(S8E5) Promoting Positive Research Culture: Why Every Lab Needs a Handbook
In our Research Culture Uncovered conversations we are asking what is Research Culture and why does it matter? In this episode, our host Nick Sheppard talks to Benjamin Tendler, Maddie Welland and Karla Miller about their Lab Handbook initiative at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging in Oxford.
We discuss how they have pioneered the implementation of a lab handbook within the WIN physics group to promote a positive research culture, interdisciplinary communication and inclusion.
The main points include:
- Purpose and concept of the lab handbook to outline the ethos and culture of a lab or research group.
- Benefits of the initiative such as promoting positive research culture and inclusion, clarifying expectations and preventing misunderstandings, and supporting mental health and wellbeing.
- The value of collaboration in all areas of research culture from the development of a handbook, to the practice of science itself and the dissemination of research results and data.
In this episode we mention several links including:
- The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging
- Benjamin C Tendler, Maddie Welland, Karla L Miller, The WIN Handbook Team (2023) Research Culture: Why every lab needs a handbook eLife 12:e88853. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.88853
- Lab Handbook Resources
This episode of Research Culture Uncovered © 2024 by Research Culturosity is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0
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Transcript
Welcome to the research culture Uncovered podcast, where in
Speaker:every episode we explore what is research culture
Speaker:and what should it be? You'll hear thoughts and opinions from
Speaker:a range of contributors to help you change research culture
Speaker:into what you want it to be.
Speaker:Hi, it's Nick Open research advisor, based in the
Speaker:library here at the University of Leeds. For this episode of the research
Speaker:Culture Uncovered podcast, I'm very pleased to be joined by not one,
Speaker:not two, but three colleagues, Benjamin Tendler, Maddy Welland
Speaker:and Karla Miller from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the
Speaker:University of Oxford. We're talking about their Lab Handbook
Speaker:initiative, which, as we'll hear, is a flexible document that outlines the ethos
Speaker:of a research lab or group. I've linked their article for
Speaker:elife in the show notes below, but before you download
Speaker:that over to Ben, Maddy and
Speaker:Karla.So I'll ask them to introduce
Speaker:themselves first. I'll start with you, Benjamin, if that's okay, and
Speaker:perhaps give me a quick introduction of who you are and what you do
Speaker:at WIN, and perhaps also exactly what is integrative
Speaker:neuroimaging. Bearing in mind I'm a layperson and don't really know what that involves.
Speaker:Yeah, sure, I'd be delighted to do that. So, my official
Speaker:role at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging is as
Speaker:a research fellow. So more officially, my current title is a Sir
Speaker:Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellow, which effectively means that I've been
Speaker:provided with some funding and resources in order to establish my
Speaker:own independent research program. So, with respect to my
Speaker:research, my background is in physics and I currently use my
Speaker:background and experience in physics within the field of neuroscience.
Speaker:So currently my research focuses on developing methods to
Speaker:image the brain using magnetic resonance imaging or MRI. These
Speaker:are scanners, which you'll find dotted in hospitals and research settings across
Speaker:the UK and globally as well. From
Speaker:the perspective of things outside of my research,
Speaker:something which I'm really interested in is trying to improve the environment in which research
Speaker:is performed, and that's what has led me to get involved
Speaker:with the lab handbook initiative itself. So,
Speaker:with respect to interpretive neuroimaging,
Speaker:the way which I think about this is typically about how we
Speaker:can perform investigations of the brain across multiple different domains and
Speaker:scales. So from my perspective, if we think about
Speaker:how a typical or canonical
Speaker:neuroscience or brain investigation is done, you might have a
Speaker:research question of interest about the brain, and you might go about this
Speaker:investigation by performing a study involving, say,
Speaker:one modality. And if you're doing imaging, say, one imaging modality or
Speaker:performing an investigation in one domain, be that, say, in a human
Speaker:study or perhaps in a species. Now, one of the
Speaker:really powerful things at the Wellcome center for Interactive
Speaker:Neuroimaging is that we have access to a wide variety of different
Speaker:methods to image the brain. So this includes things such as magnetic resonance
Speaker:imaging, in addition to other methods to image the brain, such as
Speaker:magnetic encephalography, and also many different
Speaker:domains in which we can perform these types of investigations. So we can, for example,
Speaker:for investigations living people, we also have access to
Speaker:methods to perform investigations in species and also in things such as post mortem
Speaker:tissue using microscopy techniques as well.
Speaker:So when I think of integrative neuroimaging, what I really think is the idea that
Speaker:rather than just using a single modality or investigative domain, we can actually
Speaker:leverage information across multiple different domains. So we can combine information,
Speaker:say, different species, across different scales, across perhaps different populations,
Speaker:in order to address the questions which
Speaker:you want to answer with respect to neuroscience, with
Speaker:really a more comprehensive approach to being able to answer them.
Speaker:Wow. So that sounds fascinating, and I'd love to talk to you in more detail
Speaker:about all that stuff, but of course, we're not here to talk about that today.
Speaker:That is correct. More about the handbook, which we'll come on to in a
Speaker:moment, but if I can ask you, Maddie, to introduce yourself. So
Speaker:this is Maddy Welland. Hello. So
Speaker:I am the Wellcome EDI officer. I've been at the WIN
Speaker:for three years, but I technically work across all of Oxford's
Speaker:three Wellcome centres. So I'm connected
Speaker:to this lab handbook initiative through
Speaker:our inclusive leadership program, which we've been piloting for a couple
Speaker:of years, and we'll be working on within the medical
Speaker:sciences division for the next two. Yeah,
Speaker:I'll keep it short and sweet. Okay, thanks, Maddie. Thanks. And welcome to the podcast.
Speaker:And last but not least, Karla Miller. If you could introduce
Speaker:yourself, please. Yeah. Hi, my name is Karla Miller.
Speaker:I'm a professor of biomedical engineering. So I run a research
Speaker:group, relatively large research group of about
Speaker:30 people. And so maybe later we might talk a bit about
Speaker:why having such a large research group led me to want to
Speaker:take on this lab handbook initiative. But that's not my only
Speaker:role in Oxford. I am associate director
Speaker:of the WIN, as we call it, the Wellcome center
Speaker:for Integrative Neuroimaging. And I also have a role
Speaker:within Oxford more broadly. So in the medical sciences
Speaker:division, I am the academic lead for
Speaker:equality, diversity and inclusion, or EDI. And so this is
Speaker:something that, again, it's a longstanding interest of
Speaker:mine that intersects strongly with initiatives like the lab handbook that
Speaker:might initially not seem to have so much to do with equality, diversity and
Speaker:inclusion. But as we'll talk about later, actually, I think it's one of the more
Speaker:impactful kinds of projects that we can do to promote positive research
Speaker:culture, which enables people, regardless of their background or
Speaker:whether they might initially feel comfortable in a place like Oxford.
Speaker:It enables them to really flourish and do their best work
Speaker:because they actually feel included and understood and seen.
Speaker:Right. No, thank you. And we'll certainly get onto that. And I'm glad you call
Speaker:it the win, because that means I can as well. I hope you practice
Speaker:saying integrative neuroimaging because it took all of us a long time for that to
Speaker:roll off the top. Well, no, as I was saying, I was just. I think
Speaker:it came out okay. So. No, that's great. You did great. So, no, that's
Speaker:great. Thanks to you all for those introductions.
Speaker:And so, Ben, perhaps start with you, really, in terms of
Speaker:perhaps a quick overview of the Hamburg. You've already given us a crash course
Speaker:on integrative neuroimaging. I won't say it again, that's
Speaker:the last time I'll try and say it, but yeah, so perhaps just give us
Speaker:a quick overview of the handbook, a little bit about its history and
Speaker:development. Sure, sounds great. So, to us, the lab
Speaker:handbook is effectively a document which is written at
Speaker:the research group level by a research group which is
Speaker:aiming to outline the culture and ethos that the group is
Speaker:aiming to create. So different groups might approach
Speaker:the lab handbook initiative in different ways, and they might have things which are
Speaker:valuable for them, for what they think should be included in a
Speaker:handbook. But broadly, what I'd say is that a typical lab handbook
Speaker:would provide information about the roles and expectations of different researchers
Speaker:within the group at different career stages, the culture that the
Speaker:research group is able to create, and how the research group supports the
Speaker:development of individual members from a career's
Speaker:perspective. So broadly, what I can say is that by doing this,
Speaker:what we're really aiming to do is to address the many challenges that can often
Speaker:arise in a research group settings that are due to poor communication
Speaker:between individual group members and a lab handbook aims to do this by
Speaker:explicitly defining expectations. So giving everybody an insight
Speaker:into what you can expect from me and what I can expect from you in
Speaker:return, providing a consistent and explicit message on
Speaker:exactly how the lab operates, and by virtue of doing
Speaker:this, provide accountability for everybody. Within a group, including
Speaker:people within senior management positions. Okay, great. Thank
Speaker:you. And just to come to you, Karla, and
Speaker:ask you, you've already just alluded to this, I think, in your previous
Speaker:answer, but why did you feel that handbook
Speaker:was needed? And I suppose interested in your role as in leadership,
Speaker:as the PI, and you've already sort of said a little bit about that. We
Speaker:can go say a bit more about why you thought it was needed?
Speaker:Yeah, so I think. I think...so I've always felt
Speaker:very strongly that one of the most important things, as a
Speaker:principal investigator or a lab group leader,
Speaker:that you have a very important duty to the people in
Speaker:your group. I do kind of believe that I work for the people in my
Speaker:group as much as they work for me. Right. We work together, but that there
Speaker:are different roles that people have. And one of the things that I
Speaker:realized, although I take my role, I have always
Speaker:taken my role very seriously. But as I became
Speaker:a bit, as I took on more responsibility, one of the things that
Speaker:I realized is that I was not,
Speaker:I wasn't living up to my own standards in the way that I wanted to.
Speaker:And that came in a few ways. The most important to me
Speaker:was I didn't feel like I was achieving consistency of communication
Speaker:with people when they would join the group. I would start to realize that although
Speaker:I wanted to have certain conversations with people when they joined, to
Speaker:be clear with people about my expectations, what I
Speaker:think they needed to feed back to me, all of that kind of stuff, that
Speaker:creates a good culture, I was not doing that
Speaker:consistently. And a lot of that was about the fact that I was just
Speaker:becoming more and more busy. I just had many, many, many things on my plate
Speaker:every day. So a big motivation was achieving
Speaker:consistency of communication. But then along
Speaker:with that came a lot of other things that the handbook enabled.
Speaker:So it encouraged people that I wanted
Speaker:to receive feedback. And we can talk a bit about some of the feedback that
Speaker:came out of it that I found incredibly helpful, realizing that sometimes
Speaker:I was communicating a different message than I intended to,
Speaker:it was really helpful for empowering accountability.
Speaker:So one of the challenges with running a large group, and in
Speaker:particular, as you start to get more senior, is people don't...you actually
Speaker:stop receiving feedback. Or maybe sometimes in a given role, you never receive
Speaker:feedback, and yet feedback is incredibly helpful,
Speaker:provided you really are open to it. And so
Speaker:it would kind of empower people to hold me
Speaker:accountable to the standards that I hold
Speaker:myself to. And then I guess the final thing that it
Speaker:enabled me to do is it enabled me to, in a setting where
Speaker:it was outside of the context of a problem or
Speaker:frustration from someone, it enabled me to explain my
Speaker:working reality, what it's like to actually be a
Speaker:principal investigator in modern science, which is not something that
Speaker:people who are earlier in their career within my group will have
Speaker:experience. And so it's kind of difficult for them to understand certain
Speaker:aspects of my own behavior, which stems from
Speaker:what it is like to actually be a modern principle
Speaker:investigator. That's really interesting. Just sort of that
Speaker:sense of transparency, I suppose, in terms of
Speaker:your own expectations and expectations of the
Speaker:colleagues in the lab. Yeah. And I think oftentimes with
Speaker:transparency, I think there's sometimes
Speaker:a bit of a fear from people who are leading groups
Speaker:that transparency is somehow going to undermine them.
Speaker:If there are aspects of what it's like to be a PI
Speaker:that you think people won't necessarily like to
Speaker:hear. So, for example, the fact that sometimes I am going to take long to
Speaker:answer an email or I am going to take
Speaker:longer to return a paper to people than I would like
Speaker:to do. But I think because it's the reality, just being
Speaker:open and transparent about why those things happen and how it is that people
Speaker:can help me to do my job better, I think I found that to be
Speaker:a really powerful thing. For example, not sending really long emails, I
Speaker:struggle to get through them, read them, and respond to them. Even just
Speaker:explaining some of that has helped people to get more out of
Speaker:me and when they need it, because they understand how we
Speaker:can communicate and work effectively together. No, that's really great. I'm going to come
Speaker:to you in a moment, Maddie... I was going to hop on that point.
Speaker:So Karla is my line manager and has been for the past three
Speaker:years. And this is a really valuable aspect
Speaker:of the lab handbook, I think, because what happened when I joined
Speaker:is that I didn't know that. I didn't know that actually
Speaker:emailing, you know, because that's, that's how you expect
Speaker:to converse with people if you're not seeing them in
Speaker:person. And I would send lots of emails. I would send
Speaker:lots of long emails. And it got to a point where Karla had
Speaker:to be like, right, listen,
Speaker:let's have a conversation. You may not like it. And, you know, I'm, I'm
Speaker:robust. And I was like, oh, right, okay, cool. You're not criticizing me. You're just
Speaker:clarifying, um, your expectations. But that's probably
Speaker:a conversation she's had to have 30 times, you know, and
Speaker:now it's written down now she doesn't have to
Speaker:wait until a crisis point until someone new joins and
Speaker:annoys her so much that she has to take them aside and
Speaker:say, please stop. But, yeah, yeah, no, that's
Speaker:great. And just to follow on with you, Maddie. So
Speaker:perhaps tell us a little bit about how the handbook relates to
Speaker:your role. Not, you know, in that particular context of personal experience,
Speaker:but, you know, in terms of your role now as EDI officer, I think, is
Speaker:your role? Yes. It's sort of transitioning
Speaker:to something slightly different, but I don't know what my new title will be.
Speaker:So part of my role has been to take some of the
Speaker:initiatives that the WIN has created, and the lab handbook is one of
Speaker:them, to basically disseminate it
Speaker:across the division, across the university.
Speaker:There's definitely more
Speaker:of a fit towards the medical sciences and the physical
Speaker:sciences, and maybe it would need further adaptation to be a great fit
Speaker:for, you know, the social sciences or humanities. But currently I'm
Speaker:working on disseminating it across the division, and
Speaker:there's lots of interest. You know, it's so
Speaker:amazing to work in a place where you can create something amazing and then just
Speaker:sort of share it, and people are, there's such an appetite for it. So
Speaker:that's part of my role, but it also fits
Speaker:really neatly within the inclusive leadership program that we've been
Speaker:piloting. So in the first year, we were
Speaker:able to help participants pursue a
Speaker:project, and basically that was, you know, a project
Speaker:related to any diversity and inclusion goal
Speaker:that they had locally. But the lab handbook was something we offered
Speaker:alongside that, which was a sort of IKEA flat pack,
Speaker:ready to go project. And actually, I would say at least
Speaker:half of the people on the, on the program took it up because they could
Speaker:see the value in it, and they were all senior
Speaker:PIs. And again, this year, when we've been piloting it,
Speaker:yeah, people, people have had things come up, and
Speaker:every time people go, oh, well, you know, I've got this problem in this
Speaker:area, or I don't know how to talk about this. It just seems like
Speaker:such a useful vehicle for handling or
Speaker:bringing up an issue in a, in a sensitive way that isn't,
Speaker:you know, overpowering, really. And what's the history of the initiative? How
Speaker:long has it been sort of active? And it's a living
Speaker:document, I think, perhaps come on to what that exactly means. But when was, was
Speaker:it actually written and sort of rolled out? I'm trying to
Speaker:remember what year we actually began. It was
Speaker:2021, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, was it? I thought it was
Speaker:pre pandemic. I think it started, perhaps it
Speaker:was late 2020, but then I think we returned to it in the beginning of
Speaker:2021, after we had the pause for a bit due to
Speaker:the start of the pandemic. Yeah, so it began.
Speaker:And if you go to the resources that we have, which hopefully we can include
Speaker:a link to. Yeah, I'll put any links I can put in the show notes.
Speaker:Yeah. So there was a Twitter thread that
Speaker:where. And I can't remember who it was, but they did a brilliant
Speaker:job of going through similar documents, sort of these ethos or
Speaker:culture documents for research groups in STEM,
Speaker:and they read a number of these and they distilled
Speaker:it down to a series of topics that one might want to cover.
Speaker:And I read that thread and I thought, this is brilliant. This is what I
Speaker:need. Because it came at a point where I could tell that
Speaker:my responsibilities were increasing, my group was growing,
Speaker:and I was really starting to realize that I
Speaker:was dropping balls with respect to people in my group in terms of communication
Speaker:and expectations and all of that. And so at that point,
Speaker:I just said to this broader research group, which is, it's not
Speaker:just all under me, it's an amalgamation of. I think there's now about seven of
Speaker:us PIs in one large group. And I just, at a group meeting, I just
Speaker:said, why don't we try to do this? And anybody who's interested, let's
Speaker:just have a series of sessions where we sit down and we try to write
Speaker:this thing, and we use this Twitter thread as a guide to what we might
Speaker:put in it. And then we just, as a group, we wrote it. So I
Speaker:think a really important point is, with lab handbooks, all of us,
Speaker:our overwhelming experience is, this is not something that a PI writes on behalf of
Speaker:their group. It's something that you co create together. And there's a number of
Speaker:reasons why that's important. It achieves buy in.
Speaker:It ensures that when you write
Speaker:it, you create something that everyone agrees that they're happy to
Speaker:sign up to. And also, critically, really, really importantly,
Speaker:as a PI, one of the things that comes out of
Speaker:it is, I learned a very valuable lesson. You
Speaker:find out about things that you have been trying to communicate, but which you have
Speaker:been miscommunicating. So I'll give you the example that came up for me.
Speaker:I've always been very keen that people have good work life balance. I don't think
Speaker:it's healthy for people to work excessive hours and so what I
Speaker:would tell people is, I don't care how many hours
Speaker:you work, I just want you to be productive. Now, about half of my
Speaker:group, it turns out when I said that was hearing, I want you to
Speaker:have work life balance, and I want you to find the flexibility of working in
Speaker:a way that works for you. But maybe as much as
Speaker:half of them heard, I don't care how many hours you have to work,
Speaker:you work until you produce, which is exactly the opposite message from what I was
Speaker:trying to communicate. And if I had sat down and written this handbook
Speaker:myself, I would have written what I've been saying for years. But
Speaker:what came out was, I can tell from Karla that you're trying
Speaker:to encourage work life balance, but that is not how I interpret this thing
Speaker:that you wrote. So even the process, and this is something that Maddie often
Speaker:talks about, she sometimes says, and I encourage her not to say this, but she
Speaker:sometimes says, write the thing and then throw it away and write it again. Because
Speaker:the process, and I do believe this, the process is by far the most
Speaker:important part of it. It's useful to have the thing written down, but
Speaker:creating it together, you learn an awful lot about each other, what
Speaker:people want, what they need in a way that you don't. If it's a one
Speaker:way communication stream. Well, and there's that issue of
Speaker:collaboration again, which gives me an opportunity perhaps just to try and crowbar
Speaker:in some open research, because I was just looking through before we came on
Speaker:the headings, etcetera. And obviously you've got the roles and
Speaker:expectations, and then you've got developing researchers
Speaker:and career development. And that includes explicitly open and responsible
Speaker:science. Collaborating is actually in there as well, as well as public
Speaker:engagement. So I was just really interested. I mean, first
Speaker:of all, I'm not that sure of the structure of the
Speaker:Wellcome. I mean, do you have a library there? Do you have other
Speaker:departments within that that support research, dissemination or open access
Speaker:and all that kind of thing? So we, we don't have a, we
Speaker:don't have a library within our department per se, but we do have something which
Speaker:we refer to as the open WIN community. And the open WIN community
Speaker:are actively involved in our department in making
Speaker:our studies and the data which we produce from our studies as open as
Speaker:possible. So the way which they're going about this
Speaker:is a variety of different means. So they're thinking about, for example, you know, building
Speaker:what kind of infrastructure do we need to be able to, to share the data
Speaker:which we produce? This perhaps might involve producing things in house in
Speaker:addition to resources which are available elsewhere,
Speaker:there's also ethical considerations with respect to how
Speaker:we can go about sharing data, in particular, sensitive data, which is
Speaker:involved often with newer imaging studies. But
Speaker:also the community is quite involved in a cultural
Speaker:shift as well, trying to promote the values and importance
Speaker:of open science to the researchers
Speaker:within our center, which is a really imperative thing to get us to
Speaker:what I would say as maximizing the most that we can get out of the
Speaker:data which we produce. You know, that's good. And I'm really interested in this sort
Speaker:of what we're trying to do at Leeds as well. I think this holistic approach
Speaker:to research culture, of which, you know, my role in the library,
Speaker:is an aspect of that, but obviously, it intersects with so many other aspects of
Speaker:that. I don't know if Maddie or Karla have any other thoughts on
Speaker:how it relates to other parts of the organization
Speaker:or. When you're talking about collaboration,
Speaker:do you mean collaboration scientifically? Do you mean just how
Speaker:we work with each other? Well, I think. I suppose I mean everything around
Speaker:that. I'm just really interested. I mean, I was just talking to colleagues
Speaker:on campus recently, so at Leeds this week we've been having Africa
Speaker:week. So that's a. It's been a big initiative with colleagues
Speaker:from Africa and different organizations, etcetera. And I was just having
Speaker:lunch with colleagues there and talking to a
Speaker:colleague I haven't met before. We were talking about the power of collaboration and the
Speaker:value of that in all sorts of ways. You know, whether it's research, culture, or
Speaker:science itself, or writing a handbook. You know,
Speaker:that, to me, is such an underpinning principle that
Speaker:perhaps we can all be better at, and culturally, we need to
Speaker:develop. Yeah. Okay, well, so I think one of the
Speaker:defining features of WIN
Speaker:is exactly collaboration. So I think one of the
Speaker:most....WIN is one of
Speaker:the....It's one of the world leading centers in this field
Speaker:of neuroimaging, where we're specifically talking
Speaker:about, in particular, the kinds of imaging that you would be able to perform in
Speaker:humans. So, MRI and MEG, as Ben mentioned, um,
Speaker:one of the things that has really set this center apart from other
Speaker:similar places, um, uh, is
Speaker:the, not just that collaboration is valued, but the
Speaker:interdisciplinarity of the center is valued. So oftentimes
Speaker:in, um, in imaging centers, what ends up emerging is a kind
Speaker:of hierarchy, scientifically. So oftentimes what ends up
Speaker:happening is, is that you have, um, a higher value
Speaker:placed, for example, oftentimes in clinical departments, there's a
Speaker:perception that the clinical end, as opposed to the methodological
Speaker:end, is sort of the real science. And
Speaker:where people are working on methodology, that's sort of a second
Speaker:class citizen. And this sort of thing plays itself out
Speaker:in many aspects of interdisciplinary research
Speaker:across many, many, many disciplines. But one of the things that's most remarkable, I
Speaker:think, about, WIN, is that from the outset, there was this ethos
Speaker:that all of this science is really valuable, and that actually, we do the best
Speaker:science when we genuinely approach it collaboratively.
Speaker:And so, as an engineer in a clinical neurosciences
Speaker:department, I'm not. We
Speaker:do have a lot of engineers and physicists, and that makes a huge difference
Speaker:to creating critical mass
Speaker:so that we can do really cutting edge methodological work. But we're
Speaker:also rubbing elbows every day with the people who have the
Speaker:problems. And so we actually understand the problems, and we get to
Speaker:see our methods being used in real
Speaker:world, what we would refer to as applications of the
Speaker:methodological research in real world
Speaker:neuroscience problems. And that is hugely valuable. And I think
Speaker:the fact that neither of these things is seen as being of higher
Speaker:importance. It's the synergy between the two that
Speaker:is what makes us such
Speaker:able to achieve really impactful work in that
Speaker:space. So, really, it's all about collaboration. But collaboration only
Speaker:works when everybody really, truly values
Speaker:the breadth of expertise and
Speaker:backgrounds that we have in the
Speaker:center. And a different version of that that isn't
Speaker:interdisciplinary is the breadth of backgrounds that people bring
Speaker:personally... ...they may have been trained in different countries, they have different life experiences,
Speaker:and all of that, if you have a supportive atmosphere, if people
Speaker:feel like they can really bring that into the science that they're doing, all
Speaker:of that makes our science better, but only, only if you're able
Speaker:to create an environment where everyone, if they
Speaker:may be coming at it from a slightly different perspective,
Speaker:if everyone feels like they have something to contribute.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. I suppose. I was thinking about
Speaker:that...I read your paper, obviously, why every lab leads a handbook. That, again,
Speaker:I'll link in the show notes, and there's an example you
Speaker:mentioned in there where I'll just quote, actually, "an experienced technician
Speaker:is frustrated because they were not included as an author on a paper to
Speaker:which they feel they made a substantial contribution". So I'm guessing you're familiar
Speaker:with the CRediT taxonomy, which is
Speaker:a bit of a library thing. So that's exactly one of the things that we're
Speaker:trying to promote here, at least for example, to ensure that, well,
Speaker:people like myself, for example, in terms of the data management work that I do
Speaker:are credited on a paper or a technician or whatever. So that's,
Speaker:again, an area where it sort of intersects with the
Speaker:open agenda more generally. Absolutely. And I think
Speaker:there's so many different people who bring expertise into the studies that we
Speaker:do, and yet we still have this kind of
Speaker:archaic way of, of indicating who
Speaker:has done what, which is in this massively
Speaker:constraining thing of what order are you listed on a
Speaker:piece of paper? And, I mean, it's obviously not even a piece of paper anymore.
Speaker:Right. So, yeah, so we're very keen on that. In our space, for
Speaker:example, there are people called radiographers. So they are the
Speaker:people who actually run the scanners. So they would be the equivalent of
Speaker:a wet lab technician. And often they might have a
Speaker:huge influence on how good the data quality is setting up the study,
Speaker:etcetera. And yet very rarely are they actually included.
Speaker:And so having a way of indicating their
Speaker:contribution, we feel is enormously helpful and it clearly makes a massive
Speaker:difference to them. Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. Thank you.
Speaker:Just a little conscious of time. But I just want to raise,
Speaker:just ask you, Ben, really, if you have any insight on this, because this, I
Speaker:suppose just from a personal perspective as well. I'm just interested in how
Speaker:a handbook such as this can help with personal challenges. I
Speaker:mean, for example, I'm quite open now, again, being a little bit older and
Speaker:longer than the tooth and comfortable in my own skin of mental health problems
Speaker:I've had in the past and anxiety or whatever. And that's something,
Speaker:again, that's explicitly mentioned. So I think that's an important area of transparency,
Speaker:again, that perhaps enables people to engage with these issues on their
Speaker:own terms? Perhaps, yeah, I mean, I think a lab handbook
Speaker:is a really fantastic document to help support people with respect to
Speaker:their mental health and wellbeing. There's probably a
Speaker:few...there's a few kind of different ways that it can achieve that.
Speaker:So one of the things which I think is that by having a document where
Speaker:you explicitly describe your commitment to the wellbeing of
Speaker:individuals within a group and describing how you're going about doing that,
Speaker:you're going to encourage people within the group to feel
Speaker:empowered to have conversations with their principal investigator
Speaker:or their group, lead on how things within their personal lives, such as,
Speaker:say, child care responsibilities, care responsibilities, or perhaps personal
Speaker:disability, interact with their work
Speaker:responsibilities. Now, by having these kind of things written out explicitly
Speaker:in a lab handbook document, you can begin to open up those conversations
Speaker:between different members of the group to try to identify
Speaker:places where perhaps adjustments can be made in terms of how they work to
Speaker:promote healthy work life balance, and by virtue of that,
Speaker:promote their wellbeing. Another thought, and this kind of links back to
Speaker:what Karla was saying a bit earlier with respect to working
Speaker:hours. So one of the things which is often quite challenging in terms
Speaker:of defining how people work within research settings is
Speaker:working hours. And by being really explicit about
Speaker:working hours within a document such as the lab handbook, and really communicating in a
Speaker:clear way what your expectations are, you can prevent people
Speaker:arriving to the group with their own interpretation of how they believe
Speaker:that they're supposed to work. ...and that can often arise from...that could arise from,
Speaker:for example, stereotyped expectations of what it means to perhaps be a
Speaker:researcher within a research setting. Or alternatively, it could be that they've
Speaker:perhaps worked in a previous lab environment where it's been, where the culture has
Speaker:been perhaps a bit more negative, and there's been an expectation of working long hours
Speaker:and presenteeism. So by writing those things down, I think you can prevent
Speaker:challenges such as burnout from arising. People know from day one how
Speaker:they can be expected to work with respect to hours, and preventing things such
Speaker:as burnout will be enormously helpful with respect
Speaker:to mental health and personal wellbeing. If you
Speaker:talk in your lab handbook about inclusivity, and you talk about how you
Speaker:promote yourself as an inclusive lab and give examples of that,
Speaker:you'll make people feel empowered to bring their whole
Speaker:selves to work. If that's something which they want to do, which I think can
Speaker:also be really important for people in their individual
Speaker:personal lives. You can also just provide general
Speaker:information to just signpost people through resources that perhaps
Speaker:might not be available within the actual... ...within the
Speaker:actual group itself. So I, for example, I am not an expert on mental
Speaker:health and wellbeing, but I certainly know that there are resources, perhaps at a departmental,
Speaker:university level, or perhaps even externally, which can
Speaker:be...which people in our center, in
Speaker:our group, can have access to, which perhaps can help them navigate their personal lives
Speaker:if perhaps they don't necessarily want to have these conversations with their colleagues
Speaker:surrounding them, and want to speak to people who have more professional insights.
Speaker:The other thing, though, which I say is probably even more
Speaker:critical with all of this, is that everything which I've said so far more relates
Speaker:to people who perhaps want to have support with respect to their own mental
Speaker:health and well being. But something else is also actually speaking to people
Speaker:who don't necessarily consider these things a challenge for themselves. And
Speaker:I think what you're really doing with the lab handbook is by talking about topics
Speaker:such as well being, mental health and inclusivity,
Speaker:you're communicating with people that may not necessarily be directly
Speaker:impacted by these challenges and giving them information and insights in terms
Speaker:of how they can support their colleagues who may be having challenges within
Speaker:this space. And there are really simple ways that you can do this. You know,
Speaker:you can think about just respecting the preferences or the needs of others within
Speaker:the group, and doing that in a natural way,
Speaker:which doesn't necessarily require people to have to have conversations to
Speaker:justify why they want things to be done in a certain way, which can be
Speaker:often quite difficult to do. And I think just by making these things really transparent
Speaker:and clear, it will benefit. It really benefits
Speaker:people. Everybody within the group. Yeah, we'll come back to that transparency
Speaker:issue. So Ben mentioned the value
Speaker:in signposting to resources. One of the things that I would encourage people to do
Speaker:is to take advantage of your
Speaker:institution's administrative teams that can help you with it.
Speaker:You can't suddenly become an expert on mental health or
Speaker:necessarily understand how best to
Speaker:help people when things become really challenging. But we
Speaker:engaged our HR team and some of the people who had expertise in mental
Speaker:health in order to make sure that we got those sections right, and we found
Speaker:them to be incredibly willing to help us on those sections.
Speaker:So it may sound a bit daunting to people, the idea that you have to
Speaker:write about some of these issues, but there are people, there will be people at
Speaker:your institution who would be delighted to help you do it, I'm sure.
Speaker:Yeah. And when we've been trying to introduce these
Speaker:initially to a department and then sort of cascading it throughout the department,
Speaker:it's been quite helpful to raise that point for
Speaker:people to not have to continually search for those
Speaker:resources again and again, but to have the admin teams be part of the
Speaker:process so that you can, you know, where those
Speaker:sort of central signposting things are, and you can have that.
Speaker:You can share it more easily. That's great. And again, it all
Speaker:comes back to transparency for me. I think. I think that's what I'm really hearing,
Speaker:that sort of transparent approach in all sorts of aspects. But
Speaker:I suppose just a question for all of you, really, in terms
Speaker:of future plans and where can people find out more?
Speaker:So there's kind of two aspects, I think, with respect to our future directions, with
Speaker:respect to our own lab handbook within the WIN physics
Speaker:group that we've created, and speaking to other people in terms of how they've
Speaker:utilized the lab handbook within their group. The general idea
Speaker:is that people will be returning to this document periodically to
Speaker:update it, have a discussion as a group, and see where improvements and changes can
Speaker:be made more broadly. With respect to our initiative,
Speaker:we're very keen to promote the use of lab handbooks more generally
Speaker:to a wider audience than just within our.
Speaker:Just within our lab or just within our...our
Speaker:center. And so we've been...our initiative, which we've
Speaker:been really promoting over the past few years, is
Speaker:really trying to push the idea of lab handbooks to other, other
Speaker:departments, both within and also outside
Speaker:of Oxford, and try to get more, a larger fraction of the research community
Speaker:really engaged with what we believe is a really powerful tool
Speaker:to improve positive research culture.
Speaker:So what we're currently doing in terms of future directions is
Speaker:just continuing to engage with those different departments, both within and outside
Speaker:of Oxford, to not only promote the initiative, but also seeing where we
Speaker:can provide some resources and some
Speaker:support from our side in order to be able to do this, to make this
Speaker:something which has a more broader impact on
Speaker:higher education and research settings in
Speaker:general. We published a feature article on this.
Speaker:We published an article on this last year, and
Speaker:essentially, so the article, anyone can find it by searching
Speaker:lab handbooks elife or I'll make sure it's linked.
Speaker:I'll make sure it's linked in the show notes as well, but, yeah, Sounds perfect.
Speaker:And within this. Within
Speaker:this document, within this article, we basically describe what a lab handbook is,
Speaker:why they're beneficial, how to go about writing one, and we also
Speaker:provide a series of different resources to help labs build their own. So
Speaker:anybody who's interested in finding it more can look into that and they can
Speaker:get access to those resources and gain a bit of another insight into
Speaker:why this is such a valuable document to have. That's brilliant. Thanks very much.
Speaker:Anything to add from Maddie or Karla? Yeah, I was just going to add
Speaker:that in the short term,
Speaker:I'm really hoping to capitalize on the interest from professional services
Speaker:teams because they are
Speaker:part of the culture of our departments, but may not see
Speaker:themselves within lab handbook specifically. But it's a really
Speaker:flexible tool and, you know, the bones of it will apply
Speaker:to any team. So, actually,
Speaker:my short term plans are to work with the teams within the medical
Speaker:sciences divisional office, of which there are many, you
Speaker:know, finance, comms, HR, all of these kinds of
Speaker:teams, and just kind of look at how we can adapt
Speaker:the resources that we have to be able to fit into a more professional
Speaker:services style team. Yeah, well, I'd be really
Speaker:interested in that because obviously interested in how I
Speaker:might relate to the teams and that I'm in
Speaker:a big academic library. I think there's well over 200 people in our library and
Speaker:even in my local team there's 25 people. So again, we have
Speaker:obviously similar challenges in that sort of team. So now that's great. Thank you very
Speaker:much. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for coming on to the
Speaker:podcast and just say
Speaker:goodbye to you all and if you want, say goodbye as well. Thank you. Thanks
Speaker:very much. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.
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