Behind the scenes of the government’s areas for research interest

For the uninitiated, areas of research interest (ARIs) can be traced back to the 2015 Nurse review of research councils – and a recommendation for the Government to “improve the way it expresses its own research needs.”

In the words of the Government Office for Science, which led on their development, they are designed to “clearly set out and describe departmental areas of research interest in a series of topics or questions” and “highlight gaps in evidence and knowledge that the department needs.”

As you might expect, ARIs have piqued the interest of the growing ranks of specialist knowledge brokers and impact professionals working in universities. A recent Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) publication described ARIs as “an extensive platform for researchers to explore contributions they might make to supporting evidence-informed policy.”

Launched in September 2023, the ARI Database was something of a revelation. Up until that point UK government departments had churned out PDFs running into dozens of pages. These documents required a wonkish dedication – and no small amount of time – to render useful.

The new database was warmly welcomed by impact enthusiasts in the sector, allowing researchers and professional services staff to quickly search thousands of individual ARIs, matching government demand for insight with internal research strengths and ambition.

Under the skin

The creators of the ARI Database (which only includes government ARIs plus a smattering from some other national bodies and agencies) have stressed that ARIs are not calls for evidence.

It should be noted that ARIs have a wider purpose in that they allow researchers to calibrate their funding proposals to departmental needs, while also giving Whitehall research and evidence teams a handy heads-up on shared departmental interests.

But with REF 2029 coming fast down the tracks – as UPEN has identified – the 2,300 ARI questions in the database present opportunities to develop and support pathways to impact. They offer an alluring line of communication into departmental research and evidence teams, who are strong stakeholders in the process of national policy debate and formulation.

And the idea that helping time-pushed civil servants join the dots between their needs and your institution’s evidence-based solutions won’t give you some type of edge over passive peers seems fanciful.

Knowledge gap

Unlike select committee inquiries, where details of submissions from stakeholders are published, there is no public record of who is engaging with ARIs. So we don’t know which departmental ARI engagement channels are as crowded and noisy as happy hour in the SU bar, and which are as quiet as a 9.00am Monday morning lecture.

What’s more, we have no idea what to expect when, after careful consideration and crafting, our emails are sent to designated departmental addresses – some of which are suspiciously generic. A reply within days, or weeks? Or are we silently added to a list, to await further missives?

This lack of knowledge and understanding of how ARIs engagement works in practice led us to submit a series of Freedom of Information requests to each of the main government departments, asking for details of ARI responses received from 2022 to 2024 – and where possible, redacted copies of email threads.

Academic researchers are increasingly busy people. In our role as impact advisors to them, we felt unable to continue to blindly signpost government ARIs without better insight to inform us about what goes on behind the scenes.

Into the abyss

One of the most stark findings was that for several months, the ARIs email inbox for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FDCO) was not even being checked. Email threads reveal that officials, when they did finally reply, were advising researchers that ARIs (which date back to FCO days) were out of date and no longer relevant. These very same ARIs still remain live on the database.

In other emails released to us, we see internal confusion from staff over who “owns” ARIs inquiries and how best to deal with them – hinting at a lack of enthusiasm for the whole process.

In one instance, a perfectly reasonable academic inquiry about an ARI is knocked straight into the long grass, because a staff member (bewilderingly) treats it as a request for research funding. In some instances the owner of the ARIs and those dealing with inquiries are different, creating conditions that are ripe for delay and cul-de-sacs.

Then there’s engagement that gets caught up in the bureaucracy of government; ARIs launched but further dialogue stonewalled until a new Chief Scientific Advisor was appointed and in post.

Across the data released to us, we see that the lag in responses – and even basic acknowledgements – can be weeks, sometimes months.

It’s certainly not all bad and there are several encouraging bright pockets. We see examples of good practice in dealing with ARI engagement; the Department for Education, for example, is well-known for being responsive and proactive, running webinars and physical roadshows that seek to involve a wide variety of universities in its ARIs.

The trick here, then, is to know where to invest your time and effort, matching up your strength with the needs of departments that show signs of being genuinely invested in ARIs – and have a system and resources to deal with the expressions of interest that are invited.

The usual suspects

In terms of who is responding to ARIs, it’s perhaps not a revelation that data shows Russell Group institutions are dominant. Outside of that, data suggests that those making most use of ARI engagement are institutions with specialist policy engagement functions or initiatives – including the likes of Manchester Met with its unique Metropolis thinktank.

Our research also suggests that overall email engagement with ARIs in the last two years runs into a couple of hundred academics, which is very low when you consider there are 50,000 dedicated research staff working in UK universities according to HESA.

Through our work, we have learned there is no dedicated budget or resource for marketing the ARI Database – something that if left unaddressed is likely to keep skewing engagement towards the proactive, better-resourced institutions.

ARI Database analytics shared with us suggest that on some days the site gets only a handful of visits. Having invested north of £50,000 creating the ARI Database (the equivalent to some institutions’ annual policy support fund allocation), relying on ad hoc plugs to get the word out seems like a big missed opportunity.

There are valuable contributions to key government knowledge gaps to be made by academics at modern, applied and specialist universities. But at the very least they need to know the ARI Database actually exists and is open to them, through effective communications and marketing.

When updated ARIs are published, some kind of accompanying service level agreement could also help inspire more confidence in the engagement process and focus minds internally.

New Labour, new opportunity

As the new UK government gets to work, amended ARIs are expected to be produced by the various departments. These will be eagerly awaited by a dedicated band of ARI-watchers, me included.

There is a chance to better harness and unlock the potential of ARIs for better policy making, working in partnership with all our UK universities – rather than just the usual crowd.

More thinking and positive action is needed to ensure the hard work put into building the ARI Database as a shop window isn’t undermined – and its potential limited – by low awareness, patchy processes and a lack of internal commitment.

You can find further information here about Whetstone Communications’ report Untapped impact: influencing government policy through ARIs. A free UPEN webinar that explores and discusses the findings of the research in more detail is being held on Wednesday 16 October, 1.00-2.00pm.