Accessible Feedback in Research

Can you help us transform research with more inclusive feedback practices?

Dr Thomas Evans, Roksana Sobolak, Magda Skubera, FORRT
Last updated on Oct 15, 2024
Accessible Feedback in Research

Background

Did you know that only 27% of UK Professors are women, and less than 1% of UK Professors are black (HESA, 2020)? This significant underrepresentation highlights a problematic “leaky pipeline” in academia that affects various disciplines worldwide (Dubois-Shaik & Fesulier, 2015). Marginalised groups, including women and minorities, encounter systemic barriers that hinder their professional advancement, leading to fewer individuals in higher academic positions and reinforcing a cycle of inequality. Marginalised researchers consider work environment as the most common barrier to professional progression, yet perceive the support and guidance of others to be the most influential facilitator (Gregor et al., 2023).

Feedback has the potential to evaluate and promote research quality, helping academics to incrementally improve their research practices. However, structurally embedded inequalities in feedback systems are a key factor contributing to significant deficits in the recruitment and retention of diverse talent in higher education and research institutions (Kaplan et al., 2017). For example, the traditional feedback mechanism of peer review is the most prevalent type of feedback across disciplinary, geographical, and career boundaries (Chong & Masson, 2021). However, since peer review provides feedback to researchers after the work has been conducted, many researchers find their time and resources depleted before their efforts can be properly evaluated and improved. Furthermore, the peer review system is often led by individuals from privileged groups of senior academics and can be highly inconsistent (Hamilton et al., 2020). Additionally, biases in peer review have been shown to perpetuate the exclusion of minoritised groups (Smith et al., 2023), with similar trends across other feedback mechanisms like conference talks and questions, highlighting the urgent need for a more supportive research environment with accessible feedback processes for the researchers who could benefit most.

To drive this change, we are undertaking an international multi-disciplinary survey to comprehensively map out and evaluate diverse opportunities for researchers to gather feedback throughout the research cycle. Our survey aims to uncover cross-disciplinary feedback practices that can foster more timely and inclusive feedback. We hope that this will enable early-career and marginalised researchers to refine their work iteratively and efficiently, supporting their professional development.

Our mission and how it is working to contribute to the open scholarship community

Our mission is to foster a more inclusive and diverse research environment by addressing systemic barriers involved with feedback mechanisms and supporting the professional development of marginalised researchers. This initiative not only enhances individual professional growth but also contributes to the broader open scholarship community by promoting transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration in academic research.

Many advancements within the open scholarship movement are rooted in feedback-based practices, such as pre-printing, conducting premortems to identify methodological concerns, and performing code reviews to evaluate accessibility and processing quality (Evans, 2022). Although these practices are gradually reshaping norms around transparency and data sharing, the full scope of emerging feedback mechanisms within the open scholarship movement is not yet fully known or widely disseminated. For instance, many newer feedback initiatives, such as Registered Reports, which aim to improve the reproducibility and transparency of research by peer reviewing study proposals before data collection, remain underutilised and have only slowly expanded beyond the psychological and social sciences (Chambers & Tzavella, 2021). Our project seeks to uncover and promote these diverse feedback opportunities, ensuring they are more widely understood and adopted across various disciplines.

How our project and FORRT reinforce one another

Our project and FORRT reinforce each other by promoting a culture of transparency, inclusivity, and continuous improvement in academia. Both initiatives focus on breaking down systemic barriers and supporting the professional development of marginalised researchers, ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and diverse research environment.

By leveraging our strengths, we can accelerate the adoption of open scholarship principles and foster a research environment that values diversity, inclusivity, and high-quality research practices. This complementary approach ensures that researchers have the tools, knowledge, and support needed to navigate the challenges of research and thrive in an open and inclusive scholarly community.

Call to action

Now, we need your help.

Academic researchers from diverse disciplines and regions are invited to participate in this voluntary survey to share their experiences and strategies for seeking feedback, regardless of scale or origin. We’re interested in everything from internal discussions or external sources like advanced technologies such as AI for improving research readability. By mapping and evaluating these strategies, our project intends to compile accessible recommendations that empower researchers to effectively integrate feedback into their research processes.

As part of this initiative, we will be building a dedicated FORRT team to create a community-maintained e-book that will summarise the survey’s findings. This e-book will serve as a roadmap, highlighting and evaluating feedback opportunities at each stage of the research cycle. To make this resource as valuable and comprehensive as possible, it’s crucial that we gather insights from diverse disciplines and geographical regions. By doing so, we can facilitate the exchange of strategies across various fields and locations, enriching the recommendations and making them more applicable to a broader range of research contexts.

We invite you to join us on this journey to help drive positive societal change by enhancing the feedback culture in research and empowering researchers worldwide. Stay connected and look out for updates on the project through FORRT’s social media channels, newsletter, and other communications where we will be sharing opportunities to work with you.

Want to get started? The easiest first step is to take part in our survey: Online Survey Software | Qualtrics Survey Solutions

Contact information:

Project Lead: Dr Thomas Evans, thomas.evans@greenwich.ac.uk

Research Fellow: Roksana Sobolak, r.a.sobolak@greenwich.ac.uk

Research Fellow: Magda Skubera, m.skubera@greenwich.ac.uk

References