Information for Staff

The College Research & Business Development Managers are here to help research staff identify funding opportunities, develop proposals and support external engagement with a view to creating impact.

The team can often provide you with examples of successful proposals, template letters, hints and tips for developing proposals and are more than happy to review proposals and provide feedback.

If you’re working on a New Investigator Award, a Fellowship, a multi-party proposal or a collaborative project with industry please do get in touch with them. 

The team run the College Early Career Development programme and a Peer Mentoring Programme for PDRAs who are keen to develop fellowship proposals.

The College of Science & Engineering provides support resources on the primary funders (eg. UK Research Councils, European Research Council), strategic funding calls, mobility funds and grant costings.

The University has an institutional subscription to Research Professional, an online database of research funding opportunities and a source of international research policy and practice news. By creating your own profile, you can tailor funding and news searches, as well as set-up weekly alerts based on your interests.

Impact is defined as ‘an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia’.

The inclusion of research impact as an element in funding decisions and assessments of excellence at both institutional and individual levels means that we need to embed awareness and understanding, and best practice, into our research culture and activity across all disciplines. We do this in a number of ways:

• Training and Guidance;
• Funding Opportunities.

Our College also provides bespoke support and guidance on the impact of research activities.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has awarded the University an Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) to increase the global impact of the University's research through greater levels of external engagement and entrepreneurship. The IAA supports a range of interventions with a focus on investments that pump-prime wider knowledge exchange activities and impact generation of previously funded EPSRC research. The IAA aims to deliver this by focusing on four core objectives:

• Enterprise and entrepreneurship;
• Partnership development;
• Researcher mobility;
• Capacity building and culture change.

Further information on the EPSRC IAA and the live competitions can be found here.

The Research and Innovation Services (RIS) is responsible for ensuring University policies and strategies promote a high quality research environment. RIS is also responsible for developing and implementing University strategy with respect to research and engagement, and good research practice.

The Research Strategy & Policy team is responsible for developing and implementing the University’s research strategy and policies. By supporting the work of the Research Planning & Strategy Committee and working with College and University senior management, the team ensures the University's policy framework enables and supports the University’s research objectives, whilst complying with the requirements of the University’s funders. The team also ensures that researchers are provided with a supportive environment, and are encouraged to meet the highest standards of research integrity.

The Strategy & Policy team also lead on the University’s preparations for Research Excellence Framework (REF - see next section). These preparations include delivering plans and procedures to facilitate the final REF submission, ensuring that the University's reporting of its research-related activities fulfils its potential. Within this, the team also lead in the identification and development of Impact Case Studies, working closely with other University services, college senior management & research administration.

The REF is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.

The UK’s four funding bodies for Higher Education have outlined a threefold purpose for REF2021:

• To provide accountability for public investment in research and produce evidence of the benefits of this investment;
• To provide benchmarking information and establish reputational yardsticks for use within the HE sector and for public information;
• To inform the selective allocation of funding for research.

As a research-led institution, the University of Glasgow is committed to providing an environment that ensures our research is conducted to the highest quality standards. Central to this commitment is the development of an environment that recognises and supports research excellence. When embarking on a new research collaboration or taking on new staff or students (who may be lacking in experience in these areas) it is important to ensure that everyone has the same expectations for good research practice. 

Training and workshops on research integrity and data management are available through Research and Innovation Services. These are appropriate for academic staff and research administrators, as well as being highly recommended for new early career researchers.

The Research Integrity Adviser for the School is Prof David Cumming.

Open Access to research publications means making the full text freely available on the web. This is a requirement of the REF, many funders, and good research practice. 

The library can provide support. All University of Glasgow authors who are acting as lead University of Glasgow author should notify the library as soon as an article or conference proceeding is accepted. This can be achieved by forwarding the acceptance notification and a copy of the author final version (final agreed text before the publisher adds their logo) to research-openaccess@glasgow.ac.uk.

All papers should include acknowledgement of the funder name(s) and funder grant reference. This should be in the format: 'This work was supported by the … [grant number XXX].'

Enlighten is the University’s system for managing research publications. Details of all research publications must be recorded in Enlighten, as the data is used for a number of key purposes:

• Publicising worldwide the research carried out at the University of Glasgow;
• Populating staff pages with publications details;
• Providing publications details for the University’s REF return;
• Providing publications details for the Performance and Development Review process.

The University’s Publications Policy also requires staff to deposit the full text of journal articles and conference proceedings where this is permitted by publishers.

Here you can find full details of what you should deposit.

Researcher Development is a service that works in partnership with Colleges, Graduate Schools and key services (such as HR, Careers, the library and Employee and Organisational Development) to coordinate professional and career development opportunities for Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs) and early-career staff.

The Early Career Development Programme (ECDP) is University of Glasgow's commitment to developing its early career academic staff. It aims to develop high achieving, high performing academics who will help the University to deliver its vision and ambitions supporting the strategic objective of being 'A globally connected, globally influential university.'

The Programme will enable this by providing learning and development opportunities in all aspects of the academic role; allocating a mentor to provide support and advice; and setting annual objectives which enable academics to develop their abilities and achievements with a view to meeting the criteria for promotion to Grade 9 within a defined timescale. All Early Career Researchers are allocated a mentor by their School, and should speak with their line manager to ensure that this commitment is fulfilled.

The College of Science and Engineering also provides significant support for its Early Career Researchers.

If you are hosting a visiting researcher, or have an idea of who you would like to see speak, please contact your Division’s Seminar Coordinator.

The University has a central events webapp, listing campus wide research seminars, allowing staff to see the goings on in Schools across campus. It is intended to replace existing department- or school-specific methods for advertising events which make it difficult for staff and students to discover what relevant research may be being presented elsewhere on the campus and provide a single central location where all such event information can be accessed using your GUID.

If you find a group that hosts a lot of interesting talks, you can click the "Subscribe" button on any one of their talks (or on the group information page) to subscribe to that group.

You can also set up automated event reminder emails which are sent out roughly 24 hours and 2 hours before upcoming events.

If you prefer to receive reminders through a calendar application such as iCal, Outlook or Google Calendar, the system can provide a calendar feed (compatible with most common calendar apps) that will contain all the events that you have marked.

The School is keen to ensure that its world-leading staff are recognised for their contributions to their respective field. The Prize Committee was established to provide dedicated support and guidance for those seeking to apply for awards / prizes, and to identify and highlight opportunities for members of staff across the School. Current membership:

• Robert Hadfield (Chair)
• Liz Tanner
• Colin McInnes
• Bill Sloan

All research and teaching staff have an official staff profile that is automatically created for them when they join the School. We encourage you to establish and maintain your profile, which can be an excellent promotional tool to present your research and teaching activities.

Before you can manage and update your profile, there are a few simple steps to complete:

• Locate your profile to confirm that it has been created;
• Watch the video tutorials and download the PDF training resources;
• Download and complete the registration form 'Register to edit a research profile' 
• Receive your login details and password for accessing the University's content management system, Terminal 4 - SiteManager (t4);
• Use the training materials and your t4 login to edit and update your research profile.

In the News

The School wants to hear about your work! Each Research Division has a dedicated Web Editor who are always looking for content for the College of Science and Engineering's News webpage:

• Aerospace Sciences - Hossein Zare-Behtash;
• Biomedical Engineering - Julien Reboud;
• Electronics & Nanoscale Engineering - Louise Evans;
• Infrastructure & Environment - Lukasz Kaczmarczyk;
• Systems, Power & Energy - Matteo Ceriotti.

Social Media

Social media provides a powerful means to improve the visibility of your research and to interact with peers, collaborators and stakeholders. Platforms may include professional or personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and a broad range of professional networking sites, including LinkedIn and ResearchGate.

The University actively encourages members of its research community to engage responsibly and professionally with social media. However, as the barriers between personal and professional use of social media can be poorly defined, it is important to consider how your activity reflects on both your professional research integrity and the reputation of the University of Glasgow.

The University is very active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, You Tube and LinkedIn. The School has a Twitter account, @UofGEngineering, Instagram and Facebook Group and we encourage you to follow and engage with us!

Email signature

Your University email address is a professional communication from an accredited source and as such you should not miss the opportunity to promote your affiliations, staff profile and School (or personal) social media.

We would like you to consider adding the School website to your e-mail signatures and promote our Athena SWAN Silver Award.

You may want to consider including the Twitter site (which has a growing number of influential followers): @UofGEngineering

Add any special interest group or event with which you are associated, or of course your personal website.

Other Resources

The University provides a variety of resources in its Brand Toolkit:

• Research Communications Toolkit;
• Branded stationery;
• Powerpoint templates.