Dr Louise Wood (Chair) Chair from December 2022 Expand Louise has worked at national and international levels for over 30 years in organisations dedicated to excellent science, enabling a healthier society and driving economic prosperity. As a senior civil servant she held roles in strategic leadership, operational delivery and policy-making including as Director of Science, Research and Evidence at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Deputy CEO of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Previously, Louise held several roles in DHSC’s Research and Development (R&D) directorate, including Deputy Director leading on relations with the life sciences industry, and subsequently for research infrastructure in the NHS and partner universities to support delivery of ground-breaking research to improve patient care and population health and cement the UK's reputation as a leading international centre for healthcare research and science. She spent a year on secondment at the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) as its Director of Policy and Public Affairs. Her early career was in drug safety at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, with four years membership of the Agency's Executive Board as Director of the General Practice Research Database. Louise has served as a Council Member for the Medical Research Council and member of Advisory Boards for the British Heart Foundation, LifeArc and Wellcome. She was elected an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine in 2011 and awarded a CBE for services to health research in the 2019. She has an honours degree in physiology from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in biomedical science from the University of London.
2018 Expand Response Consulting body Date Submission to the consultation on EU exit no-deal legislative proposals Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency November 2018 Submission to the inquiry into the impact of a no-deal Brexit on health and social care Health and Social Care Committee October 2018 Submission to the inquiry on the balance and effectiveness of research and innovation spending Commons Science and Technology Committee September 2018 Submission to the consultation on the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport September 2018 Submission to Charitable tax system inquiry Charity Tax Commission July 2018 Response to the Civil Society Strategy consultation Office for Civil Society May 2018 Response to call for evidence on the ‘Memorandum of understanding on data-sharing between NHS Digital and the Home Office’ Public Health England April 2018 Submission to Brexit Science and Innovation Summit inquiry Commons Science and Technology Committee February 2018 Submission to the Future Partnerships project Wellcome Trust/Royal Society January 2018 Submission to the inquiry on the impact of leaving the European Union on health and social care in Scotland Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee January 2018 Response to Supporting Research in the NHS NHS England January 2018
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan Elected AGM 2018 Expand Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. She is internationally recognised for her research to improve the care and quality of life of adults who were born with heart defects (adults with congenital heart disease). She was appointed British Heart Foundation associate medical director in October 2018. The British Heart Foundation funds cardiovascular research to save and improve lives.
2019 Expand Response Consulting body Date Response to MedTech Funding Mandate NHS England and NHS Improvement December 2019 AMRC representation to 2019 Budget HM Treasury October2019 Response to Prevention green paper Department of Health and Social Care October 2019 Response to NICE statement of intent on data analytics consultation National Institute for Health and Care Excellence September 2019 Response to Make it Public: Transparency and openness in health and social care research consultation Health Research Authority September 2019 Response to equality impact assessment for quality-related research funding and formula research capital funding Research England September 2019 Response to consultation on how MHRA engage and involve patients and the public in their work Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency September 2019 Response to budget and NHS Long Term Plan inquiry Health and Social Care Committee August 2019 AMRC submission to 2019 Spending Round HM Treasury August 2019 Response to ‘Future frameworks for international collaboration on research and innovation’ Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy June 2019 Response to the inquiry into ‘Commercial Genomics’ Commons Science and Technology Committee April 2019 Response to the National Data Guardian’s consultation on priorities National Data Guardian March 2019 Submission to NICE principles guiding development of guidance and standards National Institute for Health and Care Excellence February 2019 Review of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers Vitae January 2019 Submission to the Brexit, Science and Innovation: Preparations for ‘No-deal’ inquiry Commons Science and Technology Committee January 2019
Nicola Perrin Chief Executive - Phone: 020 8078 6049 - Email: [email protected] Expand Nicola became Chief Executive of AMRC in 2021, having previously been a Trustee for five years. Her background is in policy, strategy and engagement. Nicola was at Wellcome for fifteen years, where she led the policy team. She has had a particular focus on ensuring responsible use of patient data, including setting up the Understanding Patient Data initiative. Nicola is also on the Boards of Genomics England and UK Biobank, and was awarded an MBE in New Year’s Honours 2020 for services to science.
Dr Catriona Manville Director of Research Policy - Phone: 020 8078 6047 - Email: [email protected] Expand Catriona leads on responsible research funding and policy issues relating to the research landscape. Prior to joining AMRC, Catriona was a Research Leader at RAND Europe, an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis. At RAND, Catriona led a large portfolio of research evaluation and research into societal impact, with a particular focus on evaluating national assessment systems. Clients included UK government departments, charities and industry, European institutions and other overseas governments. In addition, she has worked for NIHR in business intelligence, and the pharmaceutical industry in genetic toxicology. She holds a doctorate in biochemistry and genetics from Newcastle University.
Louise Wren Director of External Affairs - Phone: 020 8078 6048 - Email: [email protected] Expand Louise joined AMRC in June 2023. She oversees external affairs at the AMRC and manages our relationship with key partners and supporters. Prior to joining the AMRC, Louise was Head of External Affairs at the Francis Crick Institute managing its policy, government affairs and external communications activities. She has also worked in policy and public affairs roles at Wellcome, the Medical Research Council and the BioIndustry Association. Outside of work, Louise is a patient adviser to UCLH and a member of its Person-Centred Care Committee.
Dr Mehwaesh Islam Research Policy Manager - Phone: 020 8078 6064 - Email: [email protected] Expand Mehwaesh joined the AMRC in 2019. Her role as Research Policy Manager involves analysing and communicating research and innovation policy and its implications for member charities. She leads on AMRC’s work to drive responsible funding practices across the membership including the future of peer review, research value and reproducibility, research policy elements of diversity, inclusion, anti-bullying and harassment. She also leads on AMRC’s engagement with the NHS Long Term Plan on research and innovation ensuring the unique contribution of medical research charities is recognised. Prior to joining the AMRC, Mehwaesh worked as a Policy Officer at the Academy of Medical Sciences. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Imperial College London.
Liz Perraudin Clinical Policy Manager - Phone: 020 8078 6043 - Email: [email protected] Expand Liz joined AMRC in June 2023 as Clinical Policy Manager. She previously worked in the policy teams at AMRC member charities Versus Arthritis and Diabetes UK. Before that Liz worked as a parliamentary researcher. At AMRC Liz leads on our policy and influencing work around clinical research in the NHS and the responsible and transparent use of health data.
Changes that address recognition Expand CHANGES CONSIDERATIONS ISSUES ADDRESSED Develop new incentives for reviewers This could increase participation, speed up the process and motivate reviewers. A range of incentives could be considered: a thank you, a certificate of recognition, publishing the reviewer’s name on the charity website or annual research review, a small gift, remuneration, free access to the charity’s research conference, access to invitation-only research networking events run by the charity, linking reviews to ORCIDs (Open Research and Contributor ID) or use of Publons. This could be costly to introduce. Offering material incentives could decrease the desire to voluntarily undertake peer review in the future or for other funders. Officialise a pool of experts from which to select reviewers An official pool of willing and qualified reviewers could be established by the funder to undertake peer review. This would help to reduce the burden on the funder in finding reviewers and could speed up the process. It could also provide transparency as well as recognition to the reviewers if this information was available on the funder’s website. It would be good practice to have a strict code of conduct and terms of reference for the pool of experts that they agree to when joining. This could be paired with providing peer review training and refreshers on the charity’s aims and protocols to the reviewers.
Changes that address burden Expand CHANGES CONSIDERATIONS ISSUES ADDRESSED Improve application success rate A low percentage of applications that are awarded funding following full peer review (low success rate) may indicate that changes need to be made early on in the process. For example, clearer guidance could be provided to applicants and a better triage process could filter out a greater number of applications up front. This could consequently help speed up the entire process. Success rate is currently not routinely recorded by all funders, though some information is already available to allow comparisons with other funders e.g. MRC and NIHR. It may not be comparable depending on the funder, budget, the theme of call and the type of funding e.g. projects, fellowships or clinical trials. Simplify the review process Review questions could be simplified (Turner et al., 2018), reviewers could be asked to focus only on certain elements of a proposal specific to their expertise, committee members could be provided with short summaries, and applications forms could be simplified. A blend of approaches could help to reduce the burden of peer review across funders, reviewers and applicants. It may require additional resource upfront to understand the reasons behind the burden and to implement any changes. Assess when written review is necessary Funders could decide to make more decisions without written review or limit written reviewers to two per application. Studies have shown that using more than four written reviewers scores doesn’t influence committee decisions (Sorrell et al., 2018). It could speed up peer review and focus effort where it is most needed. This will likely require careful thought around how this might be perceived and the controls needed to ensure fairness and rigour. It is possible that just two reviewers may disagree, but a third written reviewer could be sourced in these cases. If the funder felt comfortable that written review was not necessary because the committee already had sufficient expertise, it would need to develop a consistent mechanism by which to make this decision. Reject the bottom 50-75% of applications The applications with the lowest scores could be automatically rejected after external peer review so that only the remaining applications are discussed by the research review committee. This could significantly reduce the burden on the committee. This could decrease the thoroughness (and therefore quality hallmark) of peer review. There is also a risk that high-quality applications are removed at triage. The cut-off percentage will likely vary between funders, and even between funding streams, so there may need to be flexibility in setting it. This approach could be combined with the lottery system to combat criticisms that peer review has difficulty distinguishing between levels of good. The US National Science Foundation did this for their short preliminary applications (Mervis, 2015). Provide specific deadlines to reviewers Scheduling reviews at specific times with external experts could improve response rates and speed up the written review process overall. Many funders already employ this approach but still have problems. Funders should provide as much notice as possible and have flexibility around timeframes. Use teleconferencing for committee meetings This could be used to alleviate some of the burden on reviewers, reduce costs and speed up decision-making. It could allow reviewers to participate in the committee meeting remotely thereby removing the need for travel. Technical issues could make this impractical. Committee members may prefer face-to-face meeting and value its social aspects. The technology could perhaps be an option but not mandated. Crowd-source peer review The use of social media and virtual groups could be maximised to undertake peer review e.g. G1000. This could significantly increase the speed and reduce the burden of peer review. These approaches are broadly untested, and it would therefore require careful testing on a small scale initially. It could be very difficult to manage conflicts of interest. Officialise a pool of experts from which to select reviewers An official pool of willing and qualified reviewers could be established by the funder to undertake peer review. This would help to reduce the burden on the funder in finding reviewers and could speed up the process. It could also provide transparency as well as recognition to the reviewers if this information was available on the funder’s website. It would be good practice to have a strict code of conduct and terms of reference for the pool of experts that they agree to when joining. This could be paired with providing peer review training and refreshers on the charity’s aims and protocols to the reviewers. Use a lottery system to allocate research funding This would still require active involvement of a committee to ensure appropriateness and quality. An example implementation could come after ranking of application; the top 20% could be funded, the bottom 50% could be rejected and the middle 30% could be subject to random lottery – blurring the boundary between fundable and un-fundable proposals (Avin, 2015). A lottery approach reduces the influence of biases, difficulty in ranking applications and the inconsistency of peer review. Using a lottery system could reduce the burden on reviewers by replacing a stage of the review process. A lottery system might be perceived as unfair as an application that received a much lower ranking than others in the drawer might be selected. This might be inappropriate for certain types of funding streams e.g. programme grants where funding is committed over multiple cycles. A lottery system would remove subjectivity; however, some subjectivity might be desirable e.g. in considering a researcher’s career stage or the importance of a certain topic. It could be that a lottery system is applied to more risky and innovative research streams, such as seed funding, and that applications targeting more strategic issues are dealt with via separate streams. Researchers could manipulate the system by submitting multiple applications to increase their chances. A per-researcher limit or a triaging system could be put in place to help mitigate attempts to manipulate the system. Have an expert programme manager A funder could employ trained specialists with technical expertise to make funding decisions in areas within their remit. This can speed up the review process and allow the charity to concentrate funding and resources on research it is specifically interested in. This gives one individual significant influence and control, and should they have conflicts of interest or biases, this would impact fairness and in turn undermine confidence in the system. This technically breaches elements of ‘independence’, a core principle in of the AMRC Principles of Peer Review. As such significant attention should be given to ensuring that these expert programme managers have the required skills and experience to make funding decisions in order for this option to be viable. AMRC will clarify this in future iterations of their guidance. For funders with broad remits, a lack of breadth of expertise could be an issue using this model. One approach would be to apply this model to specific types of directed or commissioned funding that are limited to a defined research area. An ‘oversight’ committee (similar to a research review committee) consisting of external reviewers could make funding recommendations to the programme manager who makes the final funding decision.
Changes that address bias Expand CHANGES CONSIDERATIONS ISSUES ADDRESSED Alter eligibility criteria to promote inclusion Funders should re-examine their funding eligibility criteria to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion. For example, it should be recognised that early career researchers, particularly those submitting innovative proposals, may not always have preceding preliminary data. If bias was addressed in funding eligibility criteria it could encourage more researchers to remain in their field. Funders have not typically measured equality, diversity and inclusion and there are few tried and tested metrics that are commonly understood. The equality and diversity of applications should be measured and assessed to monitor the success of these changes. If effective, such changes could encourage more researchers to remain in their field. Anonymise applications Removing identifiers from applications could stop reviewers making decisions based on where the applications come from rather than the research itself. Anonymisation may never be truly possible, especially in small fields. Peer review typically involves assessing the research team to ensure suitability; however, this would be impossible with anonymity. Testing would be needed to understand the impact on decision making. Assess and analyse disagreement between reviewers Significant disagreement could be an indicator of work with high potential and high risk. Funders could assess this and discuss the reasons why divergences exist including attitudes to risk and bias. High levels of disagreement will not necessarily be due to biases but genuinely be different views on whether something is good quality. A strong research review committee chair would be needed to come to conclusions on contentious issues. Use a lottery system to allocate research funding This would still require active involvement of a committee to ensure appropriateness and quality. An example implementation could come after ranking of application; the top 20% could be funded, the bottom 50% could be rejected and the middle 30% could be subject to random lottery – blurring the boundary between fundable and un-fundable proposals (Avin, 2015). A lottery approach reduces the influence of biases, difficulty in ranking applications and the inconsistency of peer review. Using a lottery system could reduce the burden on reviewers by replacing a stage of the review process. A lottery system might be perceived as unfair as an application that received a much lower ranking than others in the drawer might be selected. This might be inappropriate for certain types of funding streams e.g. programme grants where funding is committed over multiple cycles. A lottery system would remove subjectivity; however, some subjectivity might be desirable e.g. in considering a researcher’s career stage or the importance of a certain topic. It could be that a lottery system is applied to more risky and innovative research streams, such as seed funding, and that applications targeting more strategic issues are dealt with via separate streams. Researchers could manipulate the system by submitting multiple applications to increase their chances. A per-researcher limit or a triaging system could be put in place to help mitigate attempts to manipulate the system. Use the Delphi approach to triage applications Here, iterative rounds of assessment are used, in which after each round of committee deliberation, the lowest scoring applications are removed. Triage can used to select the top applications which can be sent to several non-conflicted experts. Multiple Delphi rounds can be held over several weeks to score scientific merit, innovativeness and level of risk. At the end of each round, reviewers can be provided with a table of de-identified scores and an overall ranking of proposals. Reviewers can raise any objections or proceed to the next round. Once everyone is content, the two lowest-ranking proposals can be excluded. The process can repeated until a few proposals remain. These will subsequently funded. This approach would increase the commitment needed from reviewers and initial triage of applications would still be required to limit the number of applications that needed to be scored. It can be a transparent and impartial way of reviewing grant applications in a specialised field of research where no local expertise is available (Holliday & Robotin, 2010). Diversify funding streams A wider range of streams could be set up, with each stream having its own tailored criteria targeting various issues e.g. early career researchers, non-academic applicants, high-risk research, interdisciplinary research. In turn, reviewers with expertise specific to the funding stream could be recruited. Various mechanisms for funding could also be employed e.g. commissioning models and seed grants. It could increase the complexity of the funding landscape, making it harder for researchers to know which funding streams to apply for. Not all funders will necessarily have enough funding to run multiple streams. Smaller funders could, however, collaborate to share funding to support a wider range of funding streams. AMRC and ABPI are undertaking work to make it easier for charities and industry to work together. Less well-practiced funding stream criteria may present new challenges, so careful exploration will be needed. In niche fields, finding appropriate expertise for each stream might be difficult, meaning individuals risk being over-burdened and conflicted. Where this might be the case, funders could consider collaborating and sharing a research review committee. The US National Institutes of Health does this for their Pioneer Award. Funders should pay particular attention to the appropriate expertise required to chair the research review committee. Greater focus on impact Application forms could include questions about a variety of potential impacts (instead of publication record), examples of which can be seen in the AMRC impact report. This would put a greater emphasis on quality and move the conversation away from journal metrics. Reviewers could be asked to take this potential impact into consideration during the review process. It requires culture change and would take all the funders to move forward together on this issue for maximal effect. The research committee chair would need to be onboard with this in order to call out instances where reviewers revert to publication record as a metric for success. Alter assessment criteria To tackle key areas that the funder wants to prioritise e.g. reproducibility, high-quality research, innovation or interdisciplinary applications. This could help to increase the quality and appropriateness of applications. It tackles bias against any individual reviewer’s natural assessment e.g. risk-averse people. Clarity and guidance would be needed to define these criteria and how they should be assessed, and reviewer training would be needed to implement this. Funders, including the AMRC, could work together to define these criteria. The weight given to the chosen criteria could be increased to drive changes in decision making. Provide training and mentoring for reviewers Training could be used to tackle a number of issues such as bias, application ranking and scoring and perceived markers of ‘excellence’. Mentoring by longer-serving reviewers could also support newer reviewers. Training could be resource intensive, particularly when developing the training programme. Funders could work together to develop standard training that could subsequently be tailored to each funder’s remit as required. Some examples of existing training include ESRC’s online training, and NIHR’s online interactive course and guidance documentfor public reviewers. Provide reviewers with a refresher on the charity’s aims and protocol A clear summary of the charity’s views on key topics could re-emphasise the charity’s priorities. Topics could include: bias the type of research the charity is looking for e.g. innovative research quality and reproducibility the importance and value of the reviewer’s contribution This would likely need repeating on a regular basis as committee members could revert to their standard ways of working. It could be covered at the start of each research review committee meeting, for example. Charities could develop a suite of supporting materials to summarise this information. A strong chair could help to call out behaviour that is not in the spirit of the charity’s aims. Make reviewers’ identities known to applicants Applicants would be able to view the name of the reviewer alongside the peer review scores and feedback comments. This could encourage reviewers to be more constructive in their feedback which should, in theory, improve the quality of future applications. It would also improve transparency and self-policing of conflicts of interest. Reviewers may be less honest in their feedback. Early-career researchers may feel uncomfortable having their identity revealed, particularly if they are criticising senior colleagues. Measure the confidence of reviewer scores In addition to scoring applications, reviewers could be asked to indicate their confidence in that score. Where lower confidence scores are the result of concerns around e.g. the riskiness of the research, reviewers lacking expertise in every strand of the research or its quality or reproducibility, this system could drive discussion around these issues. The addition of a confidence score could allow two applications that otherwise rank very similarly to be differentiated. A written review could be requested only for those applications that received a low confidence score from the committee, rather than for all of them. Reviewers may be tempted to exaggerate their confidence to avoid being perceived as less knowledgeable than others. It might be beneficial to allow reviewers to comment on why they submitted certain scores – does if reflect their overall confidence of the application or is it because there is a specific element of the application they know less about? This additional information would also prevent good applications being wrongly labelled as ‘poor’ because of a lack of confidence of reviewers. Provide more opportunity to engage with applicants For applications that don’t require interviews, funders could provide the opportunity for reviewers to ask questions of the applicants via teleconference to get a better understanding of the research and the applicant. This could serve to lessen pre-existing biases toward the applicant or the proposed research. If this was introduced, there should be a set protocol in order to ensure all applicants are treated equally and fairly. It could potentially draw attention away from the quality of the research and more towards personal attributes of the applicant. Interaction with applicants could conversely increase reviewers’ biases. This would increase burden on both applicants and reviewers.
Changes that address quality Expand CHANGES CONSIDERATIONS ISSUES ADDRESSED Encourage more reproducible and high-quality research applications and reduce research waste Funders could offer training for researchers to improve quality and reproducibility of research. Charity staff could also play a greater role in triage by checking applicants have provided sufficient information around reproducibility. Routinely paying for replication studies, requiring researchers to undertake a systematic review before new work and obliging them to pre-register their hypotheses to avoid ‘harking’ could all help to improve quality and rigour. Funders could signpost to training in research waste/reproducibility, and could expand information to potential applicants to include information around waste, reproducibility and quality e.g. MRC’s applicant guidance. Infrastructure such as publishing platforms for work like protocols, replication studies and negative results is not well developed. However, funders could sign up to DORA and encourage researchers to publish through AMRC Open Research. It might require significant resource to undertake this. Researchers could be encouraged to make videos of their methods rather than written records to aid replication by other research teams (i.e. https://www.jove.com/) Use peer review to evaluate on-going funded research Funders could play a larger role in managing the whole piece of research rather than front-loaded management at application stage. Peer review could be used to provide ‘stop-go’ decisions at mid-term evaluations. Applicants could also be asked to submit adaptable work-plans so that they would be prepared to deal with unexpected developments or opportunities. There would need to be a formal procedure in place to allow negative reviews to be addressed before withdrawal of funding. It would place more burden on funders and reviewers and take more time. It could undermine trust and strain the funder-researcher relationship. There could be unintended negative consequences on research culture and increase pressure on researchers. Diversify funding streams A wider range of streams could be set up, with each stream having its own tailored criteria targeting various issues e.g. early career researchers, non-academic applicants, high-risk research, interdisciplinary research. In turn, reviewers with expertise specific to the funding stream could be recruited. Various mechanisms for funding could also be employed e.g. commissioning models and seed grants. It could increase the complexity of the funding landscape, making it harder for researchers to know which funding streams to apply for. Not all funders will necessarily have enough funding to run multiple streams. Smaller funders could, however, collaborate to share funding to support a wider range of funding streams. AMRC and ABPI are undertaking work to make it easier for charities and industry to work together. Less well-practiced funding stream criteria may present new challenges, so careful exploration will be needed. In niche fields, finding appropriate expertise for each stream might be difficult, meaning individuals risk being over-burdened and conflicted. Where this might be the case, funders could consider collaborating and sharing a research review committee. The US National Institutes of Health does this for their Pioneer Award. Funders should pay particular attention to the appropriate expertise required to chair the research review committee. Greater focus on impact Application forms could include questions about a variety of potential impacts (instead of publication record), examples of which can be seen in the AMRC impact report. This would put a greater emphasis on quality and move the conversation away from journal metrics. Reviewers could be asked to take this potential impact into consideration during the review process. It requires culture change and would take all the funders to move forward together on this issue for maximal effect. The research committee chair would need to be onboard with this in order to call out instances where reviewers revert to publication record as a metric for success. Alter assessment criteria To tackle key areas that the funder wants to prioritise e.g. reproducibility, high-quality research, innovation or interdisciplinary applications. This could help to increase the quality and appropriateness of applications. It tackles bias against any individual reviewer’s natural assessment e.g. risk-averse people. Clarity and guidance would be needed to define these criteria and how they should be assessed, and reviewer training would be needed to implement this. Funders, including the AMRC, could work together to define these criteria. The weight given to the chosen criteria could be increased to drive changes in decision making. Provide training and mentoring for reviewers Training could be used to tackle a number of issues such as bias, application ranking and scoring and perceived markers of ‘excellence’. Mentoring by longer-serving reviewers could also support newer reviewers. Training could be resource intensive, particularly when developing the training programme. Funders could work together to develop standard training that could subsequently be tailored to each funder’s remit as required. Some examples of existing training include ESRC’s online training, and NIHR’s online interactive course and guidance documentfor public reviewers. Provide reviewers with a refresher on the charity’s aims and protocol A clear summary of the charity’s views on key topics could re-emphasise the charity’s priorities. Topics could include: bias the type of research the charity is looking for e.g. innovative research quality and reproducibility the importance and value of the reviewer’s contribution This would likely need repeating on a regular basis as committee members could revert to their standard ways of working. It could be covered at the start of each research review committee meeting, for example. Charities could develop a suite of supporting materials to summarise this information. A strong chair could help to call out behaviour that is not in the spirit of the charity’s aims. Make reviewers’ identities known to applicants Applicants would be able to view the name of the reviewer alongside the peer review scores and feedback comments. This could encourage reviewers to be more constructive in their feedback which should, in theory, improve the quality of future applications. It would also improve transparency and self-policing of conflicts of interest. Reviewers may be less honest in their feedback. Early-career researchers may feel uncomfortable having their identity revealed, particularly if they are criticising senior colleagues. Measure the confidence of reviewer scores In addition to scoring applications, reviewers could be asked to indicate their confidence in that score. Where lower confidence scores are the result of concerns around e.g. the riskiness of the research, reviewers lacking expertise in every strand of the research or its quality or reproducibility, this system could drive discussion around these issues. The addition of a confidence score could allow two applications that otherwise rank very similarly to be differentiated. A written review could be requested only for those applications that received a low confidence score from the committee, rather than for all of them. Reviewers may be tempted to exaggerate their confidence to avoid being perceived as less knowledgeable than others. It might be beneficial to allow reviewers to comment on why they submitted certain scores – does if reflect their overall confidence of the application or is it because there is a specific element of the application they know less about? This additional information would also prevent good applications being wrongly labelled as ‘poor’ because of a lack of confidence of reviewers. Provide more opportunity to engage with applicants For applications that don’t require interviews, funders could provide the opportunity for reviewers to ask questions of the applicants via teleconference to get a better understanding of the research and the applicant. This could serve to lessen pre-existing biases toward the applicant or the proposed research. If this was introduced, there should be a set protocol in order to ensure all applicants are treated equally and fairly. It could potentially draw attention away from the quality of the research and more towards personal attributes of the applicant. Interaction with applicants could conversely increase reviewers’ biases. This would increase burden on both applicants and reviewers.
Bullying and harassment in the research environment Expand Bullying and harassment has no place in medical and health research. It can directly affect the quality of the research and have a destructive effect on the research environment. Although our paper is not mandatory for AMRC members we hope that many of our charities will choose to implement policies that discourage bullying and harassment in the research activities they fund. This guidance provides suggested wording for grant terms and conditions to tackle bullying and harassment, as well as an internal guide for charities wishing to implement their own bullying and harassment policy.
2017 events and publications Expand Event Date Mental health and multi-morbidities roundtable 1 November 2017 AGM 12 September 2017 Brexit drop-in event 7 February 2017 Publication Publication type APPG on Medical Research event on research into mental health and multi-morbidities AMRC news article APPG on Medical Research breakfast roundtable on mental health and multi-morbidities AMRC blog We're at a tipping point with mental health, now is the time for research AMRC blog How to secure the best for life sciences after Brexit Infographic Brexit and the life sciences: five key asks Briefing First APPG meeting of 2017: How to secure the best for life sciences after Brexit AMRC blog
2018 events and publications Expand Event Date Tour of the Francis Crick Institute 19 December 2018 AGM 3 December 2018 ‘Science Moves’ drop-in event 5 June 2018 Patient data roundtable 27 February 2018 Publication Publication type APPG on Medical Research drop-in event on Brexit, medical research and international mobility AMRC news article Cross-party group of Parliamentarians support UK's world-leading medical research AMRC news article How Brexit, Medical Research and International Mobility can make Britain fit for the future AMRC blog UK-based researchers for whom international mobility has played a key part in their research careers AMRC blog Medical research and international mobility Infographic Five minutes with Dr Lori Passmore of the MRC LMB, interview in the British Medical Journal (paywall) Media news article "As a science superpower, Britain must be open to global talent" writes Chris Green MP in The House Media news article Why Patient Data is a Matter of Life and Death for your Constituents AMRC news article #DataSavesLives AMRC blog Data saves lives animations, Understanding Patient Data Video
2019 events and publications Expand Event Date Six months on from the Long-Term Plan; how is research and innovation being driven in the NHS? 9 July 2019 Keeping the UK a world leader in medical research: the need for cross-government 5 February 2019 Publication Publication type Keeping the UK a world leader in medical research: the need for cross-Government coordination Infographic Sector unites to call for cross-Government coordination of research AMRC blog Preparing for the Spending Review (part 2): Bringing key messages to Parliament External blog
Covering indirect and direct research costs Expand If you are an AMRC member charity and award funding via open competition… Your 'indirect' costs of research in universities can be supported by the Charity Research Support Fund (CRSF). Your ‘direct’ costs of clinical research in the NHS can be covered by NIHR Clinical Research Networks under the Attributing the costs of health and social care Research and Development (AcoRD) agreement.
Useful blogs Expand Best impact reports from medical research charities How to write an achievements page for your charity Telling the sector's full story Impact from start to finish Shouting your impact from the rooftops How do you know you’re making a difference? The bumpy road to making change happen What's it worth? Estimating the impact of biomedical research How to effectively communicate research impact What is the impact of medical research charities Fantastic impact tools and where to find them Disturbed by the “gorilla” of impact? Wellcome Open Research: rethinking research publishing, accelerating impact How to Show Impact: Highlights from our Essential Research Management workshop
Networks and workshops Expand Many of our our networks and groups and events can offer support in this areas, but those most related to research impact are listed below: Impact Coffee Club: The group meets several times a year to share knowledge and insights around impact-related topics and network with each other. Exploring Impact: The group meets every several times a year to explore different topics related to impact, including data, dashboards, analysis, tools, reports and more. Impact workshops: We hold full-day workshops to learn from other funders and research institutions how to best collect and communicate impact. For example, in March 2019 we held a Communicating Impact workshop (read about it in this blog) and an Impact Masterclass in September 2019 (read about it in this blog). Essential Research Management workshop: We run a one-day introductory workshop twice a year on the fundamentals of research management for research staff at medical research charities. Impact is one of topics covered during this workshop.
Dr Holly McConnell Research Policy Officer - Phone: 020 8078 6065 - Email: [email protected] Expand Holly joined AMRC in August 2023 as a Research Policy Officer. As a member of the Policy and Public Affairs team, she will primarily focus on Responsible Funding policy. After qualifying as a Veterinary Surgeon (BVSc, University of Liverpool), Holly completed a masters in Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh where she discovered her passion for bioethics and health policy. She is committed to achieving health for all and the importance of ethics in policy and decision making.
2020 Expand Response Consulting body Date AMRC response to consultation on MHRA draft guidance on randomised controlled trials generating real-world evidence to support regulatory decisions Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency December 2020 AMRC submission to the Comprehensive Spending Review HM Treasury September 2020 AMRC submission to the Inquiry into the role of technology, research and innovation in the COVID-19 recovery Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology September 2020 AMRC response to R&D Roadmap Survey Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy August 2020 AMRC representation to (11 March) 2020 Budget HM Treasury February 2020 NHS Commercial Framework for Medicines NHS England January 2020
Alyson Fox Appointed December 2019 Expand Director of Research Funding, Wellcome Trust Alyson obtained her PhD in Pharmacology from King’s College London and then spent three years undertaking postdoctoral research at UCL, before being awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship to work at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College. Alyson then joined Novartis and spent 13 years in drug discovery, initially as a lab head and later as Disease Area Head, leading a team of 60+ researchers and responsible for building a portfolio of projects from target discovery to Phase 2 clinical trial. She has experience in neuroscience, respiratory and gastrointestinal research areas. In 2010 Alyson joined the Wellcome Trust where she is responsible for the management and governance of grant funding and review processes.
Ashley Bayston Elected AGM 2020 Expand Founder and Chair, The Lewy Body Society Ashley Bayston founded the Lewy Body Society after her mother was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia (LBD) in 2005. She was elected as an AMRC trustee in 2020 and stepped down in 2023.