Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

ARMA

ARMA

The Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) is the professional association for research managers and administrators in the UK. ARMA has more than 3,000 individual members from across 300+ organisations, ranging from universities and funding bodies to the National Health Service and independent research institutions. ARMA aims to facilitate excellence in research through excellence in research management and administration, sharing knowledge and best practice across the sector.

Further information: arma.ac.uk

 

Three members of the LSE research development team flanked by a representative of award sponsor Worktribe and the ARMA awards MC.

How improved research support helped LSE to clinch key research grants

The London School of Economics' (LSE) research development team’s success in increasing the percentage of large research grants from 46% to 75% earned it team of the year at this year’s ARMA awards. In this blogpost Peter Broekema and Aygen Kurt-Dickson describe how a series of changes in research support boosted researchers’ success rate in larger and more prestigious funding schemes.

Making data work harder for both academic and HR staff

When the University of Bath introduced its new research information system in 2012, the aim was to ease the burden on academics and to make it easier to reuse data. Katy McKen explains how research managers teamed up with HR to create a system that they discovered had many possibilities.

Efficiency Exchange at ARMA 2016

This week, Efficiency Exchange is at the ARMA 2016 conference in Birmingham where we will be reconnecting with research managers from across the UK higher education sector.

Chasing an idealistic dream

In April 2016, Edinburgh University rolled out its new research management system, Worktribe, having jointly developed and implemented it with Heriot Watt University. Hamish Macandrew, who leads the research support office at Edinburgh, describes the efforts to create an integrated system that enables paper free working

Discussion: restructuring a research office

Restructuring can help to achieve many efficiency benefits for universities - but it is never an easy option. In this discussion, Richard Bond of the University of the West of England and Julie Northam of Bournemouth University share their experiences of restructuring a research office.
Glenn Swafford (left) receiving his ARMA Award for outstanding contribution to research management and administration from the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education's Paul Gentle

Dr Glenn Swafford: ‘huge prestige is still attached to what equipment is where’

Fresh from his success at the ARMA awards, the University of Oxford’s director of research services, Dr Glenn Swafford, talks to Rosie Niven about the challenges of continuous improvement and the university’s achievements in equipment sharing.
Brighton's beach and west pier (pic: Rosie Niven)

#ARMA2015: we do like to share beside the seaside

At the ARMA annual conference, Efficiency Exchange sought to discover how to make research administration more efficient. Ian Powling rounds up delegates’ contributions to this exercise.
©Henkster via stock.xchng Royalty free - some restrictions apply

An efficient solution to researchers’ identity crisis

Next week’s Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) annual conference will include a session on how universities are implementing the ORCID researcher identifier. Ahead of the event, Jisc’s Verena Weigert explains how ORCID is enabling more effective research management.
Piirus logo

Building collaborative relationships a top challenge for researchers, survey reveals

Dealing with limited resources and the task of developing collaborations are among the top challenges that research managers and administrators are grappling with, according to research by Piirus, a collaboration tool for researchers. The survey of ARMA members also revealed that 91% of researchers feel that collaboration can help to support research impact.
ARMA logo

New online resources available as part of ARMA’s training programme

The Association of Research Managers and Administrators has launched a webinar series, providing members with a new training route on a broad range of topics and issues