organization of research work

How to Organize Research Papers: A Cheat Sheet for Graduate Students

• August 8, 2022
• PRODUCTIVITY

It is crucial to organize research papers so that the literature survey process goes smoothly once the data has been gathered and analyzed. This is where a research organizer is useful.

It may be helpful to plan the structure of your writing before you start writing: organizing your ideas before you begin to write will help you decide what to write and how to write it.

It can be challenging to keep your research organized when writing an essay. The truth is, there’s no one “ best ” way to get organized, and there’s no one answer. Whatever system you choose, make sure it works for your learning style and writing habits.

As a graduate student, learning how to organize research papers is therefore essential.

This blog post will cover the basics of organizing research papers and the tools I use to organize my research. 

Before you start

The importance of organizing research papers.

No matter how good your paper management system is, even if you keep all your literature in places that are easy to find, you won’t be able to “create” anything unless you haven’t thought about organizing what you get from them.

The goal of the research is to publish your own work to society for the benefit of everyone in the field and, ultimately, humanity.

In your final year of your PhD, when you see all the papers you’ve stored over the years, imagine the frustration you might experience if you hadn’t gathered the information from those papers in a way that allows you to “create” something with i.

This is why organizing research papers is important when starting your research.

Research with your final product in mind

It is very important to have a clear idea of what your research’s outcome will be to collect the information you really need.

If you don’t yet have all your information, consider what “subheadings” or chunks you could write about.

Write a concept map if you need help identifying your topic chunks. As an introduction to concept mapping, it involves writing down a term or idea and then brainstorming other ideas within it.

To gather information like this, you can use a mind map.

When you find useful information.

Come up with a proper file management system.

Sort your literature with a file management system. There’s no need to come up with a very narrow filing system at this point. Try sorting your research into broader areas of your field. When you’re more familiar with your own research, you’ll be able to narrow down your filing system.

Start with these methods:

Don’t waste your time on stuff that’s interesting but not useful :  

In your own research, what’s the most important part of a particular paper? You won’t have to pay attention to other sections of that paper if you find that section first. 

What is the argument behind your research? Make notes on that information, and then throw everything else away.

Create multiple folders :

Create a file containing related topics if you’re using a computer. Bind the related articles together if you like to print out papers. In other words, keep related things together!

Color code your research papers:   

To organize notes and articles, assign different colors to each sub-topic and use highlighters, tabs, or font colors.

Organize your literature chronologically: 

Even in a short period of time, you might have missed overarching themes or arguments if you hadn’t read them previously. It’s best to organize your research papers chronologically.

If you want to do all this at once, I suggest using a reference manager like Zotero or Mendeley (more on reference managers later).

File renaming 

Make sure you rename your files on your computer according to your own renaming strategy. Taking this step will save you time and confusion as your research progresses.

My usual way of naming a pdf is to use the first author’s last name, followed by the first ten letters of the title and then the year of publication. As an example, For the paper “ Temperature-Dependent Infrared Refractive Index of Polymers from a Calibrated Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared Measurement ” by Azam et al., I renamed the file as “ Azam_Temperature-Dependent_2022.pdf “.

One thing to notice is that I don’t do this manually for all the papers I download. That wouldn’t be as productive, and I’d probably give up after some time renaming every single file. In my reference manager of choice (Zotero), I use a plugin called Zotfile to do this automatically. Zotfile automatically renames files and puts them in the folder I specify every time I add a new paper.

Organizing your research articles by the last names of the lead authors will simplify your citation and referencing process since you have to cite the names of the researchers everywhere. The articles will also be easier to find because they’ll be lined up alphabetically by any researcher’s name you can remember.

Use keywords wisely

Keywords are the most important part of sorting. It’s easy to forget to move a paper to a specific file sometimes because you’re overwhelmed. But you can tag a paper in seconds. 

When organizing research papers, don’t forget to develop a better keyword system, especially if you use a reference manager.

My reference manager, for instance, allows me to view all the keywords I have assigned in the main window, making life much easier.

Create annotations

When reading literature, it is very important to create your own annotations, as discussed in the blog post series, “ Bulletproof literature management system “.

This is the fourth post of the four-part blog series:  The Bulletproof Literature Management System . Follow the links below to read the other posts in the series:

• How to How to find Research Papers
• How to Manage Research Papers
• How to Read Research Papers
• How to Organize Research Papers (You are here)

The best thing to do is to summarize each section of the article/book you are reading that interests you. Don’t forget to include the key parts/arguments/quotes you liked.

Write your own notes

If you decide to read the whole paper, make sure you write your own summary. The reason is that 95% of the things you read will be forgotten after a certain period of time. When that happens, you may have to read the paper all over again if you do not take notes and write your own summary.

By writing your own summary, you will likely memorize the basic idea of the research paper. Additionally, you can link to other similar papers. In this way, you can benefit from the knowledge you gain from reading research papers.

After reading a paper, make sure to ask these questions:

• Why is this source helpful for your essay?  
• How does it support your thesis?  

Keep all the relevant information in one place so that you can refer to it when writing your own thesis.

Use an app like Obsidian to link your thinking if you keep all your files on a computer, making things much easier.

When you are ready to write

Write out of order .

Once you have all the necessary information, you can use your filing system, PDF renaming strategy, and keywords to draw the annotations and notes you need.

Now that you’re all set to write, don’t worry about writing the perfect paper or thesis right away.

Your introduction doesn’t have to come first.

If necessary, you can change your introduction at the end – sometimes, your essay takes a different direction. Nothing to worry about!

Write down ideas as they come to you

As you complete your research, many full-sentence paragraphs will come to your mind. Do not forget to write these down – even in your notes or annotations. Keep a notebook or your phone handy to jot down ideas as you get them. You can then find the information and revise it again to develop a better version if you’re working on the same project for a few days/weeks.

My toolbox to organize research papers

Stick with the free stuff.

Trying to be a productive grease monkey, I’ve tried many apps over the years. Here’s what I learned.

• The simplest solution is always the best solution (the Occam razor principle always wins!).
• The free solution is always the best (because they have the best communities to help you out and are more customizable).

As someone who used to believe that if something is free, you’re the product, I’ve learned that statement isn’t always true.

Ironically, open-source software tends to get better support than proprietary stuff. It’s better to have millions of enthusiasts working for free than ten paid support staff.

There are a lot of reviews out there, and EndNote usually comes out at the bottom. I used EndNote for five years – it worked fine, but other software improved faster. Now I use Zotero, which I like for its web integration. 

Obsidian, my note-taking app of choice, is also free software. Furthermore, you own your files; also, you’ve got a thriving community.

There are a lot of similarities between the software as they adopt each other’s features, and it’s just a matter of preference.

In any researcher’s toolbox, a reference manager is an essential tool.

A reference manager has two important features: the ability to get citation data into the app and the ability to use the citation data in your writing tool.

It should also work on Windows just as well as macOS or Linux, be free, and allow you to manage PDFs of papers or scanned book chapters.

Zotero , in my opinion, gives you all of this and more.

Zotero is one of the best free reference managers for collecting citation data. It includes a browser plugin that lets you save citation information on Google Scholar, journal pages, YouTube, Amazon, and many other websites, including news articles. It automatically downloads a PDF of the associated source when available for news articles, which is very convenient.

One of the things I really like about Zotero is that it has so many third-party plugins that we have almost complete control over how we use it.

With Zotero 6, you can also read and annotate PDFs, which is perfect for your needs.

My Research paper organizing workflow in Zotero :

• Get References and PDF papers into Zotero : I use Zotero’s web plugin to import PDFs directly 
• Filing and sorting : I save files from the web plugin into the file system I already have created in Zotero and assign tags as I do so.
• File renaming : When I save the file, the Zotero plugin (Zotfile) automatically renames it and stores the pdf where I specified.
• Extracting Annotations and taking notes : I use Zotero in the build pdf reader to take notes and annotate, and then I extract them and link them in Obsidian (next section).

You need to keep your notes organized and accessible once you’ve established a strong reading habit. For this purpose, I use Obsidian . I use Obsidian to manage everything related to my graduate studies, including notes, projects, and tasks. 

Using a plugin called mdnotes , Obsidian can also sync up with my reference manager of choice, Zotero. It automatically adds new papers to my Obsidian database whenever I add them to Zotero.

Obsidian may have a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with bi-directional linking , but using similar software will make things much easier. Thus, you may be better off investing your time in devising a note-taking system that works for you.

You can also use a spreadsheet! Make a table with all the papers you read, whatever tool you choose. Include the paper’s status (e.g., whether you’ve read it) and any relevant projects. This is what mine looks like.

I keep all my notes on an associated page for each paper. In a spreadsheet, you can write your notes directly in the row or link to a Google document for each row. Zotero, for example, allows you to attach notes directly to reference files.

While it might seem like a lot of work, keeping a database of papers you’ve read helps with literature reviews, funding applications, and more. I can filter by keywords or relevant projects, so I don’t have to re-read anything.

The habit of reading papers and learning how to organize research papers has made me a better researcher. It takes me much less time to read now, and I use it to improve my experiments. I used this system a lot when putting together my PhD fellowship application and my candidacy exam. In the future, I will thank myself for having the foresight to take these steps today before starting to write my dissertation.

I am curious to know how others organize their research papers since there is no “ right ” way. Feel free to comment, and we will update the post with any interesting responses!

Images courtesy : Classified vector created by storyset – www.freepik.com

Aruna Kumarasiri

Founder at Proactive Grad, Materials Engineer, Researcher, and turned author. In 2019, he started his professional carrier as a materials engineer with the continuation of his research studies. His exposure to both academic and industrial worlds has provided many opportunities for him to give back to young professionals.

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Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

• Acknowledgements page
• Abstract (or executive summary)
• Table of contents , list of figures and tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature review
• Chapter 3: Methodology
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

• The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
• The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
• The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
• The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

• Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
• Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
• Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

• The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
• The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
• Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

• Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
• Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
• Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
• Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

• Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
• Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
• Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
• Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

• What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
• Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
• What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
• What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
• How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
• How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

• What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
• Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
• How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
• How does your research contribute something original?
• How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

• Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
• Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings . In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

• Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

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36 Comments

many thanks i found it very useful

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

It is so necessary or avital course

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

This is so good

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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Online Guide to Writing and Research

The research process, explore more of umgc.

• Online Guide to Writing

Structuring the Research Paper

Formal research structure.

These are the primary purposes for formal research:

enter the discourse, or conversation, of other writers and scholars in your field

learn how others in your field use primary and secondary resources

find and understand raw data and information

For the formal academic research assignment, consider an organizational pattern typically used for primary academic research.  The pattern includes the following: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions/recommendations.

Usually, research papers flow from the general to the specific and back to the general in their organization. The introduction uses a general-to-specific movement in its organization, establishing the thesis and setting the context for the conversation. The methods and results sections are more detailed and specific, providing support for the generalizations made in the introduction. The discussion section moves toward an increasingly more general discussion of the subject, leading to the conclusions and recommendations, which then generalize the conversation again.

Sections of a Formal Structure

The introduction section.

Many students will find that writing a structured  introduction  gets them started and gives them the focus needed to significantly improve their entire paper. 

Introductions usually have three parts:

presentation of the problem statement, the topic, or the research inquiry

purpose and focus of your paper

summary or overview of the writer’s position or arguments

In the first part of the introduction—the presentation of the problem or the research inquiry—state the problem or express it so that the question is implied. Then, sketch the background on the problem and review the literature on it to give your readers a context that shows them how your research inquiry fits into the conversation currently ongoing in your subject area. 

In the second part of the introduction, state your purpose and focus. Here, you may even present your actual thesis. Sometimes your purpose statement can take the place of the thesis by letting your reader know your intentions. 

The third part of the introduction, the summary or overview of the paper, briefly leads readers through the discussion, forecasting the main ideas and giving readers a blueprint for the paper. 

The following example provides a blueprint for a well-organized introduction.

Example of an Introduction

Entrepreneurial Marketing: The Critical Difference

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, John A. Welsh and Jerry F. White remind us that “a small business is not a little big business.” An entrepreneur is not a multinational conglomerate but a profit-seeking individual. To survive, he must have a different outlook and must apply different principles to his endeavors than does the president of a large or even medium-sized corporation. Not only does the scale of small and big businesses differ, but small businesses also suffer from what the Harvard Business Review article calls “resource poverty.” This is a problem and opportunity that requires an entirely different approach to marketing. Where large ad budgets are not necessary or feasible, where expensive ad production squanders limited capital, where every marketing dollar must do the work of two dollars, if not five dollars or even ten, where a person’s company, capital, and material well-being are all on the line—that is, where guerrilla marketing can save the day and secure the bottom line (Levinson, 1984, p. 9).

By reviewing the introductions to research articles in the discipline in which you are writing your research paper, you can get an idea of what is considered the norm for that discipline. Study several of these before you begin your paper so that you know what may be expected. If you are unsure of the kind of introduction your paper needs, ask your professor for more information.  The introduction is normally written in present tense.

THE METHODS SECTION

The methods section of your research paper should describe in detail what methodology and special materials if any, you used to think through or perform your research. You should include any materials you used or designed for yourself, such as questionnaires or interview questions, to generate data or information for your research paper. You want to include any methodologies that are specific to your particular field of study, such as lab procedures for a lab experiment or data-gathering instruments for field research. The methods section is usually written in the past tense.

THE RESULTS SECTION

How you present the results of your research depends on what kind of research you did, your subject matter, and your readers’ expectations. 

Quantitative information —data that can be measured—can be presented systematically and economically in tables, charts, and graphs. Quantitative information includes quantities and comparisons of sets of data. 

Qualitative information , which includes brief descriptions, explanations, or instructions, can also be presented in prose tables. This kind of descriptive or explanatory information, however, is often presented in essay-like prose or even lists.

There are specific conventions for creating tables, charts, and graphs and organizing the information they contain. In general, you should use them only when you are sure they will enlighten your readers rather than confuse them. In the accompanying explanation and discussion, always refer to the graphic by number and explain specifically what you are referring to; you can also provide a caption for the graphic. The rule of thumb for presenting a graphic is first to introduce it by name, show it, and then interpret it. The results section is usually written in the past tense.

THE DISCUSSION SECTION

Your discussion section should generalize what you have learned from your research. One way to generalize is to explain the consequences or meaning of your results and then make your points that support and refer back to the statements you made in your introduction. Your discussion should be organized so that it relates directly to your thesis. You want to avoid introducing new ideas here or discussing tangential issues not directly related to the exploration and discovery of your thesis. The discussion section, along with the introduction, is usually written in the present tense.

THE CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS SECTION

Your conclusion ties your research to your thesis, binding together all the main ideas in your thinking and writing. By presenting the logical outcome of your research and thinking, your conclusion answers your research inquiry for your reader. Your conclusions should relate directly to the ideas presented in your introduction section and should not present any new ideas.

You may be asked to present your recommendations separately in your research assignment. If so, you will want to add some elements to your conclusion section. For example, you may be asked to recommend a course of action, make a prediction, propose a solution to a problem, offer a judgment, or speculate on the implications and consequences of your ideas. The conclusions and recommendations section is usually written in the present tense.

Key Takeaways

• For the formal academic research assignment, consider an organizational pattern typically used for primary academic research. 
•  The pattern includes the following: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions/recommendations.

Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783 This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . © 2022 UMGC. All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

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Organizing Research Papers: A Step-by-Step Guide

Writing research papers can be an arduous task, especially when it comes to organizing the materials needed for a successful paper. In order to simplify this process, this article will provide a step-by-step guide on how to effectively organize your research papers. It will discuss topics such as where and how to store information, proper citing practices, effective note taking strategies and more in depth guidance that is essential for producing quality work. By following these instructions you will not only save time but also produce better results from your efforts in writing comprehensive research papers.

I. Introduction to Organizing Research Papers

Ii. benefits of an effective research paper organization system.

• III. Creating a Research Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

IV. The Importance of Properly Formatting and Referencing Sources

V. utilizing index cards for topic outlining and categorization, vi. constructing file folders to store relevant materials efficiently, vii . conclusion: implementing structured strategies for long-term success.

Research papers can be a daunting task for any student. To make the process easier, it’s important to have an organized approach . A research paper organizer helps keep all of your notes and resources in one place so that you don’t miss anything or lose focus while writing. It also allows you to easily search for relevant information and quickly move between sources.

An easy way to start organizing is by using a basic outline format with headers and subheaders such as: I. Introduction; II. Background Information; III. Methodology & Results; IV Conclusion & Future Directions.

• The introduction should provide context on why the topic is being discussed and how your work relates.
• Background info should include prior works related to the topic from other authors, if applicable.
• Methodology outlines what data was collected, how it was analyzed, etc..

Maximizing the Outcomes of Research Paper Writing Organization is a crucial part in producing an effective research paper. Having a systematic system to structure one’s work will yield results that are both productive and efficient, especially when it comes to meeting deadlines. A research paper organizer can help organize ideas before committing them onto written form. This allows for more structured thought process with better clarity on which information should be included or excluded from the final product. The use of an organized approach can lead to higher-quality outputs as well as increased productivity overall due to less time spent revising after submission deadline passes. It is also easier for readers or evaluators of the document follow through its content if there exists a logical flow between sections instead of having all arguments scattered throughout the entire page without any tangible direction linking these together.

Furthermore, organizing one’s thoughts with the aid of devices such as color coding makes it simpler to navigate within texts by visually highlighting important points while potentially disregarding those that may not be necessary at first glance; allowing researchers better efficiency in identifying which areas need further examination or expansion upon during their writing journey thus creating an effective organizational tool for researchers looking improve their quality and increase output timeliness.

• Color Coding:

A simple yet highly useful organization technique used in arranging text.

• Research Paper Organizer:

Developing a Research Plan: Creating an effective research plan is essential for successful execution of the project. It involves formulating questions, selecting appropriate sources and materials, establishing timelines and budgets, and outlining tasks that need to be completed. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you create your own customized research plan:

• Establish Your Goals – Start by deciding what information or results you hope to gain from your project.
• Research Paper Organizer – Use this tool to keep track of references used in the paper as well as other relevant resources.

Organize Resources & Collect Data – Establish parameters for data collection (e.g., type of source material). Gather all relevant documents, reports, articles etc that support your goal objectives.

• Outline Tasks – Draft up a comprehensive list outlining steps necessary for completion.

Create Timeline/Set Deadlines – Set deadlines for each task along with due dates on key milestones such as drafts , revisions etc Finally , develop an efficient system so you can stay on top of everything . Monitor progress frequently while remaining flexible enough if changes have to be made midway through .

Correctly Citing Sources and Proper Formatting Enhance Academic Writing It is essential for students to properly cite sources when writing an academic paper. Proper citation allows readers to identify the origin of borrowed ideas, thoughts, and information used in a text. Additionally, correctly citing sources helps authors avoid accusations of plagiarism which can lead to serious consequences including failure on assignments or even expulsion from college. Referencing outside materials also provides authors with credibility since they are able to back up their work with reliable evidence that has been obtained by other well-respected professionals within a field of study. To ensure proper citations are utilized throughout an entire paper, writers should create a research paper organizer . This will help them remember all applicable references as well as provide them with accurate formatting information such as:

• The typeface size.
• Spacing between lines.

Moreover, correctly referencing sources can also add value to one’s own written work due it allowing others potential access into other related fields of research often generated by experts in those respective areas; thus providing readers with further points for consideration not originally included within the body itself. Therefore following correct source formats gives any writer additional insight into topics being discussed while strengthening his/her argument overall through useful contextual support sourced externally beyond their original scope of content generation alone.

Organizing Ideas with Index Cards Index cards are an excellent tool for organizing ideas and structuring research papers. Not only do they help keep information organized, but index cards also allow you to quickly move around pieces of your project as needed while keeping everything together in one place.

Using the right colors for different categories can make a big difference when it comes to sorting through data. For example, red could be used to designate all primary sources; yellow could denote secondary sources; green or blue might identify keywords associated with the topic being researched. Once each card has been properly labeled and categorized, using them becomes much easier because you know exactly where everything should go!

An easy way to organize multiple lines of thought is by writing a main idea on an individual card then taping several other related cards underneath it. This makes for quick access when trying to find certain notes at a later date – just flip over the original card and voila! It’s like having your own personal research paper organizer.

• Create separate sections in notebooks (or on digital documents) so that changes can be made without compromising existing work.
• Label each page according to its category—for instance: “Primary Sources” or “Secondary Sources”.

Having this system allows researchers not only track progress but easily refer back if necessary. Assembling topics into logical sequences is another key component when utilizing index cards during outlining stages — use numbering systems that connect subtopics under headings so they’re more cohesive upon completion

Organizing Your Research Materials

Research papers can quickly become overwhelming if materials are not stored in an organized manner. One of the most efficient ways to keep everything together is by constructing file folders for each research paper topic you cover. You can use any type of filing system such as manila files, plastic folders or online documents that all store information related to a particular project.

When making your folder, it’s important to remember what materials need to be included within the designated space. This may include:

• Drafts and outlines of research papers
• Notes from relevant books, articles and other sources
• Audio recordings from interviews conducted

Any items that could help further support your paper should also be saved along with these above materials – creating a comprehensive research paper organizer. Keep all physical copies in labeled manilla envelopes so they don’t get mixed up while digital versions can stay sorted on different drives or external hard disks. Having this organized will save time when having to refer back at some point during the writing process.

Structured strategies are essential for achieving long-term success in any endeavor. To that end, there have been a number of research studies exploring the various elements of successful strategy implementation.

• Motivation: What drives individuals and organizations to achieve success?

The key is not only setting realistic objectives but also having a comprehensive approach when it comes time for implementing those objectives. This requires an understanding of the particular context in which the organization finds itself—which means being aware of both internal and external factors such as technological advancements, changes in consumer tastes, or economic cycles—and taking steps toward bridging any gaps between current capabilities and desired outcomes. Companies should take a holistic view when constructing their strategies, making sure each element serves its own unique purpose while working together with others towards common goal attainment over time.

As this step-by-step guide to organizing research papers illustrates, a well thought out and organized approach can save time and ensure more successful research outcomes. By following the outlined steps from creating a preliminary structure to utilizing efficient information retrieval systems, researchers can easily refine their process in order to maximize productivity while still producing quality results. It is imperative that those conducting research remain cognizant of the importance of organization for not only successful completion but also for ethical considerations related to reproducibility and accuracy of data collection methods. Such intentional structuring should be applied consistently throughout all stages of the project’s lifecycle in order create greater efficiencies in both time management as well as resources used along the way—ultimately resulting in higher quality output with fewer missteps along the path toward success.

• Methodology
• Open access
• Published: 29 May 2008

The role of organizational research in implementing evidence-based practice: QUERI Series

• Elizabeth M Yano 1 , 2  

Implementation Science volume  3 , Article number:  29 ( 2008 ) Cite this article

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Metrics details

Health care organizations exert significant influence on the manner in which clinicians practice and the processes and outcomes of care that patients experience. A greater understanding of the organizational milieu into which innovations will be introduced, as well as the organizational factors that are likely to foster or hinder the adoption and use of new technologies, care arrangements and quality improvement (QI) strategies are central to the effective implementation of research into practice. Unfortunately, much implementation research seems to not recognize or adequately address the influence and importance of organizations. Using examples from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), we describe the role of organizational research in advancing the implementation of evidence-based practice into routine care settings.

Using the six-step QUERI process as a foundation, we present an organizational research framework designed to improve and accelerate the implementation of evidence-based practice into routine care. Specific QUERI-related organizational research applications are reviewed, with discussion of the measures and methods used to apply them. We describe these applications in the context of a continuum of organizational research activities to be conducted before, during and after implementation.

Since QUERI's inception, various approaches to organizational research have been employed to foster progress through QUERI's six-step process. We report on how explicit integration of the evaluation of organizational factors into QUERI planning has informed the design of more effective care delivery system interventions and enabled their improved "fit" to individual VA facilities or practices. We examine the value and challenges in conducting organizational research, and briefly describe the contributions of organizational theory and environmental context to the research framework.

Understanding the organizational context of delivering evidence-based practice is a critical adjunct to efforts to systematically improve quality. Given the size and diversity of VA practices, coupled with unique organizational data sources, QUERI is well-positioned to make valuable contributions to the field of implementation science. More explicit accommodation of organizational inquiry into implementation research agendas has helped QUERI researchers to better frame and extend their work as they move toward regional and national spread activities.

Peer Review reports

Health care organizations exert significant influence on the quality of care through an array of factors that directly or indirectly serve as the context in which clinicians practice and patients experience care [ 1 ]. A greater understanding of this context can be important in closing the gap between research and practice. Each health care setting into which innovations are introduced represents its own organizational milieu, such as the structure and processes that comprise how an organization operates and behaves. Individually or in combination, these structures (e.g., size, staffing) and processes (e.g., practice arrangements, decision support) have the potential to foster or hinder discrete steps in the adoption and use of new technologies, care arrangements, and quality improvement (QI) strategies. Fixsen and colleagues describe such variables as being "like gravity...omnipresent and influential at all levels of implementation" [ 2 ]. Unfortunately, much implementation research has failed to fully recognize or adequately address the influence and importance of health care organizational factors, which may compromise effective implementation of research into practice [ 3 ].

Evaluating the organizational context for delivering evidence-based practice is a critical adjunct to efforts to systematically improve quality. This paper uses the context of and examples from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) to illustrate a framework for fostering the integration and evaluation of health care organizational factors into the planning and study of the implementation of evidence-based practice within the context of the six-step QUERI model. Based on implementation experiences since QUERI's inception, we describe the role of organizational research using a series of QUERI-specific applications. We also briefly examine the contributions of organizational theory and environmental context to the organizational research framework.

This article is one in a Series of articles documenting implementation science frameworks and approaches developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI). QUERI is briefly outlined in Table 1 and is described in more detail in previous publications [ 4 , 5 ]. The Series' introductory article [ 6 ] highlights aspects of QUERI related specifically to implementation science and describes additional types of articles contained in the QUERI Series .

Using the six-step QUERI process as a foundation (Table 1 ), we designed an organizational research framework to help improve and accelerate implementation of evidence-based practice into routine care. We reviewed organizational research from specific QUERI Centers, culling and summarizing the organizational measures they included and the methods used to apply them to different implementation research efforts. We describe these applications in the context of a continuum of organizational research activities to be conducted before, during and after implementation.

Role of organizational factors in the QUERI model of implementation research

Evaluation of the influence of organizational characteristics on the quality of care has gained in its salience and value, as efforts to implement evidence-based practice into routine care have grown [ 7 ], although with mixed results [ 8 ]. As interventions to improve quality through structured implementation programs have moved from relatively homogenized "ideal" clinical settings to more diverse clinical environments, where tight research controls may be replaced by handoffs to hospital and practice teams, the organizational context becomes increasingly central to our understanding of what works and does not work in implementing research-defined structures and processes into operational realities [ 9 , 10 ]. Historically, since most clinical and delivery system interventions have been tested in a single or small number of institutions, within which the efficacy of the intervention has been evaluated and honed, organizational conditions have been either ignored (since they assumedly did not vary) or somehow controlled for. As a result, relatively few linkages between organizational structure and quality (either processes or outcomes of care) have been demonstrated [ 11 ]. However, as these clinical and delivery system interventions are implemented in more organizations in diverse settings and in different locales, the ability to implement them in the manner in which they were originally defined and demonstrated to be effective will continue to decline without better and more explicit integration of an organizational research framework into implementation research agendas [ 12 ]. As the need to adapt implementation efforts to local circumstances is increasingly recognized, the value of collecting advance information about structural and process characteristics in target institutions also has become more prominent [ 13 ].

The mechanisms by which organizational structures and processes may influence quality operate at many levels, and as a result, conceptualizations of what is meant by the organization of a health care system, setting or practice vary [ 14 ]. The diversity of how health care organizational factors are framed and defined complicates their measurement and the ability to easily integrate them into efforts to improve quality of care. How individual organizational constructs are conceptualized and measured in relation to implementation research efforts depends, in large part, on the following:

The conceptual model and organizational theory (or theories) underlying the research [ 15 ];

The nature of what is known and/or being hypothesized about the organizational structures and processes underlying evidence-based care for each condition under study [ 16 ];

The size and complexity of the organization itself, such that it is clear whether we are talking about a team, a practice, a network of practices, a system of multiple networks, or some other organizational configuration;

The timing or stage of implementation during which organizational research is being conducted (i.e., as part of planning, during implementation to support adaptation and midcourse corrections, or after implementation in support of interpretation of findings, sustainability and spread) [ 13 ]; and,

The nature of the study designs and evaluation methods needed to demonstrate implementation effectiveness and foster sustainability and spread at the organizational level.

Organizational theory and conceptual frameworks

To date, the use of organizational theory in the design and deployment of evidence-based practices into routine care has been highly variable and generally under-used [ 17 ]. The dilemma for many implementation researchers is the absence of clear guidance on the nature of key theories and how best to use them [ 18 ]. QUERI is no different in this regard. Thus far, QUERI researchers have chiefly adopted useful heuristic models and conceptual frameworks (e.g., Greenhalgh's model, PRECEDE-PROCEED, RE-AIM, Chronic Care Model, complex adaptive systems), organizing measures around general constructs – but not necessarily grounding them in organizational theory [ 19 – 23 ]. New paradigms are needed that integrate salient psychological and organizational theories into a uniform model and make them accessible to implementation researchers [ 24 , 25 ]. In the absence of such paradigms, implementation researchers should capitalize on the contribution of organizational theories already contributed by psychology, sociology, management science and other disciplines in order to be explicit about the anticipated mechanisms of action at the organizational level. For example, these include diffusion theory, social cognitive and influence theories, the theory of planned behaviour, as well as institutional, resource dependency, and contingency theories [ 24 , 26 – 28 ].

What is known about organizational structures and processes underlying evidence-based practice

The Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) group has conducted systematic reviews of a broad array of organizational and related professional practice interventions [ 29 ]. While there is a relative plethora of strategies, programs, tools and interventions in the literature about ways to improve quality, the evidence base for systematically transforming care using established interventions is actually relatively poor [ 30 ], particularly in relation to the "black box" of organizational attributes. Outside of QUERI, organizational strategies for hospital-based quality improvement (QI) have included data systems for monitoring, audit-and-feedback, and decision-support functions; financial support for QI; clinical integration; information system capability such as electronic medical records; [ 31 ], as well as compensation incentives [ 32 ]. Organizational culture as an intervening attribute has had mixed results, with greater influence on the effect of organizational strategies [ 33 ], and limited if any influence in physician organizations [ 34 ]. Practice individuation or tailoring also has had variable success [ 35 – 37 ].

Timing of organizational research applications before, during and after implementation

When to introduce organizational research applications as an adjunct to implementation efforts also has not been well-described. First, organizational factors may be broadly applied as a pre-step to the design of QI interventions by elucidating organizational precursors of high and low performance [ 37 ], or more narrowly applied in preparation for refining an implementation strategy in one or more specific facilities via needs assessment [ 13 ]. During implementation, attention to local organizational structures and processes enables systematic assessment of their influences on fidelity to the evidence (e.g., is the care model being deployed in ways consistent with the evidence base?). Such assessments may be accomplished through qualitative and quantitative methods. Such organizational assessments are sometimes used as an integral function of evaluating implementation in real time to enable mid-course corrections through audits, feedback, and adjustment of intervention elements (formative evaluation) [ 38 ], and other times as post-implementation appraisals.

If done iteratively, as in the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles of individual quality improvement (QI) projects, local adaptation and resolution of implementation problems at the organizational level may be accelerated. Traditionally applied in continuous quality improvement (CQI), PDSA cycles are generally designed to take a single or few patients or providers through a series of processes underlying a proposed QI activity to iteratively test what works or does not work before investing in widespread policy or practice change [ 39 ]. Each process is refined, and new elements are added or others subtracted until the complete set of actions is found to be effective in a particular setting. In implementation research, PDSA cycles offer the same opportunity to hone implementation strategies in diverse settings. The system level PDSA occurs when the PDSA cycles move from implementation within a single organization to a set of organizations that may or may not be similar in characteristics to the original institution [ 13 ]. Such system-level PDSA cycles are consistent with Phase 2 (i.e., modest multi-site evaluations) or Phase 3 (i.e., large-scale adoption programs) implementation projects in the QUERI pipeline [ 6 ]. Not all QUERI Centers have relied on PDSA approaches for their implementation efforts. However, as more of them move to multi-site implementation trials or are engaged in regional or national spread initiatives, we anticipate that greater appreciation of the details needed to adapt evidence-based practices to different organizational contexts will be helpful.

After implementation ends, traditional process and outcomes evaluations may be augmented with analyses of organizational variations in implementation strategies and outcomes (e.g., system-level effectiveness or costs) and the degree to which organizational factors influence sustainability and spread. Examining the impacts of the newly implemented evidence-based care on the organization as a whole is also an essential evaluation component as they begin to form the foundation for a business case for quality improvement for health care managers. Such a business case might include changes in performance measures, employee satisfaction/retention, or evidence for the organizational return-on-investment associated with changes in care [ 40 , 41 ]. Systematic collection, analysis and reporting of detailed organizational data may then contribute to updated guidelines that integrate effective adaptations for different organizational characteristics.

Study designs and evaluation methods supporting implementation effectiveness

Achieving study designs and methods that produce credible evidence with relevance to "real world" settings is challenging, especially when aiming to evaluate population-based or practice-level interventions [ 42 , 43 ]. Balancing the needs of internal and external validity, pragmatic clinical trials offer participating sites an opportunity to modify the intervention to a degree that is likely to mirror what would happen under routine-care implementation [ 44 , 45 ]. Rather than open the "black box," these trials assume that the known (and unknown) variables are randomly distributed between intervention and control sites. Systematically assessing organizational factors through qualitative or quantitative methods may nonetheless provide a useful empirical complement to our use of pragmatic clinical trials. This is especially true in circumstances when researchers have reason to believe the variables of interest are not, in fact, randomly distributed. These types of data also are likely to improve our understanding of factors that influence provider or site participation [ 46 , 47 ] and the nature of modifications that worked in different organizational contexts [ 48 ].

Ensuring integration of rigorously designed and well-conducted organizational research to the mix will require not only broader recognition of its contribution to the goals of implementation science, but also an organizational research framework, like the one proposed here, that guides researchers to the types of organizational research they ought to be considering each step along the way. We posit that collecting and using organizational data will increase what we are able to learn about what settings, arrangements and resources foster or hinder adoption, penetration, sustainability and spread beyond the trial or implementation process. As Green and Glasgow suggest, "If we want more evidence-based practice, we need more practice-based evidence" [ 49 ].

Common concepts representing health care organizational factors

Several common concepts have been used to describe the characteristics of health care organizations (Table 2 ). For the purposes of generally classifying different types of organizational attributes related to quality of care, we delineate them along the lines of Donabedian's structure, process and outcome framework [ 50 ].

Organizational structures tend to focus on static resources, whether they are related to the physical plant (e.g., amount of clinical space); the functions of care incorporated into the physical plant (e.g., types of specialized units); the equipment they contain (e.g., availability of laboratory or diagnostic equipment, machinery, computers); or the people employed to deliver services (e.g., staffing levels, skill mix) [ 50 ]. These facets may be described as the health care infrastructure, and while they can be changed, they are not typically as mutable as other characteristics [ 51 , 52 ]. Governance, managerial or professional arrangements for overseeing, managing and delivering services (e.g., corporate leadership structures, types of health plan, service lines, and health care teams) also represent structural measures [ 53 – 55 ]. The diffusion of innovation literature portrays these measures as "inner context," pointing to greater assimilation of innovations in organizations that are large (likely a proxy for slack resources and functional differentiation), mature, functionally differentiated (i.e., divided into semi-autonomous departments or units), and specialized (i.e., sufficient complexity representing needed professional knowledge and skill-mix) [ 19 ].

Organizational processes may be distinguished from the classical interpretation of Donabedian's process of care measures by virtue of their role in supporting the actions between provider and patient at a given encounter [ 50 ]. While they are influenced by organizational structure, they tend to be more mutable as they refer to practice arrangements, referral procedures, service coordination, and other organizational actions. Using electronic medical records (EMRs) as an example, the number of computer workstations and types of software may be described as elements of organizational structure, but the ways in which they are used to deliver care (e.g., decision support capacities, communication processes between providers) represent organizational processes underlying health information technology [ 56 ].

The role of culture and relationships as organizational attributes also are important to health care redesign and implementation of evidence-based practice [ 57 ]. Schein has defined culture as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that groups learn as a function of the problems they solve in response to external adaptation and internal integration [ 58 ]. When these group assumptions have worked well enough to be considered valid, they are taught to new members as the correct way to think and feel in relation to those problems (i.e., "This is how things are done around here") [ 58 , 59 ]. As is often the case, evidence-based practice is likely to reflect a new way of doing things, and thus may come into conflict with the prevailing culture of a practice.

There are, however, highly divergent views on how to study culture [ 59 , 60 ]. Culture encompasses a wide range of concepts that capture attitudes, beliefs and feelings about how the organization functions or the role of the individual (or team) within the organization (e.g., leadership, practice autonomy, quality improvement orientation, readiness to change) [ 61 , 62 ]. Culture has been classified as both a structural feature or measurable organizational average that characterizes context or an explicit trait to accommodate, and an organizational process or symbolic approach for viewing the organizational life of an institution [ 57 , 63 ]. Integral to the evaluation of and adaptation to local culture is the need to understand and appreciate the dynamics of relationships within and outside health care organizations that influence the adoption and use of innovations [ 64 , 65 ]. These dynamics may include consequences of political and social ideologies that may exert themselves on what is acceptable organizational behaviour [ 63 ]. Organizational culture is hypothesized to influence operational effectiveness, readiness to adopt new practices, and professional behaviour and style, and is considered by many to be a critical determinant of organizational performance [ 33 , 37 ]. Thus, culture change is commonly treated as an explicit (or implicit) part of efforts to implement evidence-based practice, insofar as QI interventions aim to change business as usual [ 66 – 68 ]. Despite substantial interest in the potential of culture as an organizational attribute, there is no widely agreed upon instrument to measure culture – and no consensus on how best to analyze or apply findings from these data to improve implementation of evidence-based practice. Also, organizational culture as measured among VA employees has been fairly consistent over time, raising issues about its mutability and the measures' sensitivity to change.

Organizational outcomes are akin to other measures of quality at the provider or patient level, with the exception that they are best expressed as the aggregation or roll-up of processes or outcomes at the organizational level. While the unit of analysis may differ (e.g., team, clinic, practice, hospital, system), organizational outcomes are often reflected as performance measures or practice patterns that serve as summary measures of process quality (i.e., the percentage of eligible diabetics receiving foot sensation exams) or intermediate outcomes (i.e., glycemic control among all diabetics in the entire practice). Other outcomes include disease-related outcomes (e.g., complication rates, disease-specific morbidity and mortality), practice-level or population-based measures of effectiveness (e.g., ambulatory care sensitive admission rates, functional status), utilization patterns and costs. Many trials and observational studies of the implementation of evidence-based practice continue to focus on "enrolled" populations rather than the entire practice that would be likely to experience the new care model or practice intervention under routine conditions. Organizational outcomes are distinct only insofar as they represent what the entire practice or institution would experience as a whole once implementation is complete, and are thus inter-related to other evaluation activities.

The role of organizational research in the QUERI model

One of the foundations of QUERI has been to help operationalize the "interdependent relationships among clinicians, managers, policy makers, and researchers" [ 69 ].

The VA QUERI program's progress in conducting a series of progressively larger, multi-site implementation studies brings the nature and importance of organizational factors and the need for related planning into rapid relief. While most efforts outside the VA have focused on only a few and often immutable organizational parameters, such as size, QUERI studies have been able to uniquely capitalize on the size and diversity of the VA health care system to integrate organizational research more systematically. Therefore, the role of organizational research is both to understand the changeability of organizational attributes and, when fixed, to integrate them as modifiers in analyses of the effectiveness and impact of implementation efforts.

In the following sections, we describe the organizational research considerations that parallel the QUERI steps (Table 3 ) and describe examples of QUERI applications for each step (Table 4 ).

Evaluate disease burden and set organizational priorities (Step #1)

In a national health care system like the VA, conditions have been chosen on the basis of nationally prevalent conditions (e.g., diabetics, depression) or those associated with high treatment costs (e.g., HIV/AIDS, schizophrenia). Target conditions also have been updated periodically to accommodate changes over time (e.g., additional focus on hepatitis C added to the QUERI-HIV/Hepatitis Center's mission and scope).

On a national level, all VA facilities have commonly been held to the same performance standards regardless of organizational variations in caseload or resources. In smaller systems or independent health care facilities, organizational priorities should be established based on ascertainment of disease burden at the appropriate target level (e.g., individual practices or clusters of practices). At this step, it is important to determine how salient target conditions are among member organizations or individual practices by evaluating the range or variation in disease burden or performance. Modified Delphi expert panel techniques have been useful in establishing consensus among various organizational stakeholders in order to set institutional priorities [ 70 ]. These techniques entail advance presentation of the evidence base for a particular condition or setting (e.g., compendium of effective interventions based on systematic reviews) [ 71 , 72 ], as well as stakeholders' pre-ratings of their perceptions of organizational needs and resources, followed by an in-person meeting where summary pre-ratings are reviewed and discussed. Participants then re-rate and prioritize planned actions with the help of a trained moderator.

Many QUERI efforts have benefited from inclusion of QUERI-relevant measures in the national VA performance measurement system (e.g., glycemic control, colorectal cancer screening). This alignment of QUERI and national VA patient care goals fosters research/clinical partnerships in support of implementing evidence-based practice. For those QUERI centers whose conditions fall outside the national performance measurement system (e.g., HIV/AIDS), alternate strategies, such as business case modelling (i.e., spreadsheet-type models summarizing operational impacts of deploying a new care model or type of practice), have anecdotally met with some success.

Identify evidence-based practice guidelines and clinical recommendations (Step #2)

Organizational attributes have come into play at Step #2 in QUERI, when established guidelines assume access to or availability of certain organizational resources to accomplish them (e.g., specialty access, equipment availability). Many guidelines do not contain recommendations that consider organizational factors. It is thus essential to begin to consider the implications of the differences between the characteristics of the health care organizations in which efficacy and effectiveness have been established vs. those in which the evidence-based practices will subsequently be applied in order to improve their reach and adoption [ 73 ].

For example, for the Colorectal Cancer QUERI, VA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) guidelines for colorectal cancer screening were updated with recommendations for direct colonoscopy as the screening test of choice. Implementation of evidence-based practice in these circumstances would require different approaches in VA facilities with adequate in-house gastroenterology staffing compared to those where specialty access required referral to another VA facility or to community resources to accomplish the same goal. Anecdotally, in the face of limited specialty resources, some VA facilities adapted guideline adherence policies by fostering primary care-based sigmoidoscopies. In contrast, the U.S. Public Health Service smoking cessation guidelines relied on by researchers in the Substance Use Disorders QUERI offer a more explicit roadmap that includes adaptive changes to health care settings to promote adherence, with options for actions within and outside of primary care [ 74 ]. However, even they are limited in terms of their guidance on how best to accommodate different organizational constraints.

Measure and diagnose quality/performance gaps (Step #3)

The inclusion of organizational research in Step #3 has had particular value. For example, Colorectal Cancer QUERI researchers have evaluated the organizational determinants of variations in colorectal cancer screening performance as an early step prior to designing implementation strategies [ 75 ]. They also assessed system capacity to determine how implementation strategies might need to be adapted to deal with specialty shortages or referral arrangements [ 13 ]. Therefore, organizational knowledge from Step #3 studies may be used to facilitate planning for Step #4 implementation efforts.

Several QUERI centers have capitalized on existing organizational databases, while others have collected their own QUERI-specific organizational structure and process data for these purposes. These efforts have enabled QUERI researchers to document variations in how care is organized across the system, benchmark it with other systems, elucidate organizational factors associated with adoption of guidelines and quality improvement activities, and explicitly integrate these local variations into the design and conduct of implementation approaches (Table 4 ) [ 76 – 82 ].

Implement quality improvement (QI) interventions (Step #4)

Organizational factors come into play throughout the process of developing, adapting and implementing QI strategies for implementing research findings into routine care (Table 4 ). They provide a framework for diagnosing critical local conditions; developing a general implementation strategy; creating specific accommodations for different organizational contexts; and informing the design of subsequent evaluation studies. For example, in preparing to implement evidence-based interventions, it is important to assess local needs and capacities. Such needs assessments include appraisals of organizational readiness to change and diagnosis of system barriers and facilitators to the adoption of evidence-based practice at target sites [ 13 ].

The degree to which QUERI researchers have used information about organizational variations in the design and implementation of QI interventions has varied (Table 4 ). Organizational factors sometimes informed site selection for participation in large-scale implementation studies (e.g., Mental Health QUERI) [ 77 , 83 , 84 ]. They also were used as a foundation for the accommodation of local organizational characteristics through adaptation of intervention components (i.e., addition, elimination or modification).

Few large-scale experimental trials of the effects of specific adaptations to local organizational context that may be incorporated in Step #4 implementation efforts have been conducted. Recruitment of a sufficient number of organizations with the characteristics of interest typically requires dozens of health care settings, adding to the size, expense and complexity of cluster randomized trials [ 85 ]. Therefore, adaptation or tailoring of an implementation strategy's components to local organizational context commonly occurs as extrapolations from associations identified in quantitative cross-sectional analyses – or through application of qualitative data (Table 4 ). It is important that the level of evidence supporting on-the-ground changes in implementation protocols and procedures from site-to-site be clearly described. Otherwise, our ability to evaluate their deployment of these adaptations is limited.

Evaluate quality improvement (QI) interventions (Steps #5–6)

Consideration of organizational factors should explicitly shape the evaluation methods used in Steps #5 and #6 (Table 4 ). Methods used for assessing organizational factors in these types of evaluations use multi-method techniques, commonly combining qualitative inquiry (e.g., semi-structured interviews of key informants or focus groups of providers) and quantitative data collection (e.g., through surveys of leaders, providers or patients).

Unlike the organizational variations studies described for Step #3 or the adaptation or addition of program components that address organizational context in Step #4, QUERI studies in Steps #5 and #6 explore the organizational factors associated with adoption, implementation and impacts of the targeted QI intervention (Table 4 ). These studies may be distinguished from the pre-implementation organizational research (which is chiefly cross-sectional) in that implementation researchers aim to evaluate organizational predictors of quality improvement (i.e., changes in quality post-implementation). This is related to the more action-oriented research where fewer organizational factors are controlled for and also to pragmatic randomized trials where sufficiently large samples of organizations are included to enable subgroup analyses, as with different practices. Here, organizational evaluation may be formative (i.e., iterative component of practice redesign efforts) and outcomes-oriented (e.g., cluster randomized trials of implementation strategies or new policies or procedures designed to improve care); within QUERI, these evaluation approaches co-occur [ 45 , 85 , 86 ]. They also may focus on the organizational factors associated with adoption, penetration, sustainability or spread of interventions that have already been shown to be efficacious under ideal circumstances and effective in different types of settings.

Organizational research at Steps #5–6 has focused either on explicit integration and evaluation of organizational factors within the QI strategy itself (e.g., adding organizational supports as recommended in the U.S. Institute of Medicine [IoM] report) [ 87 ], or evaluation of organizational influences on how well a QI strategy performed across intervention sites (Table 4 ). Understanding site-level effects and provider variation similarly enable refinement and improved fit of the evidence to local organizational and practice issues [ 88 – 90 ].

Several QUERI examples apply. For example, in the Substance Use Disorders (SUD) QUERI, a process evaluation of organizational barriers in a multi-state group randomized trial of evidence-based quality improvement strategies for implementing smoking cessation guidelines led to a redesign of key intervention components (Table 4 ). During the trial, qualitative evaluation of organizational processes identified patient reluctance to attend smoking cessation clinics, inconsistent provider readiness to counsel in primary care, and variable ease in referral and capacity in behavioural health sessions [ 91 ]. Quantitative surveys and analysis of the organizational factors (e.g., formulary changes, smoking cessation clinic availability) influencing smoking cessation clinic referral practices across the 18 participating sites also were conducted [ 92 , 93 ]. The new implementation strategy – deployed in a subsequent trial – replaced the need for multiple in-person counselling sessions with EMR-based referral to telephone counselling. The Mental Health QUERI has used similar methods to implement depression collaborative care in increasingly diverse practices. With a parallel focus on schizophrenia, the Mental Health QUERI also has done extensive work using EMR automated data to monitor antipsychotic prescribing as a tool for QI evaluation in different locales [ 94 ]. Each QUERI center is working through these types of organizational research issues as implementation efforts accelerate throughout the VA.

We posit that a better understanding of the organizational factors related to implementation of evidence-based practice is a critical adjunct to efforts to systematically improve quality across a system of care, especially when the evidence must be translated to increasingly diverse practice settings. Specifically, more explicit accommodation of organizational inquiry into implementation research agendas has helped QUERI researchers to better frame and extend their work as they move toward regional and national spread activities. While some QUERI researchers have used traditional or pragmatic randomized trials, they also have worked to integrate complementary evaluation methods that capture organizational attributes in ways that enable them to open the "black box" of implementation, and in turn help inform and accelerate adoption and spread of evidence-based practice in each successive wave of practices. We argue for the value of casting organizational research as one of several lenses through which implementation research may be viewed.

Systematically integrating organizational research applications into implementation research is not without its challenges. Organizational research comes with its own methodological challenges in terms of appropriate study designs, adequate statistical power at the organizational unit of analysis, and multi-level analytical issues that require attention. Integrating organizational factors into empirical research has been daunting for most researchers given the logistical difficulties and costs of working with large numbers of hospitals or practices [ 95 ]. However, even in smaller studies, it is not uncommon for researchers to describe the effectiveness of interventions, such as reminders or audit-and-feedback, without describing the organizational supports or other contextual factors influencing their success [ 3 ]. No less important, the ability to study and manipulate organizational factors is confounded by sample size requirements of traditional research designs, invoking serious limitations in the conduct of most organizational research. Measurement of organizational constructs also can be difficult and requires identifying appropriate data sources (e.g., administrative data, practice checklists, surveys) and the right respondent(s) at one or more levels of the organization as key informants, if primary data are to be collected. Just as research at the patient or provider level tends to disregard organizational factors, organizational research also should adequately account for the contribution of patient characteristics (e.g., socio-demography, health status, clinical severity, co-morbidity) and provider characteristics (e.g., knowledge, attitudes, behaviour), where possible. Unfortunately, patient-level data clustered within providers and their respective organizations are not commonly available, creating built-in limitations in the interpretability of organizational research.

While this paper focuses on the influence of internal organizational characteristics on implementation of evidence-based practice, recognition of the importance of context requires brief mention of environmental factors (i.e., characteristics external to the organization). Environmental factors, defined as characteristics external to the organization, include geography (e.g., region, state, urban/rural location), area population characteristics (e.g., population density, socio-demography, community health status), area resources (e.g., numbers of health care providers per 1,000 residents), and other relevant area characteristics (e.g., managed care penetration, regulatory environment). Such factors may influence how health care organizations are structured, though organizational factors also may serve to mediate the impact of environmental factors on care processes and patient outcomes. For example, higher primary physician-to-patient staffing ratios in rural VA facilities appear to offset local gaps in specialty access and are associated with comparable quality [ 96 ]. Not surprisingly, deployment of system interventions into urban vs. rural facilities, often dictates different organizational adaptations to account for area resources. Explicit acknowledgment and planning for these influences ahead of implementation efforts is arguably a better approach than post-hoc reactions once in the field. The key is that context matters and requires continual evaluation to determine how context may constrain or create opportunities for improving implementation [ 97 ].

The VA's investment in QUERI has helped advance knowledge about the role of organizational factors in implementation. For example, organizational size appears to operate differently for different types of QI interventions. While organizational size is a positive factor for less complex QI interventions (i.e., where slack resources may be brought to bear), medium-sized facilities appear to be more nimble when facing the challenges of implementing more complex organizational changes (e.g., introduction of a new care model). In contrast, if practices were too small, they suffered from inadequate staffing and limited local autonomy for decision-making (i.e., had to wait for direction, were not able to identify a local champion). If they were too large, they suffered organizational inertia or required more organizational supports for coordination across departments or services. These barriers were sometimes overcome with sufficient leadership support and allocation of additional resources. Organizational control of those resources also is important. In the VA, like other large health care systems, resource control was sometimes one or more levels above the practice in which the QI intervention was being implemented. This required negotiation with senior leaders with varying levels of awareness and understanding of frontline needs or culture, and repeated marketing messages to different stakeholders at each level. Control of how care was organized also was important but did not always operate in expected ways. Practice autonomy emerged as a facilitator of more rapid implementation (i.e., faster penetration among providers in a practice); however, their speed appeared to undermine sustainability. Further work is needed to validate these findings for more QUERI conditions among increasingly diverse practice settings and in organizations outside the VA. For example, do the same findings hold true for depression as they do for diabetes? Varying levels of supporting evidence were noted for many organizational structures and processes in relation to quality of implementation. While the VA is most generalizable to large health systems, including U.S. regional systems like Kaiser Permanente and national health systems, such as those in the UK and Australia [ 98 ], many of the organizational factors studied also have correlates in smaller practices.

At this juncture, QUERI implementation research studies are progressing from local to regional to national in scope [ 12 ]. In parallel, methodologically – and along the lines of the QUERI steps – they are moving from variations studies to tests of intervention and implementation effectiveness to evaluations of spread, and then to policy development [ 13 ]. It is incumbent on us to contribute to bridging the gap between research and practice by considering the potential for accelerating implementation success by explicitly addressing organizational factors in our work.

Abbreviations

Veterans Health Administration

Quality Enhancement Research Initiative

electronic medical record

Computerized Patient Records System

continuous quality improvement

quality improvement

primary care

gastrointestinal

human immunodeficiency virus.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, VA Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) Service through the VA Greater Los Angeles HSR&D Center of Excellence (Project #HFP 94-028), the VA HSR&D and QUERI-funded "Regional Expansion and Testing of Depression Collaborative Care" (ReTIDES) (Project # MNT 01–027), and Dr. Yano's VA HSR&D Research Career Scientist award (Project #RCS 05–195). The author also would like to acknowledge and thank the editors and reviewers for their thoughtful critiques and useful input.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Yano, E.M. The role of organizational research in implementing evidence-based practice: QUERI Series. Implementation Sci 3 , 29 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-3-29

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Key attributes of successful research institutes

Frank bradke.

1 Laboratory for Axon Growth and Regeneration, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Bonn, Germany

Aidan Maartens

2 Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Sarah A. Teichmann

3 Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Science does not take place in a vacuum: The physical and social workplace has a profound influence on scientific discoveries. Everyone at a research institute can contribute to its scientific output and productivity, from faculty research groups to facilities and platforms staff to administration and corporate services. Although the researchers addressing exciting scientific questions are key, their efforts can be fostered and directed by the overarching strategy of the institute, interconnection with facilities and platforms, and strong and directed support of the administration and corporate services. Everybody counts and everybody should be empowered to contribute. But what are the characteristics that make scientific organizations and their people flourish? This Essay looks at the structure and culture of successful research institutes, laying out different operational strategies and highlighting points that need be taken into consideration during their implementation.

What are the features that make a research institute and its people flourish? This Essay explores the organization and culture of successful research institutes and looks at the lessons that can be learned from them.

Introduction

When scientists start working at a research institute, they quickly realize that they are not just inside the bubble of their own laboratory, but are part of a bigger ecosystem. In the words of John Donne, “no man is an island,” and this rings true of scientists and research groups as well. The culture of a research institute, its scientific standards, its social cohesion, and its funding framework are critical to its research output. But what are the key ingredients for a thriving institute?

Research institutes across the globe have put considerable efforts into building environments that facilitate the conception and exploitation of novel scientific ideas. A critical aspect of these environments is educational: throughout their careers, scientists continuously learn from each other by emulation, discussion, collaboration, and competition. This reflects the proverb that states “it takes a village to raise a child.” A research institute provides exactly this. It is the whole village—with all its constituent residents—in which scientists develop, formulate, and pursue their ideas, but also from which they emerge to join other scientific communities worldwide.

In this Essay, we explore strategies that have helped institutes develop into particularly successful and special places. This analysis is based on our almost 4 decades of experience working as group leaders and program heads at research institutes and in sitting on institutional scientific advisory boards and external review panels. These experiences spurred hours of discussion among ourselves and with colleagues, mentors, and mentees about the underlying philosophy, research culture, and organizational structures of successful, adaptable, and forward-looking research institutes. Here, we share our perspectives from these informal discussions. There is an inevitable geographical bias towards those institutions that we have interacted with in one way or another, but we hope the lessons we have gleaned have relevance to research institutes across the globe.

Research institute organization and culture

The philosophy behind most research institutes is to free up scientists’ time to focus on research, with little or no teaching and the provision of internal funding. Many institutes do run world-class postgraduate training programs in affiliation with universities, but the focus tends to be on training through research projects rather than theoretical lectures. Research institutes often encourage interdisciplinarity and collaboration, and many form a structure to promote the intersection of disciplines such as biology with technologies and methods rooted in physics, chemistry, or computer science, for example. Research institutes have been remarkably successful, as demonstrated by their major contributions to ground-breaking discoveries such as the classification of developmental patterning genes [ 1 ], the determination of high-resolution biomolecular structures using cryo-EM [ 2 , 3 ], and the discovery of the structure of the ribosome [ 4 , 5 ], to name just 3 examples.

Research institutes occupy a specific niche in the larger research ecosystem. Their success can be measured by scientific contributions in the form of novel ideas, publication output, and grant funding. Furthermore, success is assessed not by shareholders but primarily by other scientists, both in a broad community sense and in terms of advisory boards, funding bodies, and so on. Other measures of success include the satisfaction levels of staff and trainees, their career development to go on to contribute to society in research or other venues, and commercial impact, for example. Selected examples of research institutes, their histories and characteristics can be found in Box 1 .

Box 1. Research institutes and their characteristics

The success of the research institute model is exemplified by biomedical research institutes. One prominent example is the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, United Kingdom, which was established by the Medical Research Council in 1947 and was the PhD training ground and dozen-year long workplace for one of us (SAT). The LMB boasts 12 Nobel Prizes and revolutionary breakthroughs such as key contributions to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure. Similarly famous is the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), whose successful PhD program was the training ground for another one of us (FB) and boasts 3 Nobel Prizes. This intergovernmental research organization was founded 1974 and provides amazing opportunities to group leaders to perform ground-breaking research through generous core funding in a completely free, blue skies research environment. As an example of a more recently established institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus in Virginia, United States of America was opened in 2006 and has an interdisciplinary approach ranging from mechanistic cognitive neuroscience through to the new “4D cell physiology” program. Its philosophy is to create a culture of collaboration with freedom to pursue research.

Many institutes have a dominant scientific and/or technological culture, be it structural biology (the LMB), genomics (the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK), or neuroscience (HHMI Janelia Research Campus or the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Bonn, Germany). In addition, a “founding myth” and research culture, often related to the original leadership, is often woven into the institutes’ identity. For example, John Sulston propagated an open science and open data spirit at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, with a strong emphasis on team science, whereas Paul Nurse has built the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK into an environment supporting both basic and translational research and fostering the collaboration across both areas. The LMB identity is often associated with decades-long dedication to a single large scientific challenge, exemplified by Max Perutz’s solution of the structure of hemoglobin; additionally, Perutz’s manner of interacting with LMB colleagues in an informal, open, and nonhierarchical way feeds through to the institute’s culture today.

An important question that has grown in importance in recent years is how research institutes can promote a positive research culture. To us, research culture includes how staff and trainees interact with each other across the institute, what the institute defines as valuable and important, and what its definitions of success are (e.g., discoveries, papers, grants, spin-offs, training the next generation). It is influenced in both top-down and bottom-up ways: Leadership can set the tone and the values of the institute, while younger researchers, if well-integrated and listened to, can influence the institute’s direction and give the institute energy and excitement. It is also not just about people: Positive research culture can be incubated by the physical structure of the institute, in venues for social eating, sports, and after-work socializing, for example, as well as by regular events such as retreats to promote team building and coherence. The bottom line is that research culture is not just an added benefit for an institute: it can either nurture or impede the creativity of individual scientists, and as this creativity drives scientific discoveries, institutions are increasingly taking it seriously (see [ 6 , 7 ] for insightful discussion).

Thus a key question is how to incubate an inspirational research culture where productivity, ambition, and high-quality science are encouraged in a balanced, supportive, and inclusive way. While scientific output is generally perceived as the result of work by bench research scientists alone, there are multiple structures within a research institute involved in research delivery, and thus everyone in an institute is part of the research mission and should be recognized for their contributions. What are the ingredients required to craft a successful, collaborative, supportive, and thriving research environment? Below, we outline some key interacting components, which are summarized in Table 1 .

Considerations for a successful research institute

While there is not a single recipe for an ideal institute, every aspect of the “village” can influence the progression of the next generation of scientists and the discoveries they produce. Core facilities, a supportive administration and research groups form the golden triangle of a well-run institute ( Fig 1 ). Within the golden triangle, research institutes need to consider the following concepts to maximize their success (explored in detail in the following sections):

Institutes are built on a framework of funding and governance indicated in the floor of the building, which can be varied depending on the institutional model. To build and maintain the institute, strategic recruitment is important, as are supportive and constructive advisory committees (shown on the left-hand side). For a research culture that fosters productive and creative science, continuous open communication and collaboration is key between the 3 basic components within the institute: faculty research groups, facilities and platforms, and administration and corporate services. Varied types of outputs of a successful research environment are shown on the right-hand side. (Illustration credit: Christina Usher.).

• Listen, inside and out. Institutes need feedback mechanisms, both internal and external, to continuously evolve and optimize their organization and science.
• Enable scientists to focus on the science. Institutes benefit from effective, proactive, and communicative underpinning administration with a deep understanding of research culture, to free up scientists to focus on their science.
• Promote “plug and play” research. Effective and agile facilities and operational infrastructure, with state-of-the-art of the equipment, can be tremendously enabling for research.
• Build a holistic research environment. The institute needs a supportive research culture that empowers scientists to develop and realize their potential and promotes creativity.

While institutes are run in different ways and have different purposes, consideration of these key ingredients will help them to thrive.

Listen, inside and outside: Effective feedback mechanisms

Effective feedback mechanisms help research institutes assess how well their progress is aligning with their goals. Perhaps the most important source of feedback to the leadership is from staff working within the institute, who will have direct knowledge about how well the institute is running on a day-to-day level. Open channels of communication for staff are thus vital: this could be to their direct line managers or as regular (and optionally anonymous) surveys. These can then feedback into internal assessments on a more formal level; for example, annual reviews can showcase not only scientific achievements but also policies regarding staff wellbeing that have been enacted following feedback.

One of the key external sources of feedback comes from funding reviews and assessments, which can focus more on the achievements of individual research groups (such as at the LMB or at the Max-Planck Society institutes in Germany) or on entire departments or programs (such as at the Wellcome Sanger Institute or at the Helmholtz Association institutes in Germany). The kind of assessment regime chosen may influence the science that happens in the institute. More individual-based reviews have the benefit that responsibility lies very clearly with an individual principal investigator (PI), but intra-institute collaborations are not specifically incentivized. Of course, individual groups can independently reach out to potential collaborators, but the institute leadership needs to closely monitor how such interactions and scientific collaborations develop. The leadership might also influence collaboration by implementing a PhD and postdoc program for training in the latest techniques in the different research areas or provide a venue for cross-pollination of different ideas to stimulate intellectual creativity and innovation. Crossing disciplines does come with risks as well as opportunities [ 8 ], especially if the groups do not speak a common language, and again leadership can step in in these situations, providing opportunities as well as monitoring the effectiveness of interactions (occasional joint review meetings with members of leaderships of across disciplines may help to facilitate this).

By contrast, the more collective-based review of entire departments or programs may incentivize intra-institute collaboration. This facilitates and expedites delivery of large research programs with a single common goal, as epitomized by the concerted contribution from the Sanger Institute to the Human Genome Project [ 9 ] and the Human Cell Atlas [ 10 ], and the Rhineland-Study at the DZNE [ 11 ]. To make sure that individuals from different fields will be motivated to interact with each other around the shared project in such collective programs, leadership needs to provide opportunities for interactions and ways of monitoring their effectiveness. Large projects with relatively well-articulated goals can catalyze development of technologies and provide data sets that individual laboratories can build on in the future (advances in genome sequencing during the Human Genome Project is a clear example of this).

Regardless of whether a research institute adopts individual or group evaluation, it is crucial to have a transparent and clear process that is communicated upfront to all parties within the institute and to the evaluation committee. The process should be proportional and efficient, as limited in time as possible, and occur with as little possible disruption to the research at the institute. In addition, a separate, carefully appointed standing scientific advisory board that engages in constructive feedback can provide vital and complementary comments. Such advisory boards ideally contain 1 or 2 members with long-term knowledge of the institute’s history and culture, who truly know the organization. Their sustained input can be vital, especially for new institutes still finding their feet. Finally, it is worth considering widening the net in terms of guidance and feedback to include wider society (for an example, see Box 2 ). We see engagement with wider society as a two-way dialog, with both parties benefitting [ 12 ].

Box 2. Examples of successful practices by research institutes

Expand feedback.

• The Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain engages citizens and stakeholders to guide and co-create its long-term research strategy .

Support core facilities

• EMBL’s ARISE program of fellowships supports training of highly educated research infrastructure scientists. Researchers who want to stay in science but not on the tenure track are provided with an opportunity to learn the skills necessary to develop and maintain infrastructure, and core facilities will benefit from hiring well-trained staff.
• Cross-Europe initiative Core for Life brings together core facilities managers to together define best practices, provide training, validate and share technologies, and advocate for the importance of funding for core facilities.

Boost technology transfer

• Yeda commercializes the intellectual property generated by scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
• The Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) Innovation & Business team (Ghent, Belgium) bridges the institute’s science and industry by establishing patents, intellectual property licenses, industry collaborations, and spin-off companies.
• The Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute in New York, USA helps researchers from 3 biomedical centers translate their discoveries to preclinical studies.

Expand trainee experience

• Many organizations, such as EMBL , provide PhD training programs across departments/sites, increasing exposure to multiple disciplines.

Improve equity, diversity, and inclusion

• The Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Lisbon, Portugal runs the António Coutinho Science Awards , which provide fellowships and research funding to citizens of Portuguese Speaking African Countries (PALOP) or descendants of those from PALOP countries.
• The Wellcome Sanger Institute recently launched the three-year postdoctoral Excellence Fellowships , which are aimed at people from Black heritage backgrounds.
• The Athena Swan charter can help institutions achieve gender equality objectives and provide structures for self-assessment.
• The Wellcome Sanger Institute has a Behavioral Competency Framework (BCF) that all employees sign up to and which defines the behaviors expected and encouraged in the entire institute.
• International graduate programs such as Taiwanese International Graduate Program foster diversity by recruiting PhD students from across the world.

Network across institutes

• EU-LIFE is an alliance of leading life sciences research centers from 15 European countries, which forms a strong advocacy voice to influence policy, share best practices, and inspire open and ethical science.

Let scientists focus on the science with a proactive and communicative administration

While all scientists love discussing their new discoveries and next experiments, and some also like to spend time developing longer term scientific strategies, very few are passionate about administrative organizational strategy. This may be a mistake given the importance of an efficient administration for the smooth running and success of a research institute [ 13 ]. While institutes rightly seek excellence in faculty recruitment, they should also invest effort into recruiting and training excellent administrators.

The administrative apparatus needs to balance the desire of scientific leaders for unconstrained freedom with the necessity of managing budgets and applying business principles and governance in often publicly funded, not-for-profit organizations with liabilities and legal obligations. Finding the balance between these 2 objectives is challenging. For administration to operate harmoniously with research groups, dedication to the research culture of the institute and a proactive approach to enable science are foundational. Administrative staff need to understand that speed and flexibility can make all the difference in science. Every employee joining the administration should be made aware of the scientific research process in the institute. What are the results, discoveries, and outputs of scientific research? Why does timeliness matter? Administrative staff should understand the importance of rapid and nimble responses when providing scientists with working instruments, tailored contracts, and efficient and understandable guidelines. Supportive administrative staff will proactively provide information and co-develop (with researchers) streamlined processes and standard operating procedures to help the scientists achieve their research goals while complying with rules and regulations.

A bottom-up, proactive administration culture can be usefully complemented by a top-down organizational strategy. The administrative leadership needs to clearly articulate the vision and overarching goal of rapid and nimble research support, empowering proactive and creative problem solving by all administrative staff members. A key element of this is the level of tolerance with respects to mistakes. Getting the balance right between agility, speed, and risk aversion is important for administrative teams.

To help achieve this mindset and culture, a “liaison” system between administrative team heads and faculty members can be remarkably effective. Each administrative department can have research group leaders who act as contact points, resulting in a bidirectional dialog and exchange of information. Similarly, when faculty members understand the mechanisms and constraints of administration, they can recognize when and how to request changes effectively—communication is vital.

To develop a proactive administration who are aligned with the research aims and culture of the institute, administrative staff must feel welcomed and valued. However, administrators commonly feel their skills are underappreciated [ 14 ]. Thus, it is key to communicate with respect and to publicly acknowledge and support the vital work that administrators do.

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of communication to an institute. Internal communication has a key role in its day-to-day functioning: top-down, it allows all staff to stay informed of the long-term goals and strategies of the institute; bottom-up, it allows leadership to stay abreast of the research advances and practical concerns of the workforce; and sideways, across the institute, researchers greatly benefit from knowing what their neighbors are doing (this can help foster collaborations). Smooth and positive communication across roles enables a committed and effective research culture to flourish.

External communications, on the other hand, ensure that discoveries are not confined to the pages of scientific journals. As many institutes are publicly funded, they have a duty to convey their discoveries to the public in relatable and exciting ways. Thus, a well-supported communications office can be a great help to any institute. Communication professionals can act as the bridge between scientists and the media, help write press releases and create audiovisual output, and train scientists in how to tell their research stories. External communication also has a key role in defining an institute’s success and promise to potential funders. In certain regions, philanthropic donations can make up a significant portion of an institute’s income, and therefore, many institutes have dedicated philanthropy departments to manage and promote this activity. Here, a key aspect is donor engagement: the institute needs to communicate the impact of donations, which may be in the form of events, lay reports, or lab tours, for example.

Facilitate “plug and play” research with facilities and operational infrastructure

Core facilities, comprising technical instrumentation, methods, and the expertise of highly trained staff, enable faculty teams to focus on new areas of scientific development while benefitting from services such as next-generation sequencing, microscopy, bioinformatics, and research software engineering. Core facility teams often implement cutting-edge methodologies for the benefit of the whole institute [ 15 ], and shared core facilities can offer efficiencies and economies of scale. Indeed, core facilities can act as “force multipliers” for various essential aspects of the institute, from recruitment and retention to grants and knowledge production [ 16 ].

To develop the broad expertise needed to optimally exploit new technologies, community and collaboration are key. For example, faculty teams and core facility staff can work closely together to develop, optimize, and scale-up a new technique or methodology. Just as we discussed with regards to administration, it is crucial to get core facility staff on board with the vision of the institution and to publicly acknowledge their work, such as via authorship and/or acknowledgements in papers and talks, and in events or awards. Two examples of endeavors to support core facility staff are outlined in Box 2 .

The governance of core facilities is an important consideration: researchers must be ensured fair access, and a balance must be struck between adopting cutting-edge techniques and maintaining a high level of robustness and reliability in results and data delivery. A steering committee structure can maintain oversight of the facility, and a transparent online system can monitor services provided and usage statistics, turnaround times, and key performance indicators. Depending on the research focus of the institute, some facilities can grow to be exceptionally large and need a more defined structure and management. For example, research institutes that deal with large genomic data packages and huge sample sizes require specific adopted management schemes (for an informative case study, see [ 17 ]).

Build a holistic environment to empower individuals to develop and realize their potential

Research institutes are not merely spaces where science is done. Rather, they can proactively accelerate research advances and enhance the day-to-day lives and career prospects of the researchers within. This can be in more structural/formal respects (such as recruitment, technology transfer, and training) and also in social/cultural dimensions that generate a positive environment where ideas and creativity thrive.

Recruitment

Research is fundamentally about the people involved, so recruiting talented staff that contribute to the institute aims and culture is vital. Hiring decisions have far-reaching implications for the institute in terms of both science and culture, and this applies across the board for anyone hired in any capacity. Institutes deal differently with recruitment, ranging from an internally driven process (e.g., Wellcome Sanger Institute) to a largely external assessment (e.g., EMBL, where hiring committee members are drawn from across the international European Molecular Biology Organization membership). Each have their benefits and risks.

In internally driven recruitment, the institute and its leadership are in complete control of individual promotions, recruitment, science, and personnel strategy. The vision and strategy of the leadership team is executed in a top-down manner, with the advantage that decisions can be made quickly. At the same time, unchallenged views on strategy and personnel selection may allow bias and nepotism to creep into the process. To counterbalance this, human resources departments have a key role in ensuring well-managed recruitment campaigns, and the external scientific review process provides further checks and balances. External assessment has the advantage of objectivity and potentially avoiding personal issues and local politics. Recruitment by hiring committees with eminent external members may help increase trust in a system. Potential disadvantages include the risk of “parachuting” someone in who does not understand the research areas and organizational context of the current faculty and also a risk of consensus decisions that promote orthodoxy in hiring. There may not be a single ideal way of conducting recruitment in a given research institute—what is key is an awareness of the pitfalls of both approaches and taking steps to counterbalance them.

Once hired, scientists rightly want to be fairly renumerated for their efforts. While an attractive package is a nonnegotiable factor in decisions about where to work, extra perks such as on-campus childcare or residential accommodation can make a huge difference to the lives of scientists. Differences in pay within the institute need to be well justified based on experience and delivery. Maintaining fairness and transparency is crucial in order to avoid pay and resource gaps that are not justified based on scientific productivity, such as the gender pay gap (for a recent survey of this gap in the UK, see [ 18 ]). Finally, the option of dual hires (where spouses are hired to the same institution) can be a huge incentive for a candidate to accept an offer, particularly if they are coming from a different country.

A key question is whether to hire new PIs on tenure-track or no-tenure models. The dynamically changing workforce that no-tenure models can generate might avoid intellectual stagnation and help the leadership adapt to new challenges with new hiring. At the same time, new PIs may be put off by the lack of long-term security and be more attracted to tenure-track models. To counteract this, research institutes can extend time periods of fixed-term contracts and offer more generous core funding. In our experience, a good distribution of experience contributes to a stimulating research environment: junior group leaders bring energy, dynamism, and a fresh, sometimes revolutionary perspective, while senior group leaders contribute mentorship, experience, stability, and strategic perspectives. A healthy balance of faculty members with different levels of experience, without a concentration of only junior or only senior group leaders, may thus be a common aim.

The number of faculty is also a key consideration. There is no “ideal” institute size because more or less staff may be required depending on the research questions and funding environment. While smaller institutes may appear to provide a more convivial atmosphere, the social “tone” of an institute of any size can be influenced by leadership style and work culture, as discussed below. Related to institute size is group size. While some institutes restrict group size (e.g., the Francis Crick Institute and the LMB), others have no explicit limit. Small groups can have effective communication and teamwork, and their leanness can give a greater focus on a particular problem, whereas large groups are able to be interdisciplinary, with critical mass in 2 or more areas, and provide the benefits of research done at scale. Indeed, research as a whole flourishes with a diverse range of group sizes, with large groups expanding and building up research, and small groups starting new areas of inquiry [ 19 ].

Whatever the size, institutes work best when grouped around either a technology (e.g., the Structural Studies Division at the LMB) or around a biological topic (e.g., neurodegeneration at the DZNE). This leads to the question of how to manage the extent of interdisciplinarity within an institute. Focus on a single discipline might inhibit creativity, while too much interdisciplinarity might lead to a lack of overlap between research groups, with no benefit from synergies. The best space might therefore be somewhere in between [ 6 ].

Individuals are what make any institute run—science is really about people and their day-to-day interactions. This means that recruitment can make a huge difference to the “feel” of an institute. When hiring new faculty members, scientific capability is of course key, but not the only aspect. How well will this personality merge with the existing faculty? Alternatively, are they too similar, so would the institute benefit from disruption of the status quo? Do they fully buy in to the research culture and vision that the institute is striving for? Individuals with energy and drive can further energize others, provide inspiration for students and postdocs and, in turn, make the institute an attractive place to work for future hires. Identifying such individuals can thus be key, particularly in the early stages of an institute’s life.

The appointment of a new director is one of the most influential recruitment decisions, as they act as a figurehead for the institute, externally and internally. The new appointee might take the institute in an entirely new research direction or aim to develop a new kind of research culture: the appointment itself is a statement of the future vision of the institute. What counts as an ideal candidate will of course depend on an institute’s priorities. Is scientific excellence paramount or administrative experience? As discussed above, the decision between hiring from inside or outside will also have great implications. While an insider may understand the institute’s unwritten rules and be able to quickly identify key issues, an outsider may bring a fresher view, with novel ideas and management qualities. Personal style is crucial here, but overall leadership (of any organization) is fundamentally about serving the mission and the people in the institute. Directors who are exceptional in this regard have often been founders or early directors of institutes (e.g., Janet Thornton, an early director of the EMBL–European Bioinformatics Institute), perhaps because they feel so closely intertwined with the institutes’ identity and people.

Technology transfer and training

Once staff are in place, there are various ways that research institutes can build a supportive and inspirational research environment. As hubs of innovation, institutes generate novel ideas and inventions, and to ensure that these findings are protected and taken forwards for the benefit of society, a technology transfer system can manage intellectual property and the process of licensing and commercialization. Innovation and business development teams can also educate researchers to promote an entrepreneurial attitude, and institutes in turn must make space for, recognize, and reward activities such as the founding of start-up companies. This could be via reward and incentives through sharing of royalties from patents or the use of employment contracts with a percentage of time given over to entrepreneurial activity. Examples of successful technology transfer are shown in Box 2 .

In addition to helping scientists achieve impactful discoveries, forward-looking institutes will train scientists at all levels in the key skills required for the scientific workplace, but also in communication, research management, and leadership. Scientific training will allow researchers to stay up to date with cutting-edge methodologies. To prepare students and postdocs for life as an independent investigator (if this is the path they choose), research institutes can provide access to training in writing papers and grants, project and lab management, and science communication/public engagement. PhD programs that provide training across departments and sites can be extremely useful and stimulating, exposing students to various techniques and scientific perspectives early on in their training that are often exploited in subsequent thesis work and later careers. An institute’s success may be measured in large part by the impact of its trainees on society, and a well-supported training and outreach program can be invaluable to this.

The mentorship of younger scientists by more senior staff in the institute can be crucial to their career success. As well as providing career guidance, compassionate mentors outside of the host lab can help to tackle research misconduct in its many forms. Young researchers should have trust in the wider system and know that they can raise concerns without having to challenge their supervisor directly: a supportive mentoring network can provide this.

Building an inclusive environment

One of the beauties of working in science is encountering people from different cultural backgrounds, and research institutes should aim to integrate different personalities and characteristics, fostering diversity, and viewing it as a strength. An inclusive environment brings out the best in scientists and science [ 20 , 21 ], and different ways of thinking contribute to greater creativity. Thus, diversity in scientific approaches is more likely to be found among a group of diverse individuals, and a successful research culture takes equality, diversity, and inclusion seriously. As we have argued with respect to gender equality [ 22 ], this must be built in at the policy level so that the system is organized to incentivize good behavior. We are also encouraged by the efforts of funders in this regard, such as Wellcome [ 23 ] and HHMI [ 24 ]. Going forwards, research institutes need to further develop and promote inclusive policies encompassing areas such as equality of opportunity, parental leave policies, protection from bullying and harassment, and sustainability. There should be public, high-level buy-in for these policies and dedicated funding streams.

There have been numerous recent examples of research institutes implementing policies to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion in locally relevant ways ( Box 2 ). Ensuring diversity on management and advisory boards is another aspect that needs to be developed to achieve a greater diversity in the workforce at all levels in the long term.

The majority of discussions about diversity of science (inevitably including those covered in this piece) are centered around helping institutions in Western nations increase diversity. The risk is that this is less relevant for other institutes, particularly those in nations where English is not commonly spoken. For such institutes, a bigger problem may be to attract top science talent from the global marketplace. A highly funded institute in a wealthy nation may appear “more diverse” because it has the luxury of attracting global talent, and the definition of what constitutes “diverse” will differ from country to country. While we do not explore these issues further here, we hope this article spurs responses from colleagues around the world, who might share their local experiences for research institute success. Discussions with colleagues based in Taiwan show how institutes there have established international PhD programs ( Box 2 ) and targeted recruitment of faculty and guest professorships to access the global talent pool.

Wherever the institute, a positive research culture can be helped by a clearly articulated code of conduct ( Box 2 ). Such frameworks should be developed with the staff of the institute, should be open to change over time, and be flexible enough to accommodate the various cultural backgrounds and personalities that necessarily make up a modern research institute. Rather than being a restrictive straight jacket or homogenizing tool, they should be a way of recognizing and fostering behaviors that contribute to a positive research culture without suppressing personal authenticity and freedom of speech. Indeed, there are many different types of people that can be accommodated and contribute to a team. Exciting research often occurs on the fringes: There is a risk that research institutes stifle those with unorthodox views who may not appear to conform to standard expectations of behavior or research direction, yet bring unique strengths and perspectives to the table. The challenge for leadership is how to accommodate researchers with potentially difficult characteristics within a broadly inclusive and tolerant environment.

Finally, a positive research culture must have staff wellbeing at the core: just as an institute must ensure staff safety via a dedicated health and safety program, staff mental health should also be high on the radar of institute leadership. There are various ways in which mental health can be supported (for a recent perspective, see [ 25 ]).

Meeting today’s and tomorrow’s challenges

Research institutes today have to meet a host of new, often interlinked, challenges that stand in the way of their ability to transform society with scientific innovation. A first challenge is simply to get the necessary funding to carry out research. Many institutes have found their funding curtailed in recent years (e.g., due to austerity programs that reduce government spending on research or inflationary pressures). To help counter this, prominent institutes can act as vocal advocates for science funding. A well-run communications department and publicly vocal and compelling director will undoubtedly help in this regard. Institutes can and should be in the public conversation, helping to counter disinformation and increase public trust in science, which ideally will feed back to politicians allocating budgets. Elsewhere in the world, research funding has been a persistent issue that will likely continue into the future. While philanthropy or global funding sources are potential solutions, another option is to expand international collaborations between institutes (taking inspiration from EU-LIFE, see Box 2 ). In this way, people, skills, and knowledge would move between countries in a way that strengthens local capacities. Is the time ripe for a United Nations of Research Institutes?

The COVID-19 pandemic was a global challenge that changed the way all research institutes worked. While the short-term effects were seismic—institutes shut for months at a time during lockdowns, freezing whole programs of research—there were also more lasting impacts, notably the naturalization of hybrid or remote working. This brings its own challenge: how can we foster team cohesion when interactions are mainly virtual? Online conferences are often less interactive than in-person ones, leading to fewer of the chance meetings that seed many of the innovations of the future (for discussion, see [ 26 ]). The risk is that the same might occur within research institutes, if the corridors and cafeterias are not filled with the sounds of scientists discussing their latest data. On the other hand, the virtualization of science can increase inclusivity, both at local and global levels (e.g., those with caring duties can work from home, while cutting-edge science can be shared virtually worldwide to expand knowledge transfer). Overall, for an institute, maintaining a strong identity and research culture may always rely on people meeting in person, but harnessing new virtual technologies to increase remote interactions (e.g., in virtual reality) can also complement this. A great challenge in the future therefore is how to maintain the physical–virtual balance.

A global challenge that will only increase in coming years is the climate crisis. Many scientists are increasingly uncomfortable with flying for work (for discussion, see [ 27 ]). Institutes can also have a role here, for example, in mandating the number of international trips expected from faculty as part of wider carbon reduction or net zero policies. A slew of climate-related societal challenges will inevitably impact research institutes, including food shortages, changes in migration patterns, acute health impacts, and physical impacts on infrastructure such as flooding. The institute’s operational leadership will need to keep these impacts on the horizon to guide their choices. Just as important will be the psychological effects of a changing world on the people working within the institute: climate anxiety may, at least in part, be mitigated by strong and open climate policies at the institute level.

A final challenge—and opportunity—is the increasing inclusion of artificial intelligence (AI) into an institute’s work and culture. While it is still difficult to envision how AI will affect our approaches, we expect that we are at the beginning of a major change. For example, the newly developed ways to analyze data and literature using AI may provide transformative insights for research and research culture. We expect AI to change how we develop novel scientific ideas and concepts. Institute leadership needs to closely follow the challenges and opportunities that arise through this transformative technology, and importantly, involve all staff in conversations about how best to move forward.

Overall, a research institute has to balance a multitude of factors. It needs to support scientists to flourish and forge a career, while simultaneously adopting an overarching research strategy that relies on good team workers, efficient project/research managers, and good leaders of people. Holistic, collaborative, and responsive approaches are vital to create scientific villages that foster the next generation of scientists and continue to produce world-changing discoveries.

Acknowledgments

We thank Genevieve Almouzni (Institut Curie), Mary Barlow (EMBL-EBI), Monica Bettencourt-Dias (Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência), Ansgar Büschges (University of Cologne), Hwai-Jong Cheng (IMB, Academia Sinica), Martin Dougherty (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Eugenio Fava (DZNE), Yukiko Goda (RIKEN), Ilona Grunwald Kadow (University of Bonn), Muzlifah Haniffa (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Sabine Helling-Moegen (DZNE), Reinhard Jahn (Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences), Sarah Jewell (DZNE), Yishi Jin (UCSD), Lizzy Langley (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Cheng-Chang Lien (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University), Pierluigi Nicotera (DZNE), Steve Palmer (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Maggie Payne (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Mike Stratton (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Gaia Tavosanis (University of Aachen), Ron Vale (UCSF), and Dagmar Wachten (University of Bonn) for reading and discussion. We thank Christina Usher for the figure illustration.

Funding Statement

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

• Frontiers in Psychology
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Creative Organization Development through Leadership

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Creativity is developed by guiding rather than being taught. For this, environments that allow creativity-rich and diverse experiences should be designed and affect lots of different issues in the organization. To build and sustain an organizational culture dominated by creativity and innovation, organizations must effectively identify and mobilize the creative resources of their members. When organizational members perceive a work environment that restricts or fails to encourage individual creative expression, a gap may exist between the level of individual creative potential and the actual amount of individual creativity practiced within the organization. Leadership development may represent one important key for unlocking this idle creative potential and enhancing overall organizational effectiveness. So, organizations should focus on leadership to develop creativity via all dimensions that affect organizational culture at all levels of the organization. To achieve this, reshaping organizational psychology and culture accordingly can be stated as one of the main missions of organizational leadership. Recent studies prove that creativity is necessary for both individual and organizational levels, and for achieving these levels together, leadership is crucial for organizations. This special issue aims to collect studies on how to develop creative organizations through leadership. To focus on this special topic, the following sub-topics may be studied in detail. Based on this main objective, this special issue will also reveal the effects of creative organizational culture, which is one of the most fundamental issues in terms of organizational psychology, and the factors affecting this culture in detail. In addition, this special issue aims to reveal how creative organizational culture is changing organizational behavior and psychology as well as organizational structure in today's rapidly changing world. Moreover, the creative organizational leaders who will produce this change, their characteristics, and the new skills they need to acquire can be stated as another important purpose of this special issue. This special issue aims to collect studies on how to develop creative organizations through leadership. For this aim, the issue seeks for the following sub-topics: 1. Emotional drivers of creativity 2. The relationship between creativity, intelligence, and brain function 3. Biological dimensions of creativity 4. Factors affecting creativity 5. The importance of creativity in organization development 6. How can a creative organizational culture be developed? 7. The relationship between creativity, sustainability and entrepreneurship 8. Creative leadership and its role in organization development 9. How can creativity be developed in organizations? 10. The role and functions of creativity in selecting and developing human resources 11. New leadership theories for creative organizations 12. Innovation, inclusion, creativity and leadership 13. Digital technologies for creative leadership 14. Autonomous systems for organizational creativity and development 15. Leadership models and organizational culture and climate'?

Keywords : Creativity, organizational development, leadership, entrepreneurship, emotional intelligence, organizational psychology, management

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Research Operations Support Professional

Date: May 21, 2024

Location: Oak Ridge, TN, US, 37830

Company: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Requisition Id 13078 

Overview:     

We are hiring an entry-level Research Operations Support Professional to support operation tasks associated with work control of science and engineering activities. You will also provide support to researchers in maintaining compliance with applicable federal and state laws, DOE orders, and ORNL policies and procedures regarding work control. This position resides in the Integrated Research Operations Support group in the Safety & Operations Services Division, in the Environment, Safety, Health & Quality Directorate, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

As a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science national laboratory, ORNL has an extraordinary 80-year history of solving the nation’s biggest problems. We have a dedicated and creative staff of over 6,000 people! Our vision for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is to cultivate an environment and practices that foster diversity in ideas and in the people across the organization, as well as to ensure ORNL is recognized as a workplace of choice. These elements are essential for enabling the execution of ORNL’s broader mission to accelerate scientific discoveries and their translation into energy, environment, and security solutions for the nation.

Major Duties/Responsibilities:    

Serve as a Divisional point-of contact (POC) for work control as it relates to research safety summaries (RSS) and documentation for hazard identification and control.

Coordinate RSS reviews to ensure sufficient review between peers and SMEs and ensure all RSSs are approved and authorized within the allocated timeframe.

Help ensure that operational activities required for research objectives are completed safely and compliantly, either through the work control process or as requested by researchers.

Schedule and participate in laboratory compliance walkthroughs.

Abide by and promote the Battelle Safe Conduct of Research principles including being personally responsible for ensuring safe operations, raising safety concerns, using a questioning mentality, considering hazards for every task and where learning never stops.

Continually seek ways to increase operational efficiencies and improve safety culture in support of the research mission and champion initiatives to do so.

Deliver ORNL’s mission by aligning behaviors, priorities, and interactions with our core values of Impact, Integrity, Teamwork, Safety, and Service. Promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility by encouraging a respectful workplace – in how we treat one another, work together, and measure success.

Other responsibilities may include:

Support the integration of Integrated Safety Management (ISM) into work planning and execution, working alongside a diverse operations team.

Participate in the review and development of division or directorate level procedures and guidelines as needed.

Basic Qualifications:  

A BS in science, operations, health and safety, industrial hygiene, environmental management, project management, engineering, operations, or a related field of study and zero (0) to two (2) years of technical experience is required.

Preferred Qualifications:  

Experience collaborating as a team member in a dynamic, diverse organizational setting, involving interactions with management, researchers, facility users, and operations staff across different subject areas and tasks.

Experience with work control processes in a research and development environment and/or industrial environment.

Experience working in multi-disciplinary R&D environment or supporting industrial, radiological, nuclear, or secure facilities and operations.

Proven excellence in interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.

Ability to prioritize work and manage multiple projects simultaneously.

Strong organizational and time management skills and ability to meet inflexible delivery schedules on own initiative.

Experience in DOE and ORNL systems such as the Research Hazard Analysis and Control System and/or Integrated Safety Management.

Special Requirements:   

 Work involves various physical requirements and working conditions. As such, a pre-hire physical will be required after offer. 

 Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.  

  This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a clearance from the Department of Energy. As such, this position is a Workplace Substance Abuse (WSAP) testing designated position. WSAP positions require passing a pre-placement drug test and participation in an ongoing random drug testing program.  

Benefits at ORNL:    

ORNL offers competitive pay and benefits programs to attract and retain dedicated people. The laboratory offers many employee benefits, including medical and retirement plans and flexible work hours, to help you and your family live happy and healthy. Employee amenities such as on-site fitness, banking, and cafeteria facilities are also provided for convenience.

Other benefits include the following: Prescription Drug Plan, Dental Plan, Vision Plan, 401(k) Retirement Plan, Contributory Pension Plan, Life Insurance, Disability Benefits, Generous Vacation and Holidays, Parental Leave, Legal Insurance with Identity Theft Protection, Employee Assistance Plan, Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Savings Accounts, Wellness Programs, Educational Assistance, Relocation Assistance, and Employee Discounts.

Having difficulty using the online application system or need an accommodation to apply due to a disability? Please email: [email protected] or call 1.866.963.9545.

This position will remain open for a minimum of 5 days after which it will close when a qualified candidate is identified and/or hired.

We accept Word (.doc, .docx), Adobe (unsecured .pdf), Rich Text Format (.rtf), and HTML (.htm, .html) up to 5MB in size. Resumes from third party vendors will not be accepted; these resumes will be deleted and the candidates submitted will not be considered for employment.

If you have trouble applying for a position, please email [email protected].

ORNL is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants, including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans, are encouraged to apply.  UT-Battelle is an E-Verify employer.

Nearest Major Market: Knoxville

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U.S. Suspends Funding for Group at Center of Covid Origins Fight

The decision came after a scorching hearing in which lawmakers barraged EcoHealth Alliance’s president with claims of misrepresenting work with Chinese virologists.

By Benjamin Mueller

The Biden administration, under acute pressure from House lawmakers, moved on Wednesday to ban funding for a prominent virus-hunting nonprofit group whose work with Chinese scientists had put it at the heart of theories that Covid leaked from a lab.

The decision, announced in a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services, came on the heels of a scorching congressional hearing this month at which lawmakers barraged the group’s president with suggestions that he had misrepresented work with virologists in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began. Republicans went further, demanding that Peter Daszak, the president of the nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, be criminally investigated.

For EcoHealth, which relied on federal funding to study the threat of wild animal viruses, the loss of funding is another twist in a saga that has long dominated discussions of how the pandemic began.

In April 2020, under orders from the Trump administration, the National Institutes of Health terminated a grant to EcoHealth amid President Donald J. Trump’s feud with China over the origin of the coronavirus. Three years later, an internal federal watchdog agency determined that the N.I.H. had failed to give a proper cause for ending the grant, which supplied an average of roughly $625,000 per year. The N.I.H. restarted a pared-back version of the award.

Now, with Republicans stepping up their campaign against EcoHealth, and Democrats joining in the anger, the Biden administration has cut off funding for EcoHealth again.

Health officials said they were suspending three active N.I.H. grants to EcoHealth that totaled $2.6 million for last year. And they proposed barring the group from receiving future federal research funding. Such bans, they said, usually last no more than three years, but could be longer or shorter.

In explaining the decision, health officials cited a series of lapses that the N.I.H. had first reported nearly three years ago . Chief among them was EcoHealth’s failure to promptly report findings from studies on how well bat coronaviruses grow in mice, health officials said.

“I have determined that the immediate suspension of EHA is necessary to protect the public interest,” wrote Henrietta K. Brisbon, a health department official, referring to EcoHealth Alliance.

She cited problems in EcoHealth’s monitoring of work done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some of EcoHealth’s grant money was apportioned; the late submission of a progress report; and the possibility that a risky experiment had violated the terms of a grant.

EcoHealth said that it would contest the proposal to bar it from federal funding.

“We disagree strongly with the decision and will present evidence to refute each of these allegations and to show that N.I.H.’s continued support of EcoHealth Alliance is in the public interest,” the nonprofit said in a statement.

EcoHealth has also faced suspicion over a federal grant proposal that it made in 2018 to team up with the same Wuhan virology lab on coronavirus experiments that Republicans believe could have led to the pandemic, despite that project’s never receiving funding.

But for all the scrutiny of EcoHealth, there remains no evidence linking it directly with the beginning of the pandemic.

Federal health officials have said repeatedly that the viruses being studied with taxpayer funding at the Wuhan lab bore no resemblance to the one that set off the coronavirus outbreak, making it impossible that they had been responsible for the public health crisis.

Many scientists, including some whose criticisms of EcoHealth have been cited by House lawmakers in recent weeks, say that early cases and viral genomes point to a different origin for the pandemic: an illegal wild-animal market in Wuhan. Samples collected from the market were revealed last year to contain genetic material from the coronavirus and from animals like raccoon dogs, a scenario that scientists have said is consistent with a market origin.

Representative Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, a Republican who serves as the chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which held the hearing this month, celebrated the suspension of EcoHealth’s funding. He called it “not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide.”

Representative Raul Ruiz of California, the subcommittee’s top Democrat, also welcomed the decision, describing EcoHealth’s conduct as “a departure from the longstanding legacy of good faith partnerships between the N.I.H. and federal grantees.”

Last year, the Biden administration barred the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving federal funding for a period of 10 years.

The health department said in a statement that EcoHealth had not complied with federal regulations, necessitating that it, too, now be barred. But the health department did not respond to questions about the timing of that decision, nearly three years after most of the facts cited in its assessment were released by health officials.

Benjamin Mueller reports on health and medicine. He was previously a U.K. correspondent in London and a police reporter in New York. More about Benjamin Mueller