Consortium members have started their transformation. The progress is already visible.

Consortium

The Alliance4Life published a new comprehensive self-assessment study of the current research and innovation performance of its members. The report clearly shows the progress achieved in the implementation of research management strategies at most of the member institutes. The document includes a comparison of data collected in 2015-2017 with the new benchmark results collected three years later in 2018-2020, during the ongoing Horizon 2020 project. The results are promising and they indicate the progress made by the member institutes which had already begun their transformation and consistently stick to the adopted development strategy.

The Self-Assessment Report, which was coordinated by Prof. Silvia Pastoreková, Director of the Biomedical Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, can serve as an inspiration to all institutes in low performing countries that are striving to improve their institutional management practices and research culture.

More than just infrastructure

Even the large-scale investments into the life science infrastructure could not close the research and innovation gap in Europe.  Financial support needs to be complemented by measures on research and innovation strategy at institutional and national levels. Alliance4Life members believe that improving governance and managerial practices as well as transforming institutional culture will enhance efficiency and increase return on investment. The recently released self-assessment report serves as proof that the Alliance4Life members are on the right path towards the desired transformation.

 

How was the report compiled?

The comprehensive self-assessment process covered several dimensions of research activities. The report includes SWOT analysis providing a snapshot of internal and external conditions but examines also research culture across various institutes, managerial practices, resources as well as responsible metrics evaluated in the context of a quantitative benchmarking study. For the first time in Central and Eastern Europe, the assessment included also a survey of perception of internal research culture, inspired by the Wellcome survey on research culture (published in 2019 and 2020).

The results clearly demonstrate that the best-performing partners in terms of research outputs work in the environment of relatively well-functioning national systems, well-implemented practices of institutional management and well-developed internal research culture.

The analysis also shows that A4L_ACTIONS partners are not only aware of the challenges of building an institutional environment that enables excellent research but they are also ready to take up the challenge. In spite of objective barriers and threats, all A4L_ACTIONS partners can demonstrate very good research achievements that reflect their endeavours and deep interest in improvement. This is particularly visible when comparing the outputs of the period of 2018-2020 with the outcomes of the preceding period of 2015-2017.

Evaluation: key to success

One of the key objectives of Alliance4Life is to implement international scientific evaluation as a strategic management tool in health sciences universities and health research institutions of Central and Eastern Europe. The self-assessment report will be therefore complemented with peer review evaluations to be performed during the autumn of 2022 at several Alliance4Life member institutions. Alliance4Life also joined the initiative of reforming the research evaluation system in the EU called the “coalition of willing” and shows its commitment to standing at the forefront of the positive change.

The full report is available here: https://alliance4life.ceitec.cz/download/650?lang=en

 

Alliance4Life is a bottom-up initiative of twelve leading life science institutions from eleven EU-13 countries that aims at closing the divide in European health research and innovation. Members of the Alliance include progressive research institutions that have the necessary potential to stimulate institutional change. Alliance members joined forces to share good practices in 2017 and successfully implemented their first Horizon2020 action during 2018-2019. Currently the Alliance4Life implements its second, also EU funded project which focuses on raising the institutional profiles of Alliance4Life´s members to attract and retain international talents and to provide the right operational framework conditions including improved research management.

Wellcome is a financially and politically-independent global charitable foundation with a £38.2 billion investment portfolio. Through their work Wellcome fund grants, advocacy campaigns  and collaboration to solve the urgent health challenges.

More on:  https://wellcome.org/who-we-are