MCC Research Strategy 2017-2020

MCC Research Strategy 2017-2020

Vision

The core purpose of the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication is to produce original research and knowledge in each of its core domains and to educate highly qualified students and PhDs in the department’s educational programmes. In addition, the department aims to communicateabout research knowledge with relevant actors in society and to collaborate with external partners in both private and public sectors (e.g. Kulturstyrelsen, libraries, and high-schools).

The vision of the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication is summed up by the following five points (curiosity, research quality, interdisciplinary research, research environment, and societal impact):

Research at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication is characterized by a fundamental curiosity to exploreunravel basic questions and phenomena in the department’s research areas.
Research at the department is of high international quality by international standards. Research in all of the department’s research domains is becoming more and more internationalized. Alongside other outreach and publication channels, researchers at the department should aim to regularly publish their research in leading international journals or with top-publishers within their fields.
The department encourages strong synergistic interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction between the department’s research disciplines as well as with disciplines outside the department. The department takes advantage of these interactions in the development of strong interdisciplinary research.
Strong and internationally competitive research usually grows out of strong and productive research communities. The department encourages the organization of its researchers into research groups. Research groups are important for the organization of research activities, development of grant applications, training of PhDs and postdocs, and the integration of students into the research.
The Department of Media, Cognition and Communication is a key player in the broader public domain. Research relevant to external partners is conducted in close interaction with the partners. The department’s research is communicated and discussed in various public fora and media, and its researchers occupy important functions in governmental and non-governmental settings, e.g. advising policy makers, collaborating with NGO’s and doing consultancy for organizations and businesses.

In the following sections, the general research strategy for the department will be outlined. We describe the main challenges facing the department in the coming years and how we plan to meet them. We describe four general aspects of our strategy that will help establish and/or maintain our research excellence in a number of domains. The text is organized in three steps that answer the following questions: (1) Why is the point important? (2) What are our aims? and (3) How will we achieve the aims?

Subsequently, each section of the department outlines its main research strengths and describes its research areas in relation to comparable international fields and their best and most relevant publication channels. The sections also describe how they want to develop within the coming years and meet the future challenges.

General Research Strategy

Future Challenges

In the coming years, it is the ambition of the Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication to produce excellent basic and applied research that meet two major trends for research. On the one hand, public and private funding bodies require that research becomes more and more internationalized and specialized, while, on the other hand, they expect that research is socially relevant and contributes to solving problems in society.Addressing and negotiating these two important concerns is an important task for the department. Finding the right way to address theseequally important trends has to be done in the context of a rapidly changing landscape for research funding. Planned budget cuts at the Faculty of Humanities, planned structural changes to ‘educational landscape’ of the Faculty, and budget cuts in the public funding of external research projects will have consequences for our research activities. Establishing or mMaintaining our international research excellence requires an awareness firm grasp of these exigenciesconsequences and a clear strategy for meeting them. It is an important strategic task to identify the main future challenges and describe how we aim to meet the challenges in our research organization and activities.

Future challenges:

Increasing need for external research funding (e.g. in order to employ PhD students)
Increasing competition for external research funding
Increasing demand for internationalization of research activities
Organizing PhD and postdoc training with a view to the fact that (most PhDs and postdocs will have their next position elsewhere: our training should help them succeed)
Efficient oOrganizing efficientation of research-based teaching (better sharing of resources and experiences, better inclusion of master MA students in research activities)

We can increasethe funding for the department’sresearch by producing better research outputs (including various forms of societal impact), better grant applications, and better educational programmes.

We have selected four aspects as being of primary importance for the department’s strategy for meeting the future challenges.

1. Research Quality

High research quality is paramount to our goal of maintaining our position as an excellent research department at the Faculty of Humanities at a leading European university. Maintaining high standards with respect to what counts as an acceptable level of research activities and international publication is important for:

Excellence: Maintaining and establishing research excellence in a number of the department’s areas.
Funding: Strong international publication records are important when applying for larger grants, e.g. ERC grants. Furthermore, a part of the department’s basic funding is obtained based on our total publication record. High standards in publication is an important factor.
Internationalization: International recognition and networks are largely a function of researchers and research group’s ability to publish in internationally recognized journals and book series. Publishing internationally in high-quality journals is an important way to connect to the larger international research community.

Aims

The scientific staff should know about the best international publishing venues (journals and books) for research in their domains. The scientific staff should be familiar with the BFI system’s rankings and the publishing venues in their domains. Moreover, scientific staff should keep up with the publishing pattern in their field and, if convenient, suggest new journals to be included. This knowledge should be part of the PhD and postdoc training.
Senior researchers should aim to publish their research in at least mid-level international publication venues (e.g. book series or journals). It is important to note here the large differences between the department’s sections. It is therefore part of the section’s individual research strategy to formulate goals in terms of which type of publication avenues the researchers should strive for.
Each section should have leading researchers that publish their research regularly in internationally top-ranked journals or book series and monographs with international quality publishers.

How shall we achieve our aim to heighten or maintain our standards of international publishing?

The department management will implement the general promotion criteria at the Faculty of Humanities for associate professors to the position of full professor. Central to the criteria is the qualification requirement that candidates should publish regularly in the top journals of their fields.
The department management has decided on a local interpretation of the general norm-agreement at the Faculty of Humanities. This agreement states the expectations towards the research output of individual researchers. At Department of Media, Cognition and Communication it is decided to use the Bibliometric Research Indicator (BFI) System as an indicator of whether a researcher’s output has to be subjected to a more specific qualitative assessment. This will happen if the output over a three year period has been awarded with 3 points or less in the BFI system.

Each year the head of department will assess the entire research production of the department. Researchers with 3 or fewer points during the last three-year period will be invited to a meeting with the head of department to discuss their research productivity.
A researcher’s publication activity and strategy should be part of her or his individual employee development and performance review (MUS) at the section level. Similarly, the section’s publication record should be part of the group performance review (GRUS) at the department level.

Departmental funding for research activities in research groups will be given only on the condition that the group has described with sufficient detail how the initiatives of the group support the publication activity of its members (see Appendix A: Call for Research Groups).Research Organization

High quality research today is often done in a collaborative setting. Also individual scholarship benefits from being performed in a research setting, where feedback, constructive criticism and scholarly discussion are of high quality. A strong, collaborative research structure will improve the ability to produce high-quality international research publications, attract funding, recruit new researchers, attract academic visitors, and systematically integrate research and teaching. In particular, the organization of research in collaborative groups is important for:

Publication: Publishing one’s research in the best international scientific journals is highly competitive. Presenting one’s research and reading each other’s papers in the setting of collaborative research groups is highly beneficial.

Recruitment and training of PhDs and postdocs: Strong, collaborative groups are more attractive to new researchers and provide a more solid training than fragmented, individualistic environments. Groups capable of organizing a variety of research activities (international workshops, guest lectures, regular research seminars, etc.) will provide a strong basis for the training of PhDs and postdocs.

Teaching: The integration of teaching and research is important for a strong educational programme (e.g. for maintaining and motivating the students and spotting and recruiting new talents). The integration of students in research activities (e.g. workshops, seminars, etc.) and research projects is best organized by strong research groups.

Aims

The majority of the department’s researchers should organize themselves in collaborative groups. The groups should be organized around senior researchers with international research profiles in terms of international network, publishing record, and potential to attract funding.

The research groups should be definable, on the one hand, in terms of internationally recognized research topics, clearly situated with respect to an international research field, and, on the other hand, in terms of natural divisions in the sections, for instance, divisions in the teaching curricula.

It is important to acknowledge the differences between the sections of the department. The process of organizing research into collaborative groups must partly be a bottom-up process. It is important to recognize that the sections have different potentials for excellence, traditions for internationalization, and starting positions. Some sections already have a structure with active research groups led by internationally recognized researchers.

How shall we achieve our aim to organize the research into more collaborative groups?

The department management will continue to provide researchers with an incentive to organize themselves into groups in the form of funding for research activities (e.g. workshops, guest lectures, activities with students) (see Appendix A: Call for Research Groups).

A requirement for recruitment of new researchers is that they can identify themselves as being active parts of collaborative research environments.

The Faculty’s open PhD-fellowships will be awarded only to PhD projects that have a clear relation to established research projects and/or groups.

Change (fall 2016 – spring 2017) the composition of the department’s research committee so it consists of 3 professors as well as the head and vice-head of department in order to make it more effective.

Heads of sections will be asked (fall 2016) to initiate a process where each section identifies its major research areas (including major journals and publication outlets) and describe how they feed into recognizable international research areas.

2. Research Organization

Publication: Publishing one’s research in the best international scientific journals is highly competitive. Presenting one’s research and reading each other’s papers in the setting of collaborative research groups is highly beneficial.
Recruitment and training of PhDs and postdocs: Strong, collaborative groups are more attractive to new researchers and provide a more solid training than fragmented, individualistic environments. Groups capable of organizing a variety of research activities (international workshops, guest lectures, regular research seminars, etc.) will provide a strong basis for the training of PhDs and postdocs.
Teaching: The integration of teaching and research is important for a strong educational programme (e.g. for maintaining and motivating the students and spotting and recruiting new talents). The integration of students in research activities (e.g. workshops, seminars, etc.) and research projects is best organized by strong research groups.

Aims

The majority of the department’s researchers should organize themselves in collaborative groups. The groups should be organized around senior researchers with international research profiles in terms of international network, publishing record, and potential to attract funding.
The research groups should be definable, on the one hand, in terms of internationally recognized research topics, clearly situated with respect to an international research field, and, on the other hand, in terms of natural divisions in the sections, for instance, divisions in the teaching curricula.
It is important to acknowledge the differences between the sections of the department. The process of organizing research into collaborative groups must preferably be a bottom-up process. It is important to recognize that the sections have different potentials for excellence, traditions for internationalization, and starting positions. Some sections already have a structure with active research groups led by internationally recognized researchers.

How shall we achieve our aim to organize the research into more collaborative groups?

The department management will continue to provide researchers with an incentive to organize groups in the form of funding for research activities (e.g. workshops, guest lectures, activities with students) (see Appendix A: Call for Research Groups).
A requirement for recruitment of new researchers is that they see the value of and have the social ability to take active part in collaborative research environments.
The Faculty’s open PhD-fellowships will be awarded only to PhD projects that have a clear relation to established research projects and/or groups.
Change (fall 2016 – spring 2017) the composition of the department’s research committee so it consists of 3 professors as well as the head and vice-head of department in order to make it more effective.
Heads of sections will be asked (fall 2016) to initiate a process where each section identifies its major research areas (including major journals and publication outlets) and describe how they feed into recognizable international research areas.

Research Quality

High research quality is paramount to our goal in maintaining our position as an excellent research department at the Faculty of Humanities at a leading European university. Maintaining high standards with respect to what counts as an acceptable level of research activities and international publication is important for:

Excellence: Maintaining and establishing research excellence in a number of the department’s areas.

Funding: Strong international publication records are important when applying for larger grants, e.g. ERC grants. Furthermore, a part of the department’s basic funding is obtained based on our total publication record. High standards in publication is an important factor.

Internationalization: International recognition and networks are largely a function of researchers and research group’s ability to publish in internationally recognized journals and book series. Publishing internationally in high-quality journals is an important way to connect to the larger international research community.

Aims

The scientific staff should know about the best international publishing venues (journals and books) for research in their domains. All senior researchers should know of the gross ranking of scientific journals within their own fields, that is, approximately which journals are ranked top, mid and bottom. This knowledge should be part of the PhD and postdoc training.

Senior researchers should aim to publish their research in at least mid-level international publications. It is important to note here the large differences between the department’s sections. It is therefore part of the section’s individual research strategy to formulate goals in terms of which type of publication avenues the researchers should strive for – some sections might want to set a target of publishing mainly in top ranked publishing venues.

Each section should have leading researchers that publish their research regularly in internationally top-ranked journals or book series.

How shall we achieve our aim to heighten or maintain our standards of international publishing?

The department management will implement the general promotion criteria at the Faculty of Humanities for associate professors to the position of full professor. Central to the local implementation is the qualification requirement that candidates should publish regularly in the top journals of their fields. The department management will propose similar qualification requirements for the position of associate professor.

The department management has decided on a local interpretation of the general norm-agreement at the Faculty of Humanities. This agreement states the expectations towards the research output of individual researchers. At Department of Media, Cognition and Communication it is decided to use the Bibliometric Research Indicator (BFI) System as an indicator of whether a researcher’s output has to be subjected to a more specific qualitative assessment. This will happen if the output over a three year period has been awarded with 3 points or less in the BFI system.