UK Metascience Unit funds new research at the University
18 Mar 2025
Manchester among first recipients of a UK government grant to find better ways to conduct, distribute and fund research - with opportunities for staff to get involved
The University is among the first recipients of a grant from UK Research & Innovation’s new Metascience Unit, which was launched to find better ways to conduct, distribute and fund research.
Metascience is the application of scientific methodology to study how research is undertaken. It is hoped that the approach will help to improve the quality and efficiency of UK research.
The successfully funded project is ‘Supporting Research and Researchers through the deployment of Digital Notebooks: A framework for implementation and impact.’ The research will follow both Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute’s implementation and The Research Lifecycle Programme’s deployment of digital notebooks across the University, and to evaluate the impact of targeted interventions across the various organisational scales.
Principal investigator Andrew Stewart, Professor of Cognitive Science in the Department of Computer Science, said: “This grant is an exciting investment in The University of Manchester; recognising the importance of metascience. It will help us to demonstrate the benefits that digital notebooks can make to open, reproducible, and responsible research and provide other higher education institutions with a framework for implementation.”
Co-Investigator, Andrew Porter, Research Integrity and Training Adviser at the Manchester Institute, said: “Teams here are already starting to make use of digital notebooks to document their work. We're keen to see these powerful tools made accessible to researchers across the University to help support and grow open, reproducible and responsible research practices.”
The Research Lifecycle Programme’s (RLP) project to deploy digital notebooks is currently engaging with academics and research technical professionals to gather functional requirements for any proposed notebook solutions, and to assess demand for integrated sample inventories. The needs of all schools and faculties are to be captured, to ascertain where functional diversity can be catered for.
Find out and apply for the research associate vacancy supporting this research:
Find out more about RLP's digital notebooks project and how to contribute: