Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

Managing research contracts: Report for Brunswick Group October 2013

This report examines research contracts administration and includes benchmarking of resourcing levels and identifies best practice. Produced by Research Consulting for the Brunswick group of research intensive universities, October 2013.
Bottles in a lab

Raising the return – how do we do it?

In the final blogpost in our series on asset sharing, Sarah Jackson and Luke Georghiou say that despite the progress in this area, more work must be done to deliver full benefits.

N8 highlights the impact of asset sharing across UK universities

The report, which reveals asset sharing's role in delivering innovation, increased productivity, and maximum value for public investment, helped to shape Thursday's Efficiency, Effectiveness and Value for Money report by Universities UK.

CREST – Consortium for Research Excellence, Support and Training

Provides an innovative model for how to further research excellence and promote institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Peter Simpson, director of N8

Peter Simpson of N8: ‘deep collaboration is now the norm’

The N8 group of northern universities has a new director, Dr Peter Simpson. We caught up with the former AstraZeneca department head who nurtured collaborative projects at the pharmaceutical giant to find out his plans to encourage collaboration in higher education.
Universities UK logo

Diamond report expected to inform 2015 spending review decisions, minister says

The final report of the Higher Education efficiency review can play an important role in informing decisions at the next Spending Review, the universities minister Greg Clark MP told the Universities UK conference.
HEFCE logo

Graphene innovation centre to boost portfolio of shared assets

A Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) being developed at the University of Manchester will bolster the portfolio of shared assets supporting collaborative research, after it was awarded £15 million of funding from HEFCE.
Jisc logo

UK research secures new national data centre

A new Jisc shared data centre housing the data of six leading UK scientific and academic organisations will enable the sharing of high volumes of data. The facility represents a significant example of asset sharing in the sector with the potential to deliver cost savings and reduce the procurement needs of institutions.
Jisc logo

Jisc’s shared data centre boosts research efficiency

Jisc has developed a shared data centre for the UK’s academic research when others have tried unsuccessfully before. In this blog post, Jisc's Phil Richards explains the secret behind the project's success and shows how it is already boosting research efficiency for the founding members.

Equipment sharing: how to make an impact (and evidence it)

Dr Hamish McAlpine from the University Bath and Dr Steve Trowell from the University of Exeter talk about the simple steps we can take to become more efficient in how we support equipment through its life. These steps are also very amenable to measurement, offering the opportunity to benchmark and improve over time.