HE-R01 — Research Management Fundamentals

Course Code: HE-R01  |  School: School of Higher Education  |  Cluster: Research Management

Level: Intermediate  |  Estimated duration: 6 weeks (approximately 40 hours)  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Research management became a distinct profession only in the last four decades, as universities acquired external funding portfolios, compliance obligations and impact expectations that academics could no longer administer between teaching commitments. The role now spans strategy, funding, ethics governance, contracts, data stewardship, costing and reporting, and it sits awkwardly between academic autonomy and institutional accountability.

This course provides the conceptual and operational foundation for that work. It situates research management within the wider transformation of knowledge production described by Gibbons and colleagues as the shift toward problem-focused, transdisciplinary and accountability-laden research, and within the triple helix account of university, industry and state relations advanced by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff. These are contested frameworks, and learners are asked to test them against their own institutional experience.

Operationally, the course builds the core competencies: constructing a research strategy that a faculty will recognise as its own, costing a project fully and honestly, designing pre-award and post-award workflows, and managing the compliance architecture without smothering the research it exists to protect.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Describe the emergence and current scope of the research management profession and its position between academic and administrative authority.
2. Analyse a national research system, including its funding instruments, evaluation mechanisms and policy drivers.
3. Develop an institutional or faculty research strategy with defined priorities, resources and success measures.
4. Cost a research project fully, distinguishing direct, indirect and in-kind contributions.
5. Design pre-award and post-award workflows with clear responsibilities and decision points.
6. Map the compliance architecture governing research and design proportionate institutional processes to satisfy it.
7. Evaluate research performance using indicators appropriate to discipline and institutional mission.

Who this course is for

Research office staff, research development officers, deans and associate deans for research, principal investigators taking on leadership roles, and administrators in ministries or funding councils. Suitable for those new to the profession and those formalising practical experience.

Prerequisites

No formal prerequisites. Experience of working in or alongside a research environment will make the applied tasks substantially more useful.

Syllabus

Module 1 — The Research Management Profession

Research management is a hybrid role whose authority is borrowed rather than owned, and its practitioners succeed or fail largely on their credibility with academics. This module establishes the professional landscape and its structural tensions.

Lessons. 1.1 Origins and growth of the profession internationally  ·  1.2 Scope: strategy, development, pre-award, post-award and compliance  ·  1.3 The autonomy–accountability tension and how it is negotiated  ·  1.4 Professional bodies, standards and career pathways

Deliverable. A diagnostic note mapping the research management functions in your institution and identifying which are unassigned or duplicated.

Module 2 — National Research Systems and Funding Landscapes

Institutional research strategy is constrained by the funding instruments and evaluation regimes of the national system in which it sits. The module reads that system structurally.

Lessons. 2.1 Public funding instruments: block grants, competitive schemes and contracts  ·  2.2 National research evaluation exercises and their behavioural effects  ·  2.3 Industry, philanthropic and international funding sources  ·  2.4 Mode 1, Mode 2 and triple helix accounts of knowledge production

Deliverable. An analytical brief mapping the funding landscape available to one discipline in one country, with a realistic assessment of accessibility.

Module 3 — Research Strategy and Priority Setting

A research strategy that lists every field the institution touches is not a strategy. This module forces genuine prioritisation and confronts the political cost of doing so.

Lessons. 3.1 Assessing existing research capability honestly  ·  3.2 Concentration versus breadth and the critical mass argument  ·  3.3 Aligning strategy with mission, region and national priority  ·  3.4 Consultation, legitimacy and academic buy-in

Deliverable. A design artefact: a research strategy for one faculty with three named priorities, the areas deliberately deprioritised, and the justification.

Module 4 — Costing, Contracts and Pre-Award

Under-costing research is the most common and most expensive error in university research administration. This module builds full economic costing and the pre-award workflow around it.

Lessons. 4.1 Direct, indirect and full economic costing  ·  4.2 Cost recovery, cross-subsidy and the true price of research  ·  4.3 Contracts, intellectual property and collaboration agreements  ·  4.4 Pre-award workflow: eligibility, internal review and submission

Deliverable. An evaluation report presenting a full economic costing of one research project with a cost recovery analysis.

Module 5 — Post-Award, Compliance and Governance

Once funded, a project generates obligations in finance, ethics, data protection, export control and reporting. The module designs an architecture that satisfies them proportionately.

Lessons. 5.1 Post-award financial management and variance monitoring  ·  5.2 Ethics review, data protection and safeguarding governance  ·  5.3 Reporting obligations and funder relationship management  ·  5.4 Proportionality: compliance that does not obstruct research

Deliverable. An implementation plan for a post-award and compliance workflow with responsibilities, checkpoints and escalation routes.

Module 6 — Capstone: A Research Management Plan

The capstone integrates strategy, funding analysis, costing and governance into a plan addressed to a faculty or institutional leadership team. It is judged on operational credibility.

Lessons. 6.1 Establishing the capability baseline  ·  6.2 Setting and defending priorities  ·  6.3 Designing the operational architecture  ·  6.4 Defining performance measures

Deliverable. A 2,500-word research management plan for one named faculty or institution, including strategy, funding targets, operational workflow and performance indicators.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Systemic understanding. The national and institutional research context is analysed accurately and used to constrain proposals.
2. Strategic discipline. Priorities are genuinely selective and the cost of deprioritisation is acknowledged.
3. Operational accuracy. Costings, workflows and compliance requirements are technically correct.
4. Academic credibility. Proposals would be recognised as legitimate by the researchers they govern.

Reading list

Core. Hazelkorn, E. (2005) University Research Management: Developing Research in New Institutions. Paris: OECD Publishing.

• Bushaway, R. W. (2003) Managing Research. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.
• Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. (2000) ‘The Dynamics of Innovation: From National Systems and Mode 2 to a Triple Helix of University–Industry–Government Relations’, Research Policy, 29(2), pp. 109–123.
• Kirkland, J. (2008) ‘University Research Management: An Emerging Profession in the Developing World’, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 20(6), pp. 717–726.
• Derrick, G. (2018) The Evaluators’ Eye: Impact Assessment and Academic Peer Review. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Academic integrity and use of AI

Generative AI may be used in this course as a drafting, translation and critique aid, and its use must be disclosed. Every submission carries a short use-of-AI statement naming the tools used, the tasks they performed and the checks the learner applied to the output. Using AI to fabricate data, invent sources, impersonate an interview participant, or produce an artefact the learner cannot explain in a live viva is prohibited.

All citations are verified before submission; a reference that cannot be located by the assessor is treated as fabricated. Fabrication, plagiarism and undisclosed ghost-authorship result in failure of the component and referral to the academic integrity panel. Marks in this course are issued by human assessors, and any learner may be asked to defend a submission orally before a mark is confirmed.