Written by David Gardener, Community Knowledge Analyst at the University of St Andrews, InFrame

The InFrame Project represents a significant step toward addressing persistent challenges in academic research culture. As a £3 million Wellcome Trust-funded collaborative initiative between the Universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, InFrame aims to create an inclusive framework for collegial research leadership centred on collaborative working, mutual cooperation, and colleague care. Central to this effort is the £1 million Culture Catalyst Fund, designed to support innovative projects that explore new approaches to research leadership. This blog examines the three themes guiding the Culture Catalyst Fund and their potential to transform research culture in higher education institutions.

Putting Policy into Practice: Bridging the Implementation Gap

The Culture Catalyst Fund theme of “Putting Policy into Practice” specifically targets the implementation of, awareness of, trust in, and engagement with existing provisions. This theme acknowledges a persistent challenge in academia: the gap between well-intentioned policies and their effective implementation.

Many institutions have developed policies aimed at improving research culture, addressing issues such as research integrity, career paths, and diversity. However, as the Royal Society's ‘Changing Expectations’ conference report highlighted, these policies often fail to translate into meaningful change (The Royal Society, 2019 and The Royal Society, 2025). The disconnect between formal policies and daily practices contributes to ongoing concerns about research integrity, career progression, and sector permeability.

The implementation gap stems from multiple factors. First, awareness of existing policies is often limited, with researchers and administrators frequently unaware of available resources and guidelines. Second, even when awareness exists, trust in these policies may be lacking, particularly if previous initiatives failed to deliver promised changes. Finally, engagement with policies requires both incentive and opportunity – elements frequently missing in high-pressure academic environments.

Projects under this theme might develop innovative communication strategies to increase policy awareness, create mechanisms to build trust through transparent implementation processes, or design engagement frameworks that make policy adherence advantageous rather than burdensome. Such initiatives could transform how policies function within research institutions, moving from perfunctory compliance to meaningful engagement that genuinely shapes research practice.

Reimagining Implementation Approaches

Effective implementation requires rethinking how policies are communicated, enforced, and evaluated. Rather than top-down approaches that often meet resistance, collaborative implementation strategies that involve researchers at all career stages could generate greater buy-in. The InFrame Project's emphasis on collegial leadership aligns perfectly with this approach, suggesting that policy implementation should be viewed as a collective responsibility rather than an administrative function.

Changing What Counts: Expanding Recognition in Research Assessment

The theme “Changing What Counts” focuses on practices that recognise and value a broader range of activities and contributions in research assessment. This theme directly challenges the metrics-dominated evaluation culture that has become entrenched in academia.

The current research assessment landscape predominantly values publications in high-impact journals, citation counts, and grant acquisition. As noted in the Royal Society report, there have been calls to move away from using journal names as surrogates for research quality and to abandon the “publish or perish” mentality that dominates academic careers. Dr. Adam Rutherford explicitly advocated for ending journal publishing completely and eliminating metrics in researcher evaluation, while Professor Mark Walport emphasised that it's what's been discovered that's important and how it's applied, not where it's published (The Royal Society, 2019).

This narrow definition of success has profound consequences for research culture. It creates hypercompetition, incentivises quantity over quality, and undervalues crucial activities such as teaching, mentoring, public engagement, and collaborative work. Moreover, it contributes to the loss of diversity in research, as noted by John Kingman, who suggested that closing the gender gap in science might be “single biggest thing the country could do” to address the growing R&D researcher shortage (The Royal Society, 2019).

Projects addressing this theme could develop alternative assessment frameworks that recognise diverse contributions, create tools for evaluating collaborative work, or design recognition systems for activities that traditionally go unacknowledged in academic advancement. Such initiatives align with broader movements toward Open Science, which advocates valuing contributions beyond publications, including data curation, software development, and public engagement (The Royal Society, 2019 and The Royal Society, 2025).

From Metrics to Meaning

The challenge lies not in abandoning evaluation but in making it more meaningful. As research on productive groups has shown, factors such as balanced participation, empathy, and gender diversity often correlate with innovative outcomes – yet these qualities rarely factor into formal assessments (The Royal Society, 2019 and The Royal Society, 2025). Changing what counts means measuring what genuinely contributes to knowledge advancement rather than what is simply easiest to quantify.

Setting the Tone: Cultivating Positive Research Cultures

The theme of “Setting the Tone” encompasses practices that promote positive research cultures and disrupt the perpetuation of negative cultural norms. This theme recognises that research culture is transmitted through generations of academics, with established researchers often passing their working practices, values, and attitudes to early-career researchers.

A recent scoping review on good research culture identified that an inclusive, representative, and collaborative research environment contributes to improvement in researchers' sense of belonging (Blatch-Jones, Lakin and Thomas, 2024). This sense of belonging is crucial for both individual well-being and research productivity. Unfortunately, the current academic system often perpetuates problematic cultural elements – from unsustainable workloads and poor mentorship to hypercompetitive environments and exclusionary practices.

Projects addressing this theme might develop mentorship programs that emphasise collegial values, create frameworks for recognising and rewarding positive leadership behaviours, or establish communities of practice dedicated to cultural transformation. Such initiatives could help disrupt the transmission of negative cultural norms while actively cultivating environments conducive to both research excellence and researcher well-being.

Cultural Inheritance and Transformation

The concept of cultural inheritance in academia merits particular attention. Susan Wessler's reference to the ‘sage on the stage’ mentality illustrates how traditional notions of the superstar scientist persist despite evidence that such models may not produce the most innovative or inclusive research environments (The Royal Society, 2019). Challenging these inherited cultural models requires both structural changes and shifts in individual attitudes – precisely the dual approach that the InFrame Project sets out to embrace.

Conclusion: Toward a Transformed Research Ecosystem

The InFrame Project's Culture Catalyst Fund themes – Putting Policy into Practice, Changing what Counts, and Setting the Tone – represent a comprehensive approach to addressing interconnected challenges in research culture. By targeting implementation gaps, assessment frameworks, and cultural transmission simultaneously, the initiative recognises that research culture transformation requires multifaceted intervention.

These themes align with what Blum and Pattyn identified as the need for greater conceptual clarity within the dispersed literature on knowledge/evidence in policy (Blum and Pattyn, 2022). The InFrame approach contributes to this conceptual clarity by providing a structured framework for understanding and addressing research culture challenges.

As Round 2 of the Culture Catalyst Fund opens, it offers a unique opportunity for those working in the research ecosystem across the three participating institutions to contribute to reshaping research leadership. The ultimate goal – creating a more inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable research ecosystem – serves not only the well-being of researchers but also the quality and impact of the research itself.

The initiative's emphasis on widening the definition of what a ‘research leader’ looks like has profound implications for diversity and inclusion in academic settings. By funding projects that challenge institutional hierarchies and build leadership opportunities for underrepresented groups, the Culture Catalyst Fund may help address the systemic biases that have limited diversity in research leadership.

The transformation of research culture is not merely a nice-to-have but a necessity for addressing critical challenges facing academia. As this fund begins supporting innovative projects in 2025, it will be fascinating to observe how these three themes translate into practical initiatives that reshape how research is led, valued, and experienced across participating institutions.

Want to know more about the Culture Catalyst Fund?

Round 2 of the Culture Catalyst Fund opened on 31 March 2025, with applications open until 3pm on Friday 9 May 2025. To share information about the Culture Catalyst Fund and let those who are interested in applying, an online Information Event was held on Wednesday 2 April 2025. Throughout the event, our expert panel, featuring leads from each institution, members of the InFrame team, and funded project leads, provided valuable insights into the Culture Catalyst Fund’s application and review process, sharing their passion for improving collegiality and leadership in research. You can watch the video of the Information Event on YouTube.

Further information on the whole InFrame Project and the Culture Catalyst Fund, including how to apply and the application and supporting documents can be found on the InFrame Sway page, with support available from the dedicated InFrame based at each partner university:

• InFrame@ed.ac.uk

• InFrame@glasgow.ac.uk

• InFrame@st-andrews.ac.uk

You can find out about projects that were funded in Round 1 of the Culture Catalyst Fund on Sway, and you can also keep up with the news and events of the InFrame project on our LinkedInpage.