Environment submissions database

The principal impacts of COVID-19 on research at Reading have been threefold. First, it has affected the completion of specific projects due to restrictions on access to facilities, fieldwork, travel or events, including participatory, practice and clinical research involving the public and patients. Second, it has affected colleagues’ research productivity, principally due to higher teaching loads and care responsibilities (affecting especially women and colleagues with young children). 2019/20 TAS data suggests a 15-20% shift between time for research and teaching; and a COVID staff survey run in June 2020 showed 40% of staff could not do their work within normal hours. Third, a number of colleagues and their families have been ill with COVID including with long-COVID, or have suffered COVID-related bereavement. For many fixed-term research staff and doctoral students, impact has been compounded by uncertainties over funding extensions. These impacts are borne out in the data: the university lost ca. £3.5m in research overheads in 2019/20, and ca. 20% of externally-funded projects requested extensions. Similarly, the number of PhD researchers requesting extensions has doubled since the onset of COVID. We have sought to mitigate these impacts by facilitating working from home through a rapid transition to digital-working; enabling staff to take office furniture and equipment home; and through concerted efforts to support wellbeing during the lockdown. In June 2020, 93% of staff reported that they were content with the approach to working from home. Projects that were part of the national COVID-19 response continued to access necessary facilities on campus during lockdown. Projects where interruptions would have affected long-term experiments, led to significant data loss, or had animal welfare implications, were also supported to continue. Research facilities, including studios, the library, archives and collections, were reopened as a priority after the first lockdown. We provide targeted financial support to mitigate the impact of project interruptions, focused in particular on doctoral students and ECRs. For UKRI extension funding, the University covers the overheads to be able to support more projects. We are co-funding costed extensions of ECR Fellowships (e.g. Leverhulme), and provide both costed and no-cost extensions of internal funding. We are complementing UKRI-funded studentship extensions with comparable funded extensions for University- and co-funded studentships. Where possible and appropriate, we have furloughed research staff (at 100% salary) to extend their projects, and re-deployed fixed-term research staff to other projects. While the impact on research productivity has some implications for the current REF submission, our principal concern is its consequence for the future development and careers of researchers. To mitigate this, we have adapted probation and promotion processes to take into account COVID impacts. We are monitoring institutional EDI data, including on research outputs, funding applications and success rates, and PhD completion rates, and will use the data to support further mitigating actions. As direct support to colleagues most significantly affected, we are prioritising them for research leave in 2021/22, and have established a £150,000 fund to supplement the usual research leave provision in our academic Schools.