Vitae policy forum 2009: progress in building the evidence base07 January 2009 - 08 January 2009

Event overview

2008 saw the launch of both the Concordat for the Career Development of Researchers and Vitae, which incorporates the UK GRAD Programme and UKHERD. The new programme supports the personal, professional and career development of both postgraduate researchers and research staff.

Since the publication of the Warry report in July 2006, the government has highlighted the need to identify the economic and societal impact of publicly funded research and researchers. Previous Policy Fora have recognised the importance for higher education institutions of evidencing, evaluating and demonstrating impact and its relationship to developing practice, encouraging cultural change and securing future funding.

The Policy Forum in January 2009 was an opportunity to:

• explore the strategic importance of the Concordat implementation process, including contributing to the development of the specification for the Concordat benchmarking process
• identify the priorities of the sector in further evidencing the impact of the ‘Roberts Agenda', particularly through the application of skills in enterprise activities, outreach and public dialogue, and use of research outputs in policy making.
• share approaches and practice in evidencing, evaluating and demonstrating the impact of researcher development activities

 During 2008 a number of further reports and activities have taken place that impact the researcher development agenda.  Specifically:

• the launch of the Concordat for the Career Development of Researchers (June 2008)
• Innovation Nation (March 2008) stressing the importance of ‘investing in people and knowledge, unlocking talent at all levels'
• European Council's conclusions (March 2008) for creating a "fifth freedom" enhancing the mobility of researchers, making a more open and competitive labour market and creating better career structures for researchers
• Nigel Thrift's report to John Denham (November 2008) on research careers, which will recommend more movement for researchers between higher education and industry and more commercial sources of funding.

The Policy Forum explored how these, and other activities, such as the joint Vitae and Rugby Team project to develop a framework of researchers' skills, the Rugby Team Impact Framework, the revision of the Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS) and the collaborative Enterprise at Work project ‘Exploring intrapreneurship in researcher development' will inform and shape the development of the evidence base, the activities of Vitae and the Rugby Team.