Co-authored by Dr. Lyn R. Keith and Ms. Varsha Persaud of The UWI School for Graduate Studies and Research.
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
CONTENTS Message from the Pro Vice-Chancellor .................................................................................................................. 2 Background and Purpose........................................................................................................................................ 3 Justification for Enhancing Research Productivity at The UWI............................................................................... 4 Measuring Research Productivity at The UWI ........................................................................................................ 5 Challenges Constraining Research Productivity ..................................................................................................... 6 Strategies to Enhance Research Productivity ......................................................................................................... 7 The Policy Framework Facilitating Research....................................................................................................... 7 Capacity Development in Research and Publishing Skills ................................................................................... 7 Mentorship Strategies ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Capacity Development Workshops ................................................................................................................. 8 Strategies To Support Academic Visibility ....................................................................................................... 9 Strategies To Promote A Research Culture ..................................................................................................... 9 Institutional Research Support Services ........................................................................................................ 10
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Message from the Pro Vice-Chancellor I extend a warm welcome to you as we embark on a transformative journey to amplify research productivity at The University of the West Indies (UWI), aligning closely with our strategic initiatives of access and agility. It is with great enthusiasm and a strong sense of purpose that I introduce the updated and expanded BGSR.P.14, a seminal paper aimed at illuminating our path towards enhanced academic success. This paper represents a pivotal evolution from the original BGSR.P.14 in 2018/2019, crafted through the collective insights and dedication of our esteemed colleagues across the university. Their wisdom, coupled with the invaluable feedback from our academic community, has fortified the foundations of this renewed paper. At the heart of this endeavour lies a commitment to understand and address the constraints faced in our pursuit of research productivity. We aspire to redefine and measure research productivity at The UWI, an institution striving for global eminence while fulfilling the regional developmental needs, all within the constraints of our financial reality. Research productivity is a cornerstone of academic success, both at the individual and institutional levels. It not only positions us favourably within the global academic community but also provides a platform to address regional challenges with innovative solutions. As we enhance our research productivity, we elevate our contributions to society, fostering positive transformation and impacting lives. In essence, this paper serves as a beacon, guiding both our academic staff and graduate students in their quest for academic success through heightened research productivity. It also lays out actionable strategies for The UWI to implement, supporting our researchers and driving the increase in research output. We stand at a critical juncture where strategic and concerted efforts can truly reshape the landscape of research productivity at our esteemed institution. I invite you to engage deeply with the insights presented in this paper, for it is through our
collective commitment and action that we shall carve a pathway to academic excellence. Thank you for your dedication and unwavering support on this academic journey.
Pro Vice-Chancellor, Graduate Studies and Research Professor Aldrie Henry-Lee
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Background and Purpose This Paper is an update and expansion of BGSR.P.14 2018/2019 which was written and presented by the then Campus Directors (Cave Hill, Mona, the St. Augustine Campuses) and Coordinator (Open Campus) of Graduate Studies and Research at the meeting of the Board for Graduate Studies and Research in May 2019. Prior to producing this Paper, BGSR.P14 was circulated to the current Campus Directors of Graduate Studies and Research, Deputy Deans, Research, and Directors, Institutes and Centres for their comments. In academia, research productivity is a key measure of academic success, both at the individual level and at the institutional level in terms of how the institution is rated by the global academic community1. The purpose of this paper is to identify constraints to research productivity at The University of the West Indies (UWI) and make recommendations for strategies that could be implemented to address the constraints. To do so effectively, requires clarity on what constitutes research productivity and how it can best be measured at The UWI, an institution which aspires to global excellence and recognition while also addressing the developmental needs of the region in which it resides and doing so in a financially challenging environment. The goal of this Paper is to serve as a motivational and operational guide for researchers at The UWI, both graduate students and academic staff, in their efforts to achieve academic success through enhanced research productivity; and as a source of strategies that The UWI could implement to facilitate researchers and increase research output.
1 Jameel, Alaa S. and Ahmad, Abd Rahman, The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction between Leadership Style and Performance of Academic Staff (2020). International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Vol. 24, Issue 04, PP 2399- 2414, 2020, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3551155
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Justification for Enhancing Research Productivity at The UWI Research at The University of the West Indies is challenged by the need to service three distinctive, but not mutually exclusive, research goals which can be categorised as: Research towards Disciplinary Advancement and International Recognition; Research towards Regional Development; and Research towards Innovation and Commercialisation. To contribute globally to disciplinary advancement is a matter of regional pride and, more tangibly, drives international recognition of the quality of The UWI. This recognition underpins global acceptance of The UWI’s graduates, allows the University to attract high-quality staff and partner with high-quality international collaborators, increases its attractiveness to international fee-paying students, and increases competitiveness for research and development grants from international donor agencies. Research towards regional development has been a foundational mission of The University of the West Indies since its formation in 1948. The current Mission Statement of The UWI is: To advance learning, create knowledge and foster innovation for the positive transformation of the Caribbean and the wider world. A critical emphasis of the research agenda of The UWI must therefore be to address the prevailing challenges that constrain national and regional sustainable development, whether this be environmental and natural resource management, social development, cultural development, or economic development, and create mechanisms to engage with policymakers, as required, to ensure that the research outputs have measurable development impact. Research towards innovation and commercialisation is an increasing imperative given the prevailing financial environment of The UWI and its contributing Governments. It is a key component of the 'revenue revolution' that the University seeks to pursue in its current Strategic Plan. The essence of this research is the generation of Intellectual Property (IP) in the form of novel and innovative products or processes that can qualify for protection through patents, copyrights, trademarks, plant breeders' rights or other means, and can be commercialised for financial gain to The UWI and its researchers. Commercialisation may include licensing or the establishment of spin-off companies, either alone or in partnership with industry, which, if successful, can contribute to national/regional economic growth. The expectation should not be that every researcher at The UWI must contribute within each research category, and indeed different disciplines may align more naturally with one category than another. Many researchers may therefore focus their efforts primarily within one category to maximise effectiveness, although a given piece of research may simultaneously meet the goals of more than one category. The institutional remit is that, collectively as an institution, The UWI will strive to deliver across all three research categories, with no category being considered inherently more important than another.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Measuring Research Productivity at The UWI There are two significant challenges in measuring and assessing research productivity at The UWI. The first is that the indicators of research productivity differ significantly among research categories. The second is that any measure of research productivity must consider both quantity and quality of research output. Measuring quantity of research is more straightforward than quality, but a unifying approach relevant to all three categories is to use impact of the research as a quality index. In the case of Research for Disciplinary Advancement and International Recognition , the traditional quantity measures are number of articles in refereed journals, number of refereed books and book chapters, number of presentations in Conference Proceedings, and the value of research grants won. For this research category, there are standard internationally used measures of research impact and hence quality. These include quantitative methods such as citation counts or journal impact factors, and researcher-specific metrics based on citation counts which include the h-index, the m-quotient, and the more recently derived ε -index which purports to allow comparisons of research productivity more appropriately across disciplines. None of these measures are perfect in isolation and no single measure should be used exclusively to rank researcher productivity, but taken together, they give a useful internationally accepted indication of researcher productivity. In the case of Research for Regional Development , indicative measures could include the number of technical reports produced (as consultancies or invited authorships) at the request of regional Development Banks, Caribbean Governments, Regional Development Organisations, or the Private Sector; number of policy papers, including White Papers and Green Papers, drafted for Caribbean Governments or Regional Organisations; number of articles published in development-oriented journals, whether international or regional; number of development-oriented articles invited by and produced in reputable news outlets; number of documentaries, films, plays or other works of art contributing to socio-cultural development; number of presentations made at regional or international development-oriented Conferences and the value of project grants won from international or regional development-oriented donor agencies. Assessing quality of research in this category is challenging. The onus must therefore be on the researcher to demonstrate that the research has impacted the regional developmental dialogue, development decisions and/or the development process itself but this may often be difficult to demonstrate. One approach used at the Mona Campus, that could facilitate this assessment in many cases, is to invite the recipient of the research output to comment on its value. The UWI may wish to give further thought, and perhaps develop guidelines on how the quality of Research for Regional Development can be objectively assessed. In the case of Research for Innovation and Commercialisation , quantity and quality of output are closely integrated. For example, in the case of patents and plant breeders’ rights, the number awarded is both a quantity and quality metric, and therefore a measure of research productivity, since successful protection requires passage through a rigorous quality assessment process. Moreover, successful commercialisation of IP protected by any means is a second tier of both quantity and quality of the research output and therefore a good measure of research productivity. Measures of research productivity in this category could therefore include number of industry partnerships, number of patents, number of licensing agreements, start-up funding received (venture funding, grants, investments) or spin off companies formed.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Challenges Constraining Research Productivity While the primary responsibility to conduct research rests with faculty and graduate students, the responsibility for the organisational environment in which they work to produce new knowledge is shared by multiple layers of leadership. The adequacy of that environment is shaped by the effectiveness of each institution’s approach to supporting its research community at all organisational levels. The key constraints to research productivity, many of which were gleaned from the perspectives of The UWI researchers, are summarised below. • Limited research support is a fundamental constraint on research productivity at The UWI. The funding of facilities, equipment, research assistants and administrative support necessary to conduct research is often inadequate as is support to present research work at international conferences. Strategies to increase both internal and external support of research need to be aggressively explored. • There is inadequate financial support for graduate research students in the form of scholarships, bursaries or other awards, resulting in many research students enrolling on a part-time basis. • The dedicated time necessary to do research is limited by other institutional responsibilities, e.g., teaching, counselling, administration, and is decreasing as a consequence of the University’s budgetary constraints. • The criteria and metrics used to measure and assess research productivity should be clarified, and there is a need for greater transparency in how these are used as measures of academic success and promotion potential. • There is inadequate awareness by researchers of policies and procedures still in effect that were approved by the Board for Graduate Studies and Research to facilitate and guide research at The UWI. • The importance to The UWI and the region of conducting high-quality research is inadequately marketed both within and outside of The UWI. Additionally, there appears to be an increasing emphasis on undergraduate teaching at the expense of research, driven by current financial challenges. This is often a demotivation for researchers. • Research at The UWI is too individually driven, with researchers often working in isolation. Collaboration in research promotes the generation and exchange of new ideas, and can promote efficiency in time and use of resources, leading to enhanced research quality and productivity. However, there are few initiatives to facilitate research collaboration whether within campus, cross- campus or internationally. • New staff at The UWI whose research programmes were dependent on facilities and support available overseas are often constrained and demotivated by the prevailing institutional research environment at The UWI. Researchers may need help in altering their research goals to be achievable in their new environment and/or in a priori establishing of international partnerships that would allow access to required equipment. • Challenges regarding publication, assessment and promotion: o The uncertainty about whether research should be targeted at publication in an international high-quality journal or geared towards solving national or regional developmental problems or oriented towards innovation and commercialisation is demotivational and urgently needs to be clarified at the institutional level (see Section on Measuring Research Productivity at The UWI in this Paper). o These different forms of research need to be better accounted for in the assessment and promotion criteria used by The UWI. o The revision of the Assessment and Promotions Policy to accommodate this would produce clarity, create transparency, and foster trust. o Related to this uncertainty, is the controversy of whether impact factors of journals should be the overriding criterion in selecting a journal for publication. An alternative approach is to set numerical expectations, such as two publications per year as an assessment criterion, but this on its own is an inadequate measure given the significant variation in quality among journals.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Strategies to Enhance Research Productivity The Policy Framework Facilitating Research Many Papers and Policies designed to facilitate research have been approved by the Board for Graduate Studies and Research (BGSR), but the academic community is often unaware of them, and they are seldom operationalised. Examples include: The UWI Intellectual Property and Commercialisation Policy ; The UWI Policy and Procedures on Research Ethics ; Guidelines for Including Research Supervision Time in the Calculation of Staff Contact Hours ; The Differential Workload Policy ; Graduate Studies Guide for Students and Supervisors; Guidelines for Manuscript-Based Theses ; inter alia . There is an urgent need to compile and disseminate approved UWI Policies relevant to research across the campuses and hold Policy Awareness Workshops for the academic community, as appropriate. Apart from BGSR Policies, The UWI has approved institutional strategies in place intended to develop research capacity, improve collaboration in research and enhance the research culture. Some of these include Sabbatical Leave, Special Leave for Scholarly Purposes and Study and Travel Grants. These opportunities are often underutilised by staff, possibly in part due to lack of awareness of the guidelines affecting eligibility of applications and/or a perception of inadequate time availability to make use of them. Academic Awareness Workshops could enhance the use of these opportunities and their effectiveness in impacting research productivity. The Workshops could include the institutional expectation of work to be achieved during the leave which is to be documented in the required subsequent reporting. Leave reports submitted need to be rigorously reviewed by the University management to ensure that expectations have been met. Beyond researcher awareness of existing policies, an urgent, critical initiative is to develop and approve a new Policy on Measuring Research Productivity at The UWI which encompasses the different forms of research expected of UWI academics (see Section on Measuring Research Productivity at The UWI in this Paper), and which is clear, transparent and understood by the academic community. This Policy could then be integrated into The UWI’s Assessment and Promotions procedures. Individual Faculties have recently been commissioned to develop Faculty-specific performance assessment tools that include research output, and this will need to be integrated harmoniously with the proposed University-wide Policy on Measuring Research Productivity. Capacity Development in Research and Publishing Skills Research and publishing skills can be enhanced through mentorship programmes, capacity development workshops, strategies to support academic visibility of research outputs and strategies to promote an institutional research culture. Mentorship Strategies Mentoring is described as a symbiotic relationship between a mentor-protégé pair who assist each other to meet mutual career objectives. Professors who do not have significant administrative responsibilities are expected to be active mentors of younger academics. A good mentorship programme would facilitate collaboration in research, develop research and publishing capacity, and contribute to the development of a research culture at The UWI. Mentoring responsibilities include sharing knowledge and skills, helping to develop a trainee’s research programme that is feasible in the prevailing institutional environment, overseeing the trainee’s work, helping the trainee contact other researchers and assisting with career counselling. The trainee reciprocates by actively engaging the process and taking responsibility for their learning, offering a fresh perspective for the mentor, and taking a proactive role in monitoring and sharing disciplinary advances. Indeed, new staff, fresh from PhD or Post-Doctoral programmes, may often be more aware of disciplinary advances than resident staff. Proposed Strategies include: • Foster strong, personal and professional relationships among colleagues through opportunities for mentorship, clusters and expanded networks to facilitate research development. • Introduce peer mentorship, particularly for junior members and early career researchers at the level of Faculties, Departments, Institutes and Centres. Consideration should be given to:
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
o Assigning mentor matches between research faculty with similar interests. o Supporting cases in which junior faculty members introduce new research areas or techniques to senior faculty. • Establish peer mentorship guidelines which include but are not limited to: identifying the characteristics of the mentor-trainee relationship; examining potential ethical issues arising in the mentor-trainee relationship; defining the responsibilities of mentors and trainees; understanding possible solutions for problems confronted by trainees; clarifying and agreeing on the amount of time the mentor-trainee pair will devote to each other; and agreeing on ownership of data and authorship of potential publications. • Create opportunities for mentoring and research with international partner universities. A good international example of an approach to faculty mentorship is the University of Texas at San Antonio Faculty Mentoring Hub. This comprehensive hub for faculty mentoring includes: departmental mentoring, faculty peer mentoring, faculty mentoring champions, guidelines on becoming a mentor, and tenure track networking. The hub also provides resources to facilitate mentoring. Capacity Development Workshops This should begin with a comprehensive survey to identify key gaps in research and publishing skills. There are many entities at the university that could facilitate such Workshops either collaboratively or individually. These include Faculties, Offices of Campus Directors of Graduate Studies and Research, Campus Research Offices (e.g.,
STACIE, MORI, RICCH) and the University Office of Research, inter alia . Possible training Workshops to enhance research skills could include: • Defining the research problem • Setting realistic goals in the prevailing research environment • Designing methodologies for data collection • Quantitative and qualitative methodological skills • Data analysis and interpretation • UWI Policy Awareness Workshops • Developing Supervisor capacity • Grantsmanship: Effectively competing for research grants • Managing data security • Business plans for research programmes • Pitching innovative ideas to investors. Two recent examples of Workshops on Responsible Research Practices are: •
The Open Campus facilitated a Research Forum which focused on quantitative and qualitative research methodologies under the topic: “Exploring research designs: understanding and using mixed methods research”. This session was well received by participants. • The Faculty of Humanities and Education at Cave Hill collaborated with Professor Gregory Mackinnon of Acadia University to conduct a two-day interactive workshop, followed by ongoing virtual support, on progressive research methods. This included the development of research projects, appropriate methodological instruments, and approaches to data analysis. Possible training Workshops to enhance writing and publishing could include: • Developing competencies in writing scientific papers which may involve strengthening systematic thinking, building strong mental models, and learning in teams through sharing approaches • Understanding publication metrics • Strengthening the research writing and publication skills of graduate students by focusing on writing of scientific papers, journal selection, navigating peer-review, and science communication to the public • Training on journal selection for publication which involves: o Determining the suitability of journals for the paper to be published
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
o Determining the suitability of the journal for assessment and promotion o Recognition and avoidance of predatory journals
Responding to journal editors’ comments
•
• Conducting seminars/discussion fora which focus on: o Exploring creative financing opportunities, including financing research activities, the cost of publishing, and publication training o Promoting multi-author publishing o Promoting familiarity with The UWI’s Research Policies, e.g. The UWI Policy and Procedures on Research Ethics, which provides guidance on the attribution of authorship and copyright ownership, disputes, the ethical treatment of data, and ethical research practices, inter alia o Exploring the suitability of regional journals for publication and for assessment and promotion. A recent example of a writing and publication initiative is the Author Fellowship Programme hosted by the Office of Research, Innovation and Community at Cave Hill (RICCH). The Programme aimed to increase the confidence, capacity and willingness of research students and faculty to publish in peer-reviewed academic journals, with the goal of guiding participants to successful submission of research for publication. Strategies To Support Academic Visibility Publishing in a high-quality journal itself contributes to academic visibility, but a good publishing strategy can further increase the findability, accessibility and visibility of research outputs. Researchers can benefit from receiving training and guidance on: • Findability: This includes selecting the right titles and keywords for your work and the right journal/publisher . Creating your online academic identity requires many elements, both private and academic. These range from employee pages such as UWI Scholar, to academic profiles established via social media such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.edu and LinkedIn. These profiles should be continuously updated to reflect new publications. • Additional strategies to enhance visibility include: o The use of unique author identifiers such as ORCID to distinguish a researcher’s work from that of other researchers Strategies To Promote A Research Culture Research culture encompasses the behaviours, values, expectations, attitudes and norms of a research community. It influences researchers’ career paths and determines the way that research is conducted and communicated. Research culture embodies integrity, diversity, career paths, reward and recognition, open science and the ethos of collaboration 2 . Several aspects of what constitutes the framework for a research culture are embedded in The UWI’s research policies, perhaps particularly The UWI Policy and Procedures on Research Ethics and The UWI Intellectual Property Management and Commercialisation Policy . However, it is awareness of these and actioning one’s behaviour to reflect them, that allows a research culture to take root. Undertaking strategies towards nourishing and promoting the research culture at The UWI will facilitate its growth and produce the institutional rewards that flow from this. Proposed Strategies to Promote Research Culture at The UWI could include: • Promoting activities and strategies to foster a working environment that supports and rewards: o Positive research culture o Alignment with the Faculty’s core research values o Research integrity o Creation and maintenance of up-to-date online profiles, or a Web CV o Engagement with the academic community through blogging and tweeting.
2 The Royal Society. (2022). Research Culture | Royal Society [Education]. The Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/topics- policy/projects/research-culture/
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
o Differentiated strategies to support the varying career pathways of researchers; clear and transparent guidelines on the institution’s expectations of researchers (see Section on Measuring Research Productivity at The UWI in this Paper). • Contemplate, integrate, and make actionable, the research priorities of your Faculty. • Provide support systems that boost morale and enhance research. • Promote collaboration in research. • Collaborate with disciplinary experts within or outside of the university to assist with the development of research projects, goals, methodologies and analysis. • Engage and recruit visiting Professors, including Fulbright scholars, whose research interests align with the Faculty/Department/Centre/Institute/Unit to strengthen the research ecosystem. • Foster broader international collaboration through North-South and South-South partnerships. • Promote a culture of ‘leading by example’, through open discussion between senior and/or established researchers and their early-career peers. Promote the Mentorship Strategies identified in this Paper. • Promote discussion fora to encourage a common understanding of research values, policies, and expectations among staff and research students. • Encourage staff to join professional and academic organisations. • Promote the hosting of Departmental Research Seminars at which academic staff, not just Visiting Professors and research students, are encouraged to present their research. • Promote the use of Thesis by Manuscript to expose students early on to research and publication and jumpstart their academic careers. Institutional Research Support Services • Undertake a comprehensive review of The UWI budgets to assess whether current fiscal allocation adequately reflects the goal of retaining and improving The UWI’s status as the top research university in the Caribbean. • Revisit and champion the establishment of a Caribbean Research and Competitiveness Fund, possibly coordinated through CARICOM. All developed and rapidly developing countries have mechanisms/agencies that competitively fund knowledge generation, innovation and their link to economic growth and are increasing the percent of their GDP allocated to this. Current estimates are that OECD countries allocate between 1.8% and 2.8% of GDP to this activity. The Caribbean has no such research funding model, and best estimates are that the region allocates about 0.016% of GDP to knowledge generation and innovation for development. At the 20 th Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government in July 1999, Heads agreed in principle to establish a Research and Innovation Fund, but the decision has never been operationalised (Paper available on request). • Continue to revisit, reassess, and disseminate The University of the West Indies’ Research Agenda, which prioritises key research areas for regional development, international excellence and entrepreneurship and innovation; and match budgetary allocations and international donor applications to the key research areas identified. Utilise stakeholder perspectives, including governments, business and industry in designing and modifying The UWI’s Research Agenda. • Coordinate activities to develop cross-campus Research Clusters which match The UWI’s Research Agenda, and promote and support Cluster activities. Support the evolution of Clusters into coordinating Centres with which personnel from the former Clusters are affiliated, if external funding for the Centre’s activities can be identified. • Revisit and improve the institutional system for detection of relevant Calls for Proposals from international donor agencies and their early dissemination to appropriate UWI Staff, Post Graduate Students and Research Clusters. • Establish structured procedures to facilitate early interaction of researchers with industry to fashion the design of research programmes around industry needs and thus increase the probability of industry support. • Develop and operationalise a UWI Unit, or Campus specific Units, dedicated to assisting researchers with the commercialisation of their research products and processes. • Explore the feasibility of establishing a structured mechanism (annual meeting) whereby The UWI research products of possible commercial value can be exposed to potential investors.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
• Explore the feasibility of establishing a structured mechanism (annual meeting) whereby The UWI research outputs relevant to regional development can be exposed to policy makers. • Continue to profile The UWI’s research productivity to stakeholders through the implementation of Research Days to which potential regional and international donors can be invited. Continue to provide incentives to productive researchers in the form of fiscal prizes and awards, and recognition through marketing. • Develop and implement strategies to assist active researchers manage their administrative and teaching loads. Possible approaches include: o Implementing The UWI’s approved Differential Workload Policy to reduce the teaching and administrative loads of active researchers o Implementing The UWI’s approved Policy on Inclusion of Research Supervision Time in the Calculation of Staff Contact Hours o Creating non-teaching periods in the teaching timetables of staff, where feasible, to generate time availability for focused research. • Increase research collaboration within The UWI and with other universities through supporting mentorship programmes and actively pursuing university partnerships.
May 09, 2023
This Paper was co-authored by Dr. Lyn R. Keith and Ms. Varsha Persaud of the School for Graduate Studies and Research. It benefitted from the encouragement and guidance of PVC Graduate Studies and Research, Professor Aldrie Henry Lee and from reviews of an earlier draft by: Former PVC Research Emeritus Professor Wayne Hunte; Former PVC Graduate Studies and Research Emeritus Professor Stephan Gift; Former PVC Graduate Studies and Research and Principal of Mona Campus Professor Dale Webber; Deputy Principal of Cave Hill Campus Professor Winston Moore; Dr. Graham King (Director) and Ms. Lauren Boodhoo from the St. Augustine Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (STACIE); Dr. Michael Campbell, Chair of the Cave Hill Research Ethics Committee; Directors, Research Institute and Centres; and Deputy Deans, Research at the
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THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES School for Graduate Studies and Research STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY
Mona, Cave Hill, and St. Augustine Campuses. Any remaining errors or omissions are the responsibility of the co-authors.
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