{"id":284834,"date":"2024-01-19T13:52:10","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T13:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/academia-government\/blog\/three-ways-research-offices-can-lead-researchers-to-more-funding\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T08:10:35","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T08:10:35","slug":"three-ways-research-offices-can-lead-researchers-to-more-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarivate.com\/academia-government\/blog\/three-ways-research-offices-can-lead-researchers-to-more-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Three ways research offices can lead researchers to more funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over half of research office leaders say researchers are disengaged. How can you close the gap to win more funding?<\/em><\/p>\n

In late 2023, Research Professional\u2122 News, an editorially independent part of Clarivate\u2122, surveyed \"\" research office leaders and staff as well as researchers around the world, taking a close look at the challenges facing them today and in the future. The resulting report Research Offices of the Future<\/a> reveals a clear consensus among respondents about the number one priority of the research office: finding and securing more funding. The survey also revealed that a key barrier to earning grants and awards is researchers\u2019 lack of engagement with their research office colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat surprised me the most in this report was the huge discrepancy between researchers and research offices, how they engage and see each other\u2019s value,\u201d said Silke Blohm, Founding Director, 4Sciences Group, in a panel discussion<\/a> about the report\u2019s findings. She views researchers\u2019 \u2018lack of engagement\u2019 as a \u201cbig challenge, also a big opportunity, because this is an area where the research office has some control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research offices around the world are struggling to build more effective relationships with researchers with lean staff and increasing workloads. In a prior panel discussion<\/a>, research office leaders Meg Sparling (University of California, Davis), Daniel Moseke (University of Arizona) and Emily Brashear (Washington State University) stressed the importance of simplifying workflows throughout the research enterprise, shifting time from administrative tasks to activities that are crucial to winning funding.<\/p>\n

The time-stretched (and stressed) research environment<\/h3>\n

Nearly 50% of research office staff rate time-pressures among the top three challenges of their job. \u201c[There is] limited awareness and understanding of the quality threshold needed to win funding and the time it takes to write proposals of this level,\u201d notes a U.K. research development leader.<\/p>\n

Research Offices of the Future also notes that 25% of research offices are staffed by fewer than 10 people\u2026 sometimes much fewer. Sparling, the research funding coordinator at University of California, Davis, a tier one research institution where grants and awards approach $1 billion annually, supports hundreds of researchers. Despite her own monumental workload, she understands that researchers are just as busy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a 2021 report<\/a> from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)\u202fin the U.S. points to a researcher environment that\u2019s overworked and underpaid. It says that one in five researchers is working more than 55 hours a week and earning less than $30,000 per year. Respondents to the Research Professional News survey agree: \u201cResearchers are frustrated with the workload model and lack of administrative support for both teaching and research\u202factivities,\u201d said a member of a U.K.-based research office team.<\/p>\n

The workload of researchers also has a disabling impact on the research office. Research Offices of the Future quotes one senior member of a research office in Australia: \u201cTime-poor academics find it difficult to effectively plan, draft and submit the highest quality and competitive proposals with limited support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lifting burdens on both sides of the relationship<\/h3>\n

Building engagement between researchers and research office staff to find and convert opportunities into winning proposals requires a macro view of what will make both sides of the relationship more successful. For example, support staff need tools that cut straight to relevant opportunities and make them easy to share with researchers and their teams. Researchers need tools that make it easy to share opportunities with their teams, labs, collaborators and students. Research units benefit from tools that enable them to display opportunities on their websites.<\/p>\n

A growing number of research leaders are using three key strategies to engage with researchers and win more funding:<\/p>\n