New report considers the landscape for independent researchers

The National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange has a new report out on the role of independent researchers as facilitators of cross-sector knowledge within a fractured research landscape. Broadly speaking, independent researchers are individuals carrying out research but where their job title does not indicate they are a “traditional” university or academic researcher.

The report highlights how the status of independent researchers reflects wider shifts in the research system, towards “more varied research careers, greater recognition of practice-based and experiential knowledge, and the growing importance of collaboration and co-creation.” It also acknowledges that their role as outside of the institution comes with barriers – lack of access to resources, poor recognition for their work, and detachment from more traditional institutional support mechanisms.

The report considers independent researchers as an asset in a research system which has become increasingly networked, interdisciplinary and cross-sector, while acknowledging that this is in tension with a policy landscape which is often focused on institutions, rather than the individuals within them. The unique benefits of independent researchers is that they by nature often work across organisation boundaries (opposed to university-housed researchers who work from institutions).

This model has specific equality implications: in particular, that “portfolio work requires time, financial reserves, networks and confidence in navigating opaque systems.”

There are also indications that independent researchers are not only working between fields but may be creating them:

“Working at disciplinary and sectoral edges, they may identify questions that do not yet have an institutional home; connect previously separate practices; develop language and conceptual frameworks; convene communities of inquiry; test methods; and circulate grey literature, archives and practical resources.”

The findings at this stage are suggestive but not wholly complete. The report does not call for every independent researcher to have access to institutional resources. Instead, it asks for the research system to be moulded to support independent researchers, with a view to making them more effectively integrated within the overall research ecosystem.