Review of funding for JISC projects in Wales

News release: 22 April 2010

Due to the current financial climate and pressures on funding, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) has been reviewing priorities for uncommitted funding for the remainder of 2010-11.

Consequently HEFCW will be withdrawing from JISC any unallocated capital funding for 2010-11. Whilst HEFCW will honour any existing commitments this decision means that Welsh universities will now not be eligible to lead new capital funded innovation projects.

There are currently two calls affected by this decision:

Grant 05/10: Flexible service delivery programme: Call for projects

Grant 14/09: Managing Research Data Programme

If you have questions about whether a call that you are working on at the moment is affected by this announcement, please email funding@jisc.ac.uk

Questions and Answers here

Challenges for academic libraries in difficult economic times

A new guide from the Research Information Network focuses on how academic librarians are experiencing and responding to financial cuts in the current economic climate.

Based upon data gathered in the UK and internationally, and focus groups with senior librarians during late 2009, the guide looks at the financial position of libraries, their strategies for dealing with challenging economic circumstances, and the value of libraries.

After a decade of growth in budgets and services, academic librarians now expect a sustained period of cuts over the next three to five years. The scale of these cuts means librarians are having to reconsider the kinds and levels of service they can provide in support of their universities missions.

This guide shows how librarians are responding to the issues of balancing expenditure between information resources and staffing and how they plan to sustain levels of service, as well as developing new services to meet new needs. It demonstrates that library directors need the support of senior managers across the higher education sector, as well as from publishers and other information providers, to help address the challenges, as well as the opportunities, faced.

The guide is available to download from this link  along with a short two-page briefing.

Research Excellence Framework – consultation outcomes

The four UK higher education (HE) funding bodies have announced the outcomes of the recent consultation on the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – the new system for assessing research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs).

The consultation revealed overwhelming support for research to continue to be assessed though a process of expert review, and for the main factor in the assessment to continue to be the quality of research outputs produced by institutions.

There was widespread support in principle for an explicit assessment of the social and economic impact of research, subject to developing a robust methodology, and reservations about the weighting of this element within the overall assessment.

In the light of the consultation feedback the four funding bodies have made some refinements to the proposals and announced initial decisions about the general arrangements for the assessment.

A pilot exercise that will be vital in developing the method for assessing impact is currently in progress. It involves 29 UK HEIs and panels of experts made up of leading researchers and senior figures from a wide range of organisations that commission and use research including businesses, public sector bodies, charities and other third sector organisations. A full detailed announcement about the method for assessing impact and its weighting within the framework will be made after the pilot exercise has concluded in autumn 2010.

HEFCW Circular W10/12HE 

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/HEFCE/2010/ref.htm

HEA Wales Newsletter – Spring 2010

Keep up-to-date with the latest news from the Higher Education Academy in Wales by reading their Spring 2010 newsletter.