Early-career researchers play a vital role in celebrating impact at HDR UK
Applications are currently open for early-career researchers to join the HDR UK impact committee. Two current members, Dr Anmol Arora and Dr Louise Marryat, share their experiences of being on the committee and why you should consider applying.
Our Impact Committee, comprised of early-career researchers (ECRs), celebrates the most impactful outputs from across our community based on criteria including research excellence, scale, team science, public and patient involvement, diversity and inclusivity, and more.
We spoke to Dr Anmol Arora, Academic Clinical Fellow at University College London, and Dr Louise Marryat, Baxter Fellow in Mother and Infant Research at the University of Dundee, to find out why they joined the committee and what they’ve gained from it.
Why did you apply to be on the Impact Committee?
Anmol: As I was starting my research journey, HDR UK quickly emerged as a beacon of support for early-stage researchers. I began participating in community events and utilising HDR UK’s online resources. When I discovered the opportunity to contribute to the Impact Committee as an early-career researcher, it immediately stood out as a unique opportunity to engage in reviewing activities that I had initially assumed would be reserved for only the most senior researchers. The more time I spent learning about the committee, the more I appreciated its forward-thinking and welcoming approach.
Louise: How we demonstrate and evidence impact in administrative data studies has been an area of interest to me for some time. I applied to be on the impact committee because I wanted to get more insight into how other people are achieving this, as well as to expose myself to a wider range of types of journal papers than I would usually read in my day-to-day work.
What’s your favourite part of being on the Impact Committee?
Louise: I really enjoy the discussions about how we have scored papers and our reasoning behind our decisions. Having people from a wide range of backgrounds naturally brings together different viewpoints, which often make me think about things in a different way. They are a great bunch of people and a lot of fun to work with. There are of course other perks, such as being invited to the dinner after the conference and inputting into HDR strategy, which would otherwise not be accessible at the ECR stage.
Anmol: The Impact Committee is very fortunate to receive excellent support from HDR UK that allows it to thrive. There are plenty of opportunities to attend events, provide feedback and engage with the wider HDR UK community through the Impact Committee. The Central HDR UK team have been unwaveringly helpful in ensuring that the committee has the resources it needs. This includes administrative support, disseminating communications and a constant quality-improvement process for the committee. Every committee meeting is a treated as an opportunity for us to discuss amongst ourselves and with the Central HDR UK team about how we can improve our processes, with no sign of complacency or ego. Over the past year, we have overhauled our review process, recruited from across the UK and improved how we communicate our output as a committee.
Why is it important for ECRs to be involved in HDR UK’s work around impact?
Louise: I think that ECRs bring a fresh, and different, viewpoint to HDRs work on impact. Particularly when it comes to strategy, it’s really important that the views of ECRs are considered, not only because they often bear the brunt of any additional work required, but also because they are the research leaders of the future, and so shaping the direction of that future is of key importance.
Anmol: Joining the HDR UK Impact Committee as an ECR would provide you with an insight into how research is assessed at the highest levels, learning lessons that will improve the quality of future grant proposals, academic manuscripts and your own impact.
It’s also a brilliant opportunity to learn about novel work outside of your immediate research interests. As a committee, we are fortunate to receive the most cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines, from retrospective electronic health record analysis to computational genomics. Being on the committee has widened my horizons and taught me the importance of making sure my work is accessible to a multidisciplinary audience. Finally, it is vitally important that the membership of the committee is representative of the wider health data research community and so, regardless of your field of research or career stage, we would love to hear from you.
Has being on the committee made a difference to your work?
Anmol: Being on the committee has provided me with a fresh insight into the research pipeline. Having also sat on funding panels and editorial committees, there is a clear distinction between assessing the quality of a study at a planning or pre-publication stage and evaluating its impact once published. When assessing impact, we tend to focus on the implications of a project and what demonstrable positive impact it might yield rather than scrutinising technical details. Every piece of research we receive has already succeeded in project approvals, funding applications and peer-review. Being on a committee where, by its nature, we only review the ‘best of the best’ provides us with a birds-eye view to assess what factors are associated with success along the research pipeline.
Louise: Being on the committee has definitely made me think about how I write papers and the level of detail required for others to assess what we have done. It has also made me think about how we build teams for research more, and about the international pooling of data (something which many of our highest scoring paper achieve).
Applications are currently open for new members to join HDR UK’s Impact Committee. All early career researchers are welcome, but applications are especially encouraged from people with genomics expertise and research software engineers.
