GuildHE Research is an organisation that provides training and support for researchers and students in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

. It is a sub-association of

GuildHE GuildHE represents 57 higher education institutions in the UK, including universities, university colleges, further education colleges and specialist institutions. Member institutions include some major providers in professional subject areas ...

. GuildHE Research was known as the Consortium for Research Excellence, Support and Training (or CREST) from its inception in 2010 until March 2019. The organisation was set up with strategic development funding from the

Higher Education Funding Council for England The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in Engl ...

, which was matched by phased subscriptions from members. It is currently self-sustained, receiving funding from member organisations.

Activities

GuildHE Research is particularly focussed on providing support and training to researchers at smaller organisations who might otherwise have less access to training and networks. This builds upon the concept of there being "islands of research excellence", an idea that arose from the 2008

Research Assessment Exercise The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was an exercise undertaken approximately every five years on behalf of the four UK higher education funding councils ( HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW, DELNI) to evaluate the quality of research undertaken by British h ...

. The organisation organises

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, organises training, and curates and disseminates information on research policy such as the

Research Excellence Framework The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a research impact evaluation of British higher education institutions. It is the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise and it was first used in 2014 to assess the period 2008–2013. REF is under ...

. CREST was a signatory of concordats such as the ''Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers'', the ''Concordat to Support Research Integrity'', and the ''Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research''.

Open access and open data

GuildHE Research have investigated how smaller institutions can make research available via

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre o ...

and

open data Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...

. In 2014,

Jisc Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit company that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education institutions and research as well as not-for-profits and the public sector. History T ...

provided the organisation with funding to develop a research data management system to support smaller and specialist institutions. This was followed, in 2016, by involvement in the pilot of a research data shared service. Research outputs of member institutions are made open access via an online repository.

Members

Members include:

References

{{Reflist, 30em College and university associations and consortia in the United Kingdom Higher education in the United Kingdom