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RKE&I Strategy
Abertay will use research, knowledge exchange and innovation to solve real-world problems, strengthen teaching and create wider social and economic benefit.
Abertay will use research, knowledge exchange and innovation to solve real-world problems, strengthen teaching and create wider social and economic benefit.
As defined by our new 2025–30 Strategic Plan, the University's purpose is:
To offer transformational opportunities to everyone who has the potential to benefit from Abertay's approach to university education.
To inspire and empower our students, staff and graduates to achieve their full potential, thrive in a digital world and make a positive difference to the world around them.
To innovate in all aspects of our work, fostering a culture of creativity, and engaging in research and knowledge exchange which has real impact.
To work with our partners to prepare students for the world of work and a lifelong journey of learning and growth, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and global engagement.
The University's strategic plan for RKE&I states that:
We are committed to producing quality research, knowledge exchange and innovation that is aligned with international, national and local priorities and delivers real impact for society.
We will invest in research, knowledge exchange and innovation to strengthen our reputation in areas which enhance our academic programmes, thereby ensuring a sustainable, vibrant and collaborative researcher community.
We will support staff to deliver high-quality research output, knowledge exchange and impact, by harnessing cutting-edge technologies where appropriate, to support researchers and drive innovation.
Abertay is a small, collaborative, modern University with an established reputation for working well across traditional research boundaries, as well as within new and emerging disciplines and sectors. We are committed to high-quality research that delivers real impact for society across a range of discipline areas. From environmental and cybersecurity research into sustainable businesses and food production, to using computer games as creative and critical tools, as well as understanding the behaviours and structures that drive and influence individuals in the societies in which they exist, our researchers are solving complex real-world problems to fuel innovation-led growth and sustainable development.
Externally, the research and innovation landscape and its interfacing with Higher Education is evolving quickly. The most notable developments to date include the continued shift of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) investment and support towards research-led innovation and business collaboration, funding alignment with the 10-year UK Modern Industrial Strategy (2025) and Sector Plans (the IS-8), and introduction of Scotland's National Innovation Strategy (2023–33), National Strategy for Economic Transformation and University Economy Action Plan. In short, the UK and Scottish Governments at all levels expect universities to maximise the opportunities afforded to society and the economy through the translation of research and the acceleration of its impacts, as well as the upskilling of the workforce at all levels.
We are already responding to this shifting landscape. Our research excellence is driving our innovation and partnerships with private, public and third sector organisations and in key industry areas including sectors identified by UK and Scottish Governments and the Tay Cities Regional Economic Strategy (2017–2037). In particular, our reputation for working in partnership with, and delivering for, industry has facilitated our engagement with UKRI ambitions and funding opportunities. We have built upon our strengths and have focused our engagement on some, rather than all, opportunities and initiatives, to leverage additional competitive funding for research and innovation nationally and internationally. We are creating a dynamic academic ecosystem which stimulates a virtuous circle where maximising the use of research excellence helps drive innovation, economic and social impact through partnership working with key stakeholders, which in turn feeds back to expand and enrich our own research and teaching excellence, relevance, capacity and capability.
The RKE&I Strategy 2025–30, Research-Led Innovation Nodes for Contemporary Society (R-LINCS30), is a considered response to the external landscape, contextualised by the successes achieved and challenges faced during the period of our previous RKE Strategy (2020–25). Through investment in and delivery of our new RKE&I Strategy, Abertay will support areas of existing and emerging research excellence across the University and grow the value of our research to continue to make a major contribution to economic prosperity, social and cultural impact and inclusive growth. This RKE&I Strategy is central to our long-term plan to enhance a research-led culture right across Abertay that underpins everything we do in research, knowledge exchange, innovation and teaching, and will deliver an integrated strategy across the Institution, driving and coordinating actions at individual, Departmental, Faculty and University levels.
Strategic RKE&I activity will continue to be focused within and across Challenge Spaces addressing key local, national and international priorities that our research base best positions us to respond to. To address these Challenge Spaces, we will draw on our cross-institutional ways of working and discipline expertise based within our academic units.
Creative Industries & Cultural Vitality, exploring the creative use of interactive and emerging technologies in entertainment and non-entertainment spaces alike, and how they shape our everyday living, leisure and work cultures and practices.
Health & Care Across the Lifespan, considering human and societal challenges of adversity, mental and physical health, wellbeing, education, performance and social care and the roles that science, sport and physical activity have in addressing those challenges.
Security, Equality & Social Justice, fostering personal, societal and organisational security and resilience in a time of increasing local, national and transnational threats and socio-technical disruption together with growing economic and health inequality and social fragmentation.
Sustainable Development & Inclusive Living, managing responsibly the natural resource requirements and energy-food-water nexus of inclusive living and business infrastructures and safeguarding their transmission to future generations.
Our underlying vision is focused collaborative research and interdisciplinary innovation for impact. The three central pillars of our vision are:
To achieve research of the highest quality.
To have an impact beyond academia which yields economic, social and cultural benefits.
To support and develop an excellent research culture.
To realise this vision, we will:
Foster ambition and success, build critical mass and new research, knowledge exchange and innovation strengths across the University, by leveraging existing excellence within our Challenge Spaces.
Stimulate excellence in collaborative and interdisciplinary research, knowledge exchange and innovation with societal and economic impact through development of existing staff and the appointment of talented and leading academics and practitioners.
Develop researchers to be adaptable and flexible in an increasingly diverse, AI-driven and global research environment, through provision of researcher training, mentoring, facilitated interaction with enterprise and public engagement channels, investment and support.
Enhance the value of our research output and impact through enhanced research leadership and a streamlined and effective research support infrastructure.
Develop further strategic collaborations aligned with our core academic provision through national and international academic and industrial research, knowledge exchange and innovation alliances.
We will achieve our aims by focusing purposeful activity, strategic investment and innovative policies into five key priorities over the next five years:
Research leadership, recruitment and management.
Sustainable research environment and culture.
Researcher development.
Quality output and impact.
Excellent support infrastructure and informed decision-making.
Through these priorities we will invigorate the University research culture and balance the profile of RKE&I with teaching within the academic ecosystem, by communicating our successes, appropriate resourcing, prioritisation and support.
Leadership: We will provide a coherent network of RKE&I leadership, management and support that will develop capacity and depth through focused effort via our Challenge Spaces. We will form research teams drawn from our academic units, to ensure alignment of strategy at all levels of the University. Our research leaders will identify funding opportunities and priorities and plan coordinated activity and support via a Research Leadership Group and the Research Executive. Output, impact and income achieved will be assessed against agreed targets. We will introduce effective research leadership into subject areas which need this strengthened.
Recruitment: We will also identify those RKE&I areas where through key recruitment and investment we can develop a broad front of excellence, impact and leadership. To affect this, interview panels for all academic posts will continue to have appropriate research representation from the Research Executive or Research Leadership Group.
Management: We will develop and clearly articulate our expectations and standards to research leaders, managers and staff. Workload will be allocated and managed to support RKE&I goals of output, impact and income generation. We will identify potential research leaders in key areas and support them to secure major awards and come to the forefront of their fields. We will support the development and management of large impactful grants.
Summary: Research leadership and line management are critical to improved RKE&I performance; purposeful quality research leadership and management will continue to improve the number of large, coordinated grant proposals being submitted and the quality and quantity of output generated by staff.
Investment: We will focus internal investment through our Challenge Spaces, building on our disciplinary excellence and existing successes, to capitalise on our critical mass and interdisciplinary capabilities, with a view to developing and diversifying applications, industry networks and partnerships, in areas which enhance our academic provision.
PGR Students: We will provide targeted internal support for Postgraduate Research Degree Students (PGRS), funded and co-funded studentships, UKRI Doctoral Centres (DTPs/CDTs), partnerships and Abertay Futures Scholarships, and provide quality research degree supervision, to support the growth and impact of our postgraduate research community and stimulate new intra- and inter-disciplinary developments appropriate for a contemporary research landscape. We will continue to provide excellent research degree student supervision to support student success, employability and career progression.
Impact: We will provide an ecosystem of support for individuals and organisations in order to help realise the economic, social and cultural impact of new innovation arising from our research. We will continue to increase the number of academic staff recognised internationally for their excellent research and impact and we will target our effort to diversify funding from business, and esteemed UKRI, UK charity and international sources.
Infrastructure: We will ensure that appropriate technical support is in place in key areas and provide state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.
Summary: Developing an ambitious, resourced, supportive and collaborative research environment and culture is critical to the vitality and sustainability of the academic community; targeted support and prioritised effort will continue to improve our reputation for delivering quality research with impact and will support the appointment and retention of excellent academics.
Development: We will attract, develop and nurture the careers of excellent researchers, including early career researchers, by supporting their initial period at Abertay, so that they are embedded within the academic community and their research and impact reaches an internationally excellent level. This embedding will be achieved through mentoring and support, reduced administrative and teaching workloads and access to collaborative studentships.
We will develop and clearly articulate our expectations and standards to staff, and we will support staff and students to deliver quality research output, knowledge exchange, innovation and impact. Individual researchers will be supported to build integrated bodies of work that evidence sustained and deep research inquiry. This support will include research planning to deliver on a relatively small number of high-quality outputs with clear pathways to impact supported by effective networking.
The Graduate School will act as an integrated hub to support development of academics and raise the quality of output and impact. The Graduate School and Research Leadership Group will support researchers in developing bodies of work and support managers in the use of Development Discussions to support staff's professional development and engagement with research. Our aim is to enable researchers at all levels to realise their research plans and effectively transition between career stages.
Integrity: We will meet the highest standards of research integrity and promote equality of opportunity in the career progression of all researchers, whatever their background or community.
Networking: We will introduce a regular University RKE&I Seminar Series within a dedicated timeslot with an expectation that research-active staff and PGRS attend. It will also be open to taught students and the public. We will also deepen our network of leaders and mentors, for example alumni, industrialists and entrepreneurs, to assist staff and students to develop ideas and funding proposals.
Summary: Developing our staff and students is critical to the vitality and sustainability of the academic community; improved engagement with researcher development opportunities will continue to improve the quality of research and its impact, our RKE&I income, PGRS outcomes and Tertiary Quality Enhancement Review (TQER) results, and will support our ambition to host relevant DTPs or CDTs.
Outputs: We will produce excellent research in terms of originality, significance and rigour and deliver impact with considerable reach and significance beyond academia to yield economic, social and cultural benefits. To continue to improve our research quality, Research Excellence Framework (REF) Unit of Assessment (UoA) champions will continually review the quality of research output by academic staff and support continued improvement, through the use of appropriate esteemed academics, either internal or external as appropriate, paying particular attention to experimental design, the writing process and output forum selection.
Where academics undertake KE&I, we will support academics to plan development of underpinning research into the running of the RKE/I project.
Impact: Abertay already has very good industry engagement in many areas. We will deepen our existing collaborations, and develop new strategic relationships with industry, the public and third sector, locally, nationally and internationally, growing our position as an open innovation ecosystem for accelerated research translation. We will strategically manage our key external relationships for the long-term benefit of our research agenda, especially with a view to continued UKRI and other industry-supporting funding.
Where research with impact is undertaken, the REF UoA champions will monitor the quality of impact generated by academic staff and support continued improvement of impact and impact case studies through early planning of impact pathways and recording of evidence over the long term.
More broadly, we will extend the influence of our research and innovation on the development of policy and practice and promote a culture of inclusive community and public engagement with our research. We will continue to embed open research as a defining feature of our research culture, and we will support our staff and partners to develop added value from open access data and AI.
Enterprise: To stimulate enterprise and innovation we will provide proof of concept funding for small-scale research and knowledge exchange projects, and work with our enterprise support centre, Bell Street Ventures, to translate research into start-ups and spin-outs; provide opportunities for entrepreneurship and corporate co-location to facilitate collaborations between staff, students and companies.
Summary: Improving the quality of our research output and impact is critical to the sustainability of the academic community; targeted support and prioritised effort will continue to develop our reputation for delivering quality research with impact, will attract external funding and quality partnerships, and will help to attract excellent academics and students.
Our support for RKE will be an integrated provision, using fit-for-purpose information systems that provide accurate and timely data sets so that the needs of our researchers and sponsors are met comprehensively and that our research leadership and management can carry out data-informed planning.
We will continue to develop an excellent and comprehensive centralised Research, Innovation and Enterprise Support (RIES) service to facilitate the RKE&I pipeline. We will continue to refine our RKE&I data management systems, with a particular focus on reporting internally and externally, and improve automation and self-service recording of research data and metrics. Our RKE&I management systems will continue to support Research Integrity, Trusted Research and Secure Innovation, Data Management, Intellectual Property and Open Access requirements.
Summary: An excellent RIES service and reliable information systems facilitating regular reporting, review and feedback is critical to improved RKE performance; reporting, assessment and informed research leadership and management can only occur if information systems are efficient and fit for purpose, accurate and streamlined.
Our underlying vision is focused collaborative research and interdisciplinary innovation for impact. The three central pillars of our vision are:
To achieve research of the highest quality.
To have an impact beyond academia which yields economic, social and cultural benefits.
To support and develop an excellent research culture.
The RKE&I Strategy 2025–30 is fully aligned with the overarching University Strategy, supporting its mission to offer transformational opportunities, empower individuals and innovate across all areas of activity.
Specifically:
|
Linked strategic objectives |
Explanation |
|---|---|
|
Goal 1: Research with impact |
We are committed to producing quality research and knowledge exchange that is aligned with international, national and local priorities and delivers real impact for society. We will invest in research and knowledge exchange to strengthen our reputation in areas which enhance our academic programmes, thereby ensuring a sustainable, vibrant and collaborative researcher community. We will support staff to deliver quality research output, knowledge exchange and impact; we will clearly articulate our expectations and standards to staff. |
This supporting strategy expresses our values through:
Inclusivity: Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in all research activities, ensuring equitable access to opportunities and support for under-represented groups.
Integrity: Upholding the highest standards of research ethics and transparency, fostering trust in our research outputs and partnerships.
Collaboration: Encouraging interdisciplinary and cross-sector partnerships that reflect our commitment to working together for societal benefit.
Innovation: Supporting creative approaches to research and knowledge exchange that challenge conventional boundaries and deliver real-world impact.
Together, these values reflect a caring, ethical and inclusive research culture. EDI considerations are embedded in researcher development, recruitment and leadership practices, ensuring that inclusivity is a lived value across the RKE&I ecosystem.
|
Indicator |
2024 Baseline |
2030 Target |
Public or internal |
|---|---|---|---|
|
RKE income |
As stated within the Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund (KEIF) Strategy |
As stated within the Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund (KEIF) Strategy |
Public |
|
REF outcome |
2.66 average GPA. 60% of research 3*/4* |
At least maintain equivalent REF2021 performance |
Public |
Please note: A broader set of KPIs underpins this strategy. These indicators are reviewed through internal governance processes and are therefore not included here.
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