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How to improve operational efficiency in your institution

Plan your path to excellence with effective operations

Operational efficiency in your institution

Research excellence – How to collaborate more effectively

In recent years, institutions have been working together more closely across teaching and research, maximizing resources and funding, and accelerating impact, by exploring co-creation and collaboration models. Some examples include:

University-industry collaboration (US)

In the US, the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) – the first new National Science Foundation (NSF)directorate in 30 years – is launching an investments pilot opens in new tab/window and embarking on a mission to “create growth and jobs in the US through boosting ‘use-inspired’ R&D. opens in new tab/window The TIP doubled its budget to $880 million last year, with innovation surfaced by the initiation of new collaborative partnerships, or “industry clusters opens in new tab/window” with other researchers globally.

University-industry collaboration (UK)

In the UK, Advanced Oxford, an Oxfordshire-based collaboration with Elsevier, developed an innovation dashboard opens in new tab/window that supports the local ecosystem in measuring the combined impact of the region, facilitating research strategy, evaluation and policy. The dashboard tracks data on how Oxfordshire’s science and technology business community impacts economic activity in the UK – effectively, combining the output data of multiple entities for use by policymakers, planners, investors, companies and the universities.

"Collaboration with industry is becoming quite successful. First of all, we have made significant progress in conducting joint research that allows industry to take advantage of the university's research results. On the financial side, over the five-year period from 2018 to 2023, funding from industry has doubled."

AL

Academic leader

Asia-Pacific

University-industry collaboration (APAC)

In Japan, Elsevier’s Pure has supported similar co-collaboration operations through the MIRAI-DX project opens in new tab/window. As part of this initiative, research administrators from 40+ Japanese institutions have combined their data into a sole interface, allowing them to leverage their combined networks and outputs towards securing larger funding opportunities in SDG- and Covid-19- driven research. By combining their research information with KAKEN’s funding data research fields, they can easily surface the most targeted information for each application (Fig. 3). With similar research goals in mind, and the shared problem of decreasing funding success rates in a highly competitive market, the consortium’s active promotion of problem-solving joint research through the portal has opened new revenue streams for multiple institutions (Fig. 3).

For institutions globally, this serves as another example underlining the link between collaboration and creating innovative funding opportunities. What is clear is that universities go faster when they go – or collaborate well – together.

Figure 3 - The Mirai-DX platform

Figure 3 - The Mirai-DX platform

Accelerating the impact of your organisation

“We want to see qualitative stuff, whereas what we get is quantitative, and the public don't really understand it… a high-impact journal. What does that mean to the average person on the street? Not very much.”

FL

Funding leader

UK Government Agency

The demonstration of real-world impact is being propelled up the leadership agenda. In a new study examining academic evaluation, 79% of academic leaders, researchers and funders were cited as supporting a new approach for research assessment.

Key findings - Executive summary

There is a growing pressure to demonstrate the broader societal and economic impact of research beyond traditional bibliometrics. The overreliance on quantitative proxy measures leaves space for showing an institution’s wider reach of its scholarly outputs – a key driver in facilitating fortune-changing funding opportunities and attractive collaborative partnerships.

"There will be a redefinition of the core task of universities. That is something which we see happening now in a lot of countries, universities asking themselves what is our goal in society and for society?" Academic Leader, Europe, Middle East & Africa Source: View from the Top, Elsevier & IPSOS, 2024

Actively proving success rates in venture capital flows, patents, start-ups, jobs created and influence on local and larger-range policy are all crucial factors in the allocation of public investment, and, therefore, further funding validation. One academic leader noted the validity of these metrics in demonstrating the more immediate impact of research versus existing measures:

"Most often, the impact of research is measured through things you can count like patents, publication and funding dollars, but what is true impact, the societal impact and the delayed impact? The things you may do in the next few years may bear fruit in five years. How many lives have been changed, how many long-term health outcomes have been changed and what are the social escalators? There is some framework for this, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, but in general messaging, social impact of research is very hard."

AL

Academic Leader

Americas

Demonstrating impact with the REF

In the UK, the cost of running the REF has meant that the British government is closely monitoring cost within the system with a desire to drive efficiencies, meaning that the measurability of research impact has adopted a new and greater significance. As stated by Sarah Main, Vice President Academic and Government Relations UK, Elsevier: “The idea that universities spend huge amounts of money running the research excellence framework is not popular.” Therefore, institutions will likely feel a pressure to prepare for the REF submission in an efficient way, and reduced costs – and there are financial benefits for those who can execute this well.

Key findings | Best practices on impact

Best practices on impact

Talent management – How to showcase your institution’s most valued asset

Without question, funding constraints limit an institution’s talent, people management and hiring strategies. 93% of academic leaders globally stated that they need more funding to attract and retain the right talent, with just 11% stating they feel well prepared to offer competitive compensation and benefits to staff.

Workflows and workloads in academia

There is vast data to show that faculty workloads are increasing. Recent research shows that, in the US, academics are working more than they are paid to do, equating to 2 unpaid days (50.4 FTE hours) per week. While there is more focus needed in this area, significant progress is being made:

“I finally feel like we’re on the precipice of real change. We’ve talked about diversifying our faculty […] long before we looked at the structures in place to actually recruit, support and retain faculty. So, finding ‘equity holes’ in current policies and processes is now a standard part of review and assessment in my office. And the real question is now how to ensure that everyone feels a sense of belonging and wants to stay and contribute.”

CB

Courtney Bryant

Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University

Workloads are unrelenting across academia, with 66% of faculty reporting burnout opens in new tab/window – attributing it to “unremitting workload of 70+ hrs per week, poor leadership, top-heavy administration and devaluation of faculty.”

Finding the space to showcase their institution’s most valued asset – its key to competitive advantage in academic excellence – is top of mind for many leaders. As well as the significant challenges surrounding staff engagement, hiring processes, ensuring work-life balance and reporting on high-value faculty work feeding the institutional strategy (Fig. 4).

No shortage of hurdles to winning faculty engagement

Figure 4 - No shortage of hurdles to winning faculty engagement

Best practice strategies for retaining faculty

In light of these challenges, what are the key strategies for success to retain your faculty? Best practices noted by some institutions include: mentoring and guidance programs from senior faculty, conducting exit interviews to understand why faculty leave, leadership opportunities and providing supportive communities at the institution (Fig. 5).

Reimaging the tenure and promotion process

The workflows surrounding hiring processes further complicate strategic talent sourcing and management. A lack of standardized data, processes and templates can hinder efficiencies in tenure and promotion processes. 73% of tenured professors moved up their retirement date in last year, according to a report from the Chronicle of Higher Education opens in new tab/window. There is also a limited guarantee that disorganized data and workflows will lead to equitable hiring and tenure and promotion processes. However, many examples exist of how leveraging data in aid of efficiency has supported faculty and senior leadership in making the right hiring decisions and retaining talent.

On the topic of the standardization of tenure and promotion processes, Courtney Bryant, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty, Carnegie Mellon University stated: “It’s hard to read cases when they’re not standardized, it’s hard to ensure that you have a good process and the right materials, so standardization is key to a smooth process and fair process.” The structure and focus that data provides for effective planning also allows for more focused, precision committee work, enhancing productivity for senior-level staff.

If datasets, systems and processes are fully structured to support agility and high performance, and in the most effective way to benefit faculty and staff, this frees up the university’s brightest minds to make a more dynamic, deeper impact in research and education. Unstructured data and processes around scholarly activities can lead to hiring missteps, missed promotion chances, or the most relevant research work not being surfaced at the right time.

"Data is a linchpin in fostering institutional change because data used correctly and transparently, creates accountability...institutions should know the demographic breakdown of contingent and tenure-line faculty as well as rates of renewal, tenure, and promotion. I think this data is powerful in so many ways, and we're still discovering the ways in which this data can be powerful."

DCP

Dr. Christy Pichichero

Associate Professor and Director of Faculty Diversity at College of Humanities and Social Sciences, George Mason University

Source: White Paper: Faculty Diversity in Review, Promotion, and Tenure opens in new tab/window, Interfolio, 2024

D. Harley, S.K. Acord, S. Earl-Novell, S. Lawrence, C.J. King, “Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines,” Center for Studies in Higher Education, 2020

Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in academia

On diversity in the promotion and review process, Sian Smith, Assistant Director, Faculty HR Research and Faculty Office, London Business School states: “We think really carefully about that to ensure that when the school is conducting a review it’s made up of a diverse range of people that represent who they’re then going to be reviewing. They’re some of the things that we might not have thought about 5 or 10 years ago.” Sian also mentions that, in the UK, universities are required to publish their gender pay gap data, noting that this sharp focus provokes some “difficult” but “really important” conversations.

"When we start to take into consideration tenure and promotion rates, retention rates, percentages of minoritized faculty in contingent positions compared to tenure-line positions and then factors such as invisible labor that affect women in particular and other minoritized groups, I think we're still on the very steep end of changing these aspects of our profession."

DCP

Dr. Christy Pichichero

Associate Professor and Director of Faculty Diversity at College of Humanities and Social Sciences, George Mason University

Faculty engagement and burnout

Talent and the “4th generation university”

“Talent” is not limited to university faculty. Student engagement takes centre stage in the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Elsevier’s 2024 report, “Towards the 4th generation university”, which depicts universities as a “gateway for talent,” loaded with potential to transform the innovation and technological breakthroughs of the region. At Eindhoven, almost half of the alumni (46.7%) remain within 75km of the university following their studies and 75.1% remain within the Netherlands. A “4th generation university” is touted as a new model that “gives rise to new units within universities, such as innovation spaces, and to multi-stakeholder partnerships with a specific focus on challenges or technologies.” (Fig. 6)

Towards the 4th generation university image

Source: Towards the 4th generation university, Elsevier & Eindhoven University of Technology, 2024

In considering the state of the market in higher education, there is a clear consensus for change among leading academic institutions. All the data and know-how would suggest that talent is king; as a key driver for the success of the university, they are also drivers for thought, the primary opinion leaders for research excellence, as well as those leading and shaping the structure of student programs for the future cohorts.

As universities look to the “4th generation” model for institutions, many are considering varying frameworks for how data is organized, how faculty is secured and developed and ultimately, the forever changing university experience. Overall, in accelerating research impact and excellence, going faster appears just as critical as going faster, together, as new and innovative partnerships emerge.