Diverse Intelligences, advancing understanding of human/non-human, natural/artificial, and individual/collective intelligences, and the GRC for Critical Sustainabilities, taking a whole system approach to building a sustainable future for our planet.
Research culture/environment
The environment and working culture of an institution influences the way that research is conducted and communicated. Positive research cultures are an important part of research excellence and result in better quality research.
Universities highlighted the development or implementation of institutional research culture strategies or action plans. Some, such as Robert Gordon University and the University of St Andrews, have carried out staff surveys to help them understand their communities and to inform development activities and strategies
Over half described support for career development of staff at all levels, including early career researchers and research leadership. Several, including the University of Stirling and the University of the Highlands and Islands, describe annual festivals to strengthen and share good research practice.
University of Aberdeen’s PORTAL – a hub for research training and career development designed to support researchers and research-enabling staff, such as technicians – offers tailored development pathways to empower individuals at every career stage with the tools and resources to support their personal and professional growth.
Queen Margaret University is launching a new Research and Knowledge Exchange (KE) Culture framework, including development of a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of Research and KE Culture, based on a basket of metrics from an established UK-wide survey (the Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research survey (CEDARS)).
Enabling staff employment
As a core grant, REG allows universities to employ the staff who make research possible.
The long-term nature of REG funding supports staff appointments and studentships, whether that is for building capacity in critical areas or research centres, supporting research time allocation for staff or allowing recruitment of specialist support roles.
It also allows support for researchers who are between grants, aiding retention and reducing career precarity, and meaning their skills and knowledge are not lost to Scottish research.
The University of Edinburgh has attracted research talent, making 40 appointments for “tenure track” Chancellor’s Fellows in June 2024. ‘We have only been able to make these appointments because of the increase in our REG funding’.
In the University of Stirling, REG supports recruitment, development and retention of research staff. These staff are central and critical to the University’s R&I strategy. Commitments include: building capacity for staff to develop their research and innovation portfolios; professional development to support inclusive teams that nurture leadership across career stages and activities; developing the talent pipeline of doctoral candidates, and early to mid-career researchers.
Underpinning direct research costs
REG forms one side of the UK’s dual support system for university research, with the other side formed by grants from UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) that are competitively awarded to Scottish researchers and teams.
Universities recognise that one of the key purposes of REG is to uphold the principles of the dual support system and use it to contribute toward the full economic costs of research, including research supported by other funders of research, such as charities, where there is shared benefit.
SRUC uses its REG funding to support projects that tackle critical global challenges, such as food security, climate resilience, and animal health, where full economic costs may not be covered by external grants. REG is also used by SRUC to bridge funding gaps in interdisciplinary and/or international research that spans across agriculture, sustainability, and digital innovation, helping SRUC grow its reputation as a leader in research impact both nationally and internationally.
The University of Strathclyde’s approach is to consistently maximise leverage of the funds received through REG. In this way REG funding supports large, long term, complex endeavours (such as specialist industry-focused research centres like the Advanced Forming Research Centre and the Centre for Continuous Manufacturing and Advanced Crystallisation) and direct co-funding of grant-funded research and postgraduate studentships.
Supporting centralised research services and/or professional support services
It is not only researchers who make research possible. Support from specialist staff and services is an essential part of universities’ research effort.
Many universities use REG to provide long-term, cross-institutional support for staff and central services to support the full research process; from finding external funding to bid development and proposal writing, through to managing research projects, compliance with external regulations (such as Trusted Research, Open Access, Research Integrity) and communicating research outcomes.
At the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, REG underpins the cost of 20 Research and Knowledge Exchange Directorate staff who support staff research and researcher development, as well as driving institutional policy and strategy, and promoting external collaborations.
The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) use REG to provide central resources and personnel to support research activities across UHI partners, research centres and institutes, including underpinning staff in the Research and Graduate School offices, who provide central research, knowledge exchange and postgraduate researcher (PGR) support services.
Pump-priming and capacity building
Exploration of new ideas needs new resources to move from the thought to the testing phase
Around half of the universities provide examples of using REG as pump-priming/ seed funding or capacity building to support new collaborations, interdisciplinary working and new projects with the potential to lead to an increase in external funding applications and development of expertise in new areas.
Robert Gordon University’s “Change our Tomorrow” breakthrough fund will shape and support innovative and ambitious projects that cut across the research ecosystem to tackle the challenges of the future by supporting academics to identify and develop collaborative expertise through pioneering interdisciplinary research.
The University of Edinburgh have committed to a new internal seed-funding scheme, the Big Ideas Accelerator Fund, focused on fostering research collaborations that span multiple Colleges, working across disciplines and demonstrating strategic importance to the University.
Maintaining and/or renewing infrastructure
World-leading research requires access to cutting-edge equipment and highly complex, bespoke physical and digital infrastructure.
Universities highlighted use of REG to support their research infrastructure such as purchasing specialist equipment, refurbishment of lab space, supporting digital assets and investing in High Performance Computing, often in conjunction with leveraged funds.
The University of Dundee has used REG to provide continued funding for the wider research infrastructure, including “Physical and digital research infrastructure [which] requires ongoing long-term funding, to ensure our research facilities and environment remains fit for purpose”.
Glasgow Caledonian University has used REG to lever other financial support enabling the purchase of hardware and software infrastructure that will benefit and be utilised in different research centres (e.g. a data processing server) or providing secure access to data to a wide variety of stakeholders outside the university (e.g. a Safepod facility).
Supporting postgraduate research students
All universities are part of training the next generation of researchers, whose skills will benefit academia, industry and wider society.
Although the Research Postgraduate Grant is provided specifically to support investment in the training environment for postgraduate researchers, some universities also choose to allocate some Research Excellence Grant towards this purpose, for example, through direct funding of PhD studentships, or to develop or continue support for a central graduate school or doctoral centre.
Abertay University has established a pan-University Graduate School, offering a comprehensive and integrated training and development programme to staff and research students.
Edinburgh Napier University’s Doctoral College brings together all activities supporting Postgraduate Research (PGR) students into a single structure devised to enhance the student experience and raise the visibility of the research degree community. The ambition includes provision of an excellent student experience where the PGR students are integrated as full members of the University’s wider research community.
Uses of Research Postgraduate Grant
The Research Postgraduate Grant supports institutions to:
- Invest in a collaborative environment for research training and development that values positive culture, inclusivity and exposure to high-quality research as central to the postgraduate research experience.
- Secure a pipeline of skilled postgraduate researchers and support their career development in a way that meets the needs of academia, industry and society.
We asked universities to set out high-level outcomes demonstrating what they intend to achieve in the next year using RPG funding. Outcomes set by the universities include a mix of business-as-usual activities and aspirations for change, reflecting the diversity of the institutions and their postgraduate research (PGR) programmes. Some responses indicate RPG is earmarked for a very specific purpose within the institution, such as competitively awarded PhD bursaries.
Glasgow School of Art (GSA) highlighted that without the underpinning support provided by RPG it would be challenging to run a viable postgraduate research programme, but thanks to long-term RPG investment, they have been able to grow their PhD cohort. GSA use RPG to invest in student training and research activities, core academic leadership and support staff as well as contributing towards membership of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.
In the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), RPG supports university-wide administration of the doctoral training programme, providing training and development opportunities, and excellent supervision and networking to nurture talent and support career development in or outside of academia. RPG further supports three-year postgraduate studentships through the annual Vice-Chancellor’s Studentship Competition. Studentships must address challenges aligned to one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
What we know now
The RAA returns not only provide assurance and accountability on the use of REG and RPG but also give a wealth of evidence on the many and varied ways which universities use their core research funding to support their research endeavours.
Research Excellence Grant enables institutions to invest in the conditions needed for research excellence. These range from physical and digital infrastructure and cutting-edge equipment, to retaining staff knowledge and expertise by bridging funding gaps, as well as investing in new talent, developing excellent research cultures in which people can thrive, and providing the central services and wider teams supporting the research effort.
The stable, long-term nature of core research funding allows institutions to invest strategically in new opportunities and ambitious challenge-focused projects as best meets their individual locations and expertise, while also supporting long-term development of the researcher pipeline to ensure we have the skilled people we will need, ready to meet the challenges of the future.
For further information on the impact of research from Scottish institutions see Funding for Research and Innovation.
SFC Strategic Plan 2022-27
Building a connected, agile, sustainable tertiary education and research system for Scotland.