Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Cardea (CARDEA - Career Acknowledgement for Research (Managers) Delivering for the European Area)
Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-05-31
Cardea aims to develop Research Managers (RM) who strengthen Europe's R&I excellence through a diverse set of support roles and responsibilities. Research management as a profession is almost invisible from policy, career progression and tenure opportunities across Europe. Also, there is little consistency between countries, funders, policy makers and individual institutions. Cardea develops supports to address this inequality. Based on the results of the Survey we carried out in the first year of the project, we are developing a range of solutions, including a Capacity Maturity Model to assess and improve RM activities and a novel RM Hub for networking and training to include a community of practice. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Widening Participation (EU13), and Public-Private partnership actions are at the core of our research, training and enhancement activities. Additionally, the mobility and networking of RMs and those with responsibility for developing RMs are included to ensure the research management ecosystem grows transnationally. Significantly these actions will provide a significant evidence base to advocate the inclusion of RM exigences in policy, and we will target this proactively, targeting 38 key decision-making organisations. Amongst the impacts of Cardea will be an enduring network and Hub that can facilitate RM development and collaboration, a validated methodology to assess RM careers and a well-established baseline against which improvements can be objectively measured. This allows us to develop an RM Charter and offer a Concordat to institutions and organisations that make significant commitments to developing RM activities in a structured, mature manner. The ambition of this project centres on our intention to develop the research management career as a well-defined profession, with a well-characterised profile, skills requirements, career pathways and appropriate developmental supports and recognition for those who choose this career. The ultimate rationale for this goal is to professionally support the wider Horizon Europe missions for excellence in research through professional research management by developing a detailed knowledge base to inform evidence-based policy and to provide collaborative solutions to identified challenges.
In the first year of the project, project activities focused on management and coordination; the establishment and analysis of the CARDEA knowledge base; the analysis of mobility programmes and networking opportunities available to Research Managers in Europe; the conception of a policy proposal concerning a career development framework for Research Managers. The effective coordination of the project was ensured via regular meetings and networking activities among project partners. A productive collaboration with CARDEA’s sister project RM ROADMAP was also established. This collaboration entails avoiding duplication of efforts and overlapping of deliverables. In the reporting period, the key areas where CARDEA and RM ROADMAP collaborated are the delivery of an online dashboard and the definition of a training catalogue. The CARDEA knowledge base was established via two core activities: a Survey and parallel desk-based research pertaining to different WPs. The Survey (i.e. research questions; fields of enquiry; data collection strategies) was first designed. The design included specific tasks concerning EDI issues in Research Management, with an entire section of the Survey dedicated to EDI issues. The analysis of the results of this section has started in May 2023. The Survey was circulated in September 2022. It collected 855 responses from Research Managers across 37 countries. The Survey Data and analytical report are available on the CARDEA website. Desk-based research related to different components/objectives of the CARDEA project: the establishment of a Research Management Hub via a Community or Practice approach; the mapping of Research Managers’ training needs. The analysis of existing online hubs across Europe was essential for the identification of features and strategies that would be beneficial to the CARDEA Hub. Discussion of these examples and the literature surrounding Hub creation was critical to the planning of the CARDEA Hub strategies. These planning activities included the discussion of the consortium’s vision for a Research Management community of practice. The mapping of Research Managers’ training needs was carried out via a productive collaboration with RM ROADMAP. Specifically, CARDEA carried out an analysis of survey results regarding Research Managers (including CARDEA’s) and training opportunities open to them, laying the groundwork for the conception of the training modules that CARDEA will deliver. Research Managers' mobility and networking opportunities were mapped and discussed with public and private organisations to increase mutual knowledge, recognition and future commitment. Plans for intra-consortium visits and stakeholder meetings aimed to identify best practices in mobility were made.
The core activity expanding the state of the art is the CARDEA Survey. The knowledge base the Survey created will support actions to advocate the inclusion of Research Managers needs in policy.