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THE CITY LAW SCHOOLRESEARCH & ENTERPRISE COMMITTEE
MEETING 38AG03 – 10 October 2018, 13:00 – 14:00
Attendance List
Name of Member RoleMeeting
3810/10/2018
Meeting 39
Term 2
Meeting 40
Term 3
Dr. Tawhida Ahmed (Chair) Chair, Associate Dean (Research)
Sean Rowlands Secretary
Dr. Mazen Masri Deputy Associate Dean (Research)
Dr. Jesse Elvin Ethics Director
Hilary Vieitez Research Librarian
Dr. Carmen Draghici Academic Visitors Programme Director
Prof. Chris Ryan Interim Dean A
Prof. Peter Hungerford-Welch Assistant Dean (Professional) A
Prof. Jason Chuah Head of Academic Programme
Dr. Elaine Fahey Associate Dean (International) A
Prof. Panos Koutrakos Senior Tutor for Research A
Dr. Adrienne Yong Lecturer A
Dr. Sabrina Germain Lecturer
Dr. Luke McDonagh Senior Lecturer (Elected Member) A
Lynne Townley Lecturer (Elected Member) Abs
Vacancy Elected member N/M
Attendance key:
: Present A: Apologies sent Abs.: Absent N/M: Period when not a member
i. The quorum for a meeting of a Research Committee is one-third of total membership rounded up to the next whole number. >5
CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
1. Welcome and apologies
1.1. Chair welcomed the committee to the first meeting of 2018/19.
1.2. Apologies sent by committee members are recorded in the attendance list above.
1.3. Chair noted that David Mangan is on Study Leave for Term 1 and will be leaving City at the
end of the term, therefore a vacancy will open up in Term 2. The Committee records its
thanks to David for his contribution to its work.
2. Minutes from previous meeting
2.1. The minutes of the previous meeting, REC 37, were approved as an accurate record
subject to the following amendments:
2.1.1. Hilary Vieitez clarified on Claire Packham’s behalf that item 9.3 noted that a review of library reference items would be carried out, but should have read: there had already been a review of reference items, a large number of which had been made loanable.
2.1.2. Jesse Elvin amended 6.2.1 to delete the incorrect terms of “virtual”, the committee does exist although decisions are sometime reached via email rather than in meetings.
2.2. Actions from previous minutes:
Actions from meeting 37 Report
Item 8: Carmen Draghici requested to inform committee of the temporary withdrawal of the Academic Visitor programme and update on any outcome.
Carmen Draghici provided the following clarification:
There was one cancelled visit from Singapore in 2018, from Prof. Steve Ngo, however this was not as a result of a withdrawal of the fellowship, but a change in the visitor’s own plans due to supervening commitments.
Prof. Ngo, who was expected to join the programme in May, contacted CLS in April to advise that he would only have 8 days available to spend at City and to ask whether the programme required a minimum duration of the stay.
Prof. Ngo was advised that the programme was intended for longer periods of research, in principle one term/ 12 weeks, as indicated on our website, with some flexibility, and he was referred to Elaine Fahey to explore options for short-term international exchanges.
Carmen’s update on the more general temporary suspension of the Academic Visitor Programme is recorded below in Item 8 and in Paper C presented for this meeting.
Item 9: Library service to conduct a review of books with reference-only access with a view to make more available on loan if possible to compensate for reductions in study space.
The action was deleted on confirmation of the minutes from Meeting 37.
It was clarified that a review had already taken place and a large number of reference items had been made loanable.
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
3. Matters arising
3.1. Chair noted that ARQM results for the School have been released but these are interim
results pending appeals.
3.1.1. Carmen Draghici asked whether there was an indicative timeframe for responses to appeals.
3.1.2. Chair responded that appeals are currently with external evaluators who were being chased by Dean.
3.2. The vacant School role of Associate Dean for Enterprise has not yet been filled
ACTION: Chair will ask Dean for an update on the status of the Associate Dean for Enterprise role.
3.3. Chair announced that Key Travel, City’s listed travel and hotel vendor, now has authority to
make bookings for colleagues directly from the CLS research budget. They can now be
contacted by staff members directly via the email address [email protected].
3.3.1. Staff members whose travel funding has been approved following an application form submission can then contact Key Travel to request a quote and arrange their travel and accommodation directly.
3.4. The Secretary announced that the 2018/19 CLS Research Assistance Scheme is now live.
3.4.1. Last year’s scheme was described anecdotally by various staff members and students as a very fruitful resource that helped with research projects carried out in the School and provided flexible work with career development value to students.
3.4.2. This year’s scheme has had an increase of the hourly rate of pay to £20.44 (incl. holiday) to harmonise with City’s Grade 5 payscale. This follows City policy that Research roles without a PhD are paid at Grade 5 level as a minimum. Therefore the Scheme more accurately recreates an externally funded research project.
3.4.3. A Unitemps vacancy for applications to join the RA pool is open (https://www.unitemps.com/Search/JobDetails/20407)
3.4.4. City Law School staff are also invited to nominate students they would like to recruit via their funding application for the Research Assistance role.
ACTION: Committee members are encouraged to promote the scheme with colleagues as we would like to have the resource used as widely as possible to support research being done at the School.
3.4.5. Jason Chuah suggested that ethics clearance for work involving a research assistant should be part of the Student Research Assistance scheme, with an explicit check on the application form.
ACTION: Secretary to meet with Jesse Elvin to discuss what form of ethics clearance may be necessary and workable with the Research Assistance Scheme applications.
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
3.4.6. Jesse Elvin raised the issue of whether nominations were fair and equal form of recruitment, alongside the open job vacancy advertisement for the Research Assistance Pool.
3.4.7. Hilary asked whether Research Assistant recruitment had been focused on current students in light of difficulties in accessing library resources if an RA does not also hold student status.
Secretary responded that there had been attempts to recruit recent graduates but this was complicated given the ad hoc nature of RA requests: in some cases graduates who were offered a role sometime after they had submitted their application were no longer available. It is advised that the requesting staff member should nominate any graduate or other non-student RA as long as the tasks do not require resources that are unavailable to temporary employees.
3.4.8. Sabrina Germain seconded the praise for the Student Research Assistance Scheme, which has been a very helpful resource in her experience.
3.5. R&E Training & Professional Development programme is up on the Staff Hub and training
events are available for booking: https://staffhub.city.ac.uk/research/welcome-to-city/researcher-training-
and-professional-development
3.5.1. Many events are available, with a general remit that can be useful for researchers from across City.
3.5.2. Some examples of City-wide Events with places available at the time of writing include: Publication ethics – 24 Oct Research funding opportunities presentation – 16 January 2018 Effective writing for research grant application – 25 Jan & 25 Apr
ACTION: The R&E link with booking form will be circulated with all CLS colleagues and committee members are encouraged to help promote the events.
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
4. REF Updates
General updates
4.1. The period for the REF Consultation on the panel criteria and working methods (2018/02)
ends on October 15th.
4.1.1. The information about this consultation has been circulated previously. Individual responses can be submitted on the website.
4.1.2. Any remaining submissions to be included in City’s institutional response can be sent to Sean.
4.2. Reminder of key REF2021 dates:
Census date: 31 July 2020 Submission deadline: 27 November 2020 Publications up to 31 December 2020 can be included. Impact occurrence period: 2013 – 2020 Underpinning research for Impact publication range: 1 January 2000 – 31
December 2020
ACTION: Chair will ask whether these deadlines will take advanced online publications into account.
Report from REF Strategy Meeting
4.3. School can request support for REF preparation by submitting a business case.
ACTION: Invitation for ideas of REF support needed at CLS, with the caveat that to make a business case a high degree of necessity must be demonstrated.
4.4. Publications co-authored by various CLS staff can only count as one REF submission.
4.4.1. The School is one REF Unit of Assessment, which has an overall total number of unique publications to submit based on its number of staff; so a co-authored piece can only be counted with the School tally once.
4.4.2. Chair does not want this to discourage collaboration within the School, which can nevertheless lead to the creation of high-quality publication and is a good working practice.
4.4.3. Publications co-authored with researchers based in other Units of Assessment within City, or at other Institutions, can be submitted more than once by the Unit of Assessment of each author.
4.5. Double weighting of publications needs to be explained/justified.
4.5.1. This means that longer publications like monographs do not automatically qualify for double weighting on the School REF submission, although the argument for their double weight can certainly be made.
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
4.5.2. To ensure that there is no shortfall from the projected total number of publications because some publication is not considered to be double weighted, the REF panel will be able to put forward reserve publications that will be part of the School submission.
4.6. The benefit of research to teaching or students within our School can now be counted as
part of an impact case study.
4.6.1. However, the thresholds remain that: The staff member must have research as a significant responsibility of their role The underlying research publication must still be at least judged a 2* publication
by the REF panel.4.6.2. Jason Chuah added that teaching impact would be more valuable as an addition to a
holistic Impact Case Study that attributes various types of Impact to a piece of research.
4.6.3. Chair added that the main beneficiaries of this policy update at City will probably be LEAD whose research about educational technologies, methods and techniques have their primary impact on teaching.
4.7. Environment pillar of the REF submission (p. 99 – 118 in the REF draft guidance).
4.7.1. The School will be starting to draft the statement on the REF environment for the Law Unit of Assessment.
4.7.2. Chair noted that we will have to show a working structure behind our claims for the research environment, through a strategic presentation of School and Research & Enterprise infrastructure.
5. University Research Committees
5.1. Most of the University Research Committee business concerned REF planning, which has
been covered in Item 4 above.
6. Research ethics
6.1. City’s new online Ethics Application system is now live and can be accessed via the
Research and Enterprise page on the City website:
https://www.city.ac.uk/research/research-and-enterprise/research-ethics/do-i-need-ethics-
approval
6.1.1. No CLS Ethics applications have been made since the new system was launched, so Jesse does not yet have any operational report on the new system.
6.1.2. There have been issues with the system not allowing amendments to comments recorded on applications. This is being looked into by the system implementation team.
6.2. City is standardising its ethics application processes and have circulated draft role profiles
for ethics committee members.
6.2.1. Three circulated draft role profiles are submitted to the committee as Papers E1, E2 & E3
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
ACTION: Circulate draft ethics committee role profiles with committee. Comments are invited by the next CLS R&E Committee meeting.
6.3. The Ethics Director reported an Ethics rules violation that recently occurred.
6.3.1. A retrospective request was made to include a named person on a research project.
6.3.2. A report on the violation can be shared if requested.
7. Research students
7.1. Panos Koutrakos submitted Paper B for the committee’s consideration.
7.2. Chair provided an update on Item 2 of Paper B: Since Adrienne Yong assumed other
administrative duties in the School, Dr. Andriani Kalintiri has taken over the role of PGR
methods coordinator.
7.3. Jason Chuah commented on Item 7 of Paper B: sometimes issues under discussion with
the PhD student representative are not within the School’s power. Issues can involve HR,
UCU or the SU, and having all these parties included can lead to delayed responses.
7.4. Jesse Elvin commented on Item 7 of Paper B: Plamen Dinev’s application for the Modern
Law Review PhD Scholarship did not go through ethical approval. Jesse asked what the
proper order would be for ethics approval of projects such as these.
7.4.1. Secretary responded that the normal order for ethical approval of staff proposals for external research funding is after receipt of an offer letter, when the project is being set up.
7.4.2. The committee response was that ethics approval for a PhD’s doctoral research can cover a series of activities over that period. .
7.4.3. Any additional approval that may be needed for a particular project would be applied for after a funding offer had been made, during the award setup stage. This is the same order to be followed with staff research funding applications.
7.5. Carmen raised the issue of GTA’s lack of facilities to provide office hours to students.
This is relevant to the example raised in Item 7 and has not yet been resolved. Office
hours can be part of their teaching provision and it is not clear how this is practicable
given PhD students work in an open plan office.
7.5.1. Jason Chuah responded that this issue is still under discussion. The current default position is that GTAs have a status of Visiting Lecturers following the decision to separate their studentship stipend from any hourly pay for teaching they provide.
8. Academic Visitor Programme
8.1. Carmen Draghici submitted Paper C for the committee’s consideration. At the meeting she
highlighted that the previous two academic visitors had praised the School for:
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
The support they received from the Library The collegial environment
8.2. The Academic Visitor Programme is currently suspended due to the lack of space
available for Visitors. The call next open call for applications to the programme is
expected to be in Term 2 of the 2019 – 2020 academic year, in time for them to visit the
School once the new Sebastian Street building is scheduled to open.
9. Research librarian report
9.1. Lenka Shipton has been in touch with new staff who have joined City Law School to inform
them about the CRO system.
9.2. Hilary Vieitez provides training to PhD student after the committee meeting.
9.3. Hilary invites suggestions from staff about resources for the research library, such as
databases or external training.
10.Law Research Strategy
10.1. Chair submitted Paper D for the committee’s consideration.
ACTION: Chair requests that the Committee consider the Strategy and provide comments in writing by the end of 17th October
10.2. Targets in the School strategy have been extracted from the University strategy for their
relevance to Law research.
10.3. Chair highlighted that the School is building capacity for REF 2021 and beyond. As an
update on current progress with the Strategy:
Output is on track Impact is improving Research grant activity has increased.
10.4. Carmen Draghici raised issue of Workload Allocation Models and the need for research
active staff members to have time reserved to carry out the work expected in the
Research Strategy.
11.Date, time and venue of next meetings.
11.1. Date and venue for Meeting 39 to be confirmed.
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CLS Research & Enterprise CommitteeMeeting 38 - 10 Oct 2018
Minutes taken by Secretary to the Committee Sean Rowlands <[email protected]> with comments from Chair Dr. Tawhida Ahmed.
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