Duncan Ivison: Open research “powerful – it really speaks to our values”
21 Jan 2026
President and Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Ivison on why a Research Culture and Environment funded project to help colleagues share their work is important.
“We are a public university and the idea that we are going to make our research, our ideas, our concepts, outcomes and results available is really powerful – it really speaks to our values,” President and Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Ivison says.
“It’s also a great way to increase impact. One of the big challenges to us as an institution is to really speed up the point between discovery and impact. Open research helps us to do that.”
Duncan made his comments while meeting PhD student Swara Patel, from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, and Research Culture and Assessment Manager, Cathal Rogers to discuss the importance and impact of open research.
Open research is the subject of one of seven projects funded by the University’s Enhancing Research Culture Fund.
Scott Taylor, Lucinda May, and Michael Stevenson from the Office for Open Research are building our community of open research advocates and a more open and transparent research culture through the creation of project outputs, case studies and training materials. The project also supports career development for researchers within the open research movement – the Fellows spend a year working part-time on projects that further Open Research practices within their disciplines, at the University and across the sector.
Head of the Office for Open Research, Scott explains: “We've just awarded Fellowships to our third cohort.
“Each year the diverse range of projects has been genuinely inspiring and this year is no exception – from advancing FAIR data standards and reproducible coding practices to creating open educational resources, qualitative data sharing, and co-produced tools for public engagement.
“The outputs from the programme are varied and practical – for example, reusable tools and templates that other researchers can adopt.”
Scott added: “So many people across the University are passionate about making our research culture more open. But very often this translates into more work above and beyond the many other responsibilities of people's roles.
“We established the Open Research Fellowship Programme to buy out a day a week in salary costs to help people carve out time to focus on a project that will accelerate openness within their part of the University. We wanted the programme to tangibly recognise and reward this sort of work and to foster a community of practice across the organisation of passionate advocates for Open Research.”
Meet our Open Research Fellows 2025/26
Ashma Krishan, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health: IMproving the usefulness and impact of research Pre-REGistration (IMPREG).
Danna Gifford, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health: Building capacity for open research with large-scale microbial genomics data.
Guilherme Fians, Faculty of Humanities: Recognising wiki contributions as co-produced research outputs: A toolkit for open scholarship.
Phil Reed, Faculty of Science and Engineering: Continuing digital research technical professional (dRTP) career development at Manchester, nationally and beyond.
Ramiro Bravo, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health: Enhancing Collaboration in Research Projects and Data Management.
Zewen Lu, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health: INSPECT-JR: A tool to check trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials in journal reviewing process.
Zuzanna Zagrodzka, Faculty of Science and Engineering: Research Technical Professionals (RTPs) as Catalysts for Open Research.
Get involved
To get more information on our University’s Open Research practices, visit:
Further information
This project was one of seven funded following the launch of the University’s Research Culture and Environment framework.
The University’s research culture and environment is defined as the way that we collaborate, communicate, and interact with each other; the behaviours, attitudes, and values that shape how our research is developed, conducted, and used; and the mechanisms by which we support research and recognise and reward that work. The funded projects align to one of the University’s four research culture themes:
- Supporting diverse and rewarding careers;
- Enabling open and impactful research;
- Upholding the highest levels of responsible and ethical research;
- Building collaboration and interdisciplinarity.
Associate Vice-President for Research, Professor Melissa Westwood said: “The applications received in response to this call showed a real breadth and diversity of ideas to help shape our research culture and demonstrated the passion and innovation of colleagues across our University.
“The seven funded projects address a range of challenges, and we are excited to see the impact they will have in such important areas of our research culture.”
For more information and support, visit: