HE-BCI major review

Aim: Improving the reporting of KE interactions to show where they are happening at a local, regional, national and international level. This will include the disaggregation of current cumulative frequency counts, defined by their location.

Desired outcomes:

• Allow for the monitoring of the extent of reach of provider knowledge exchange.
• Support provider strategic commitments to addressing local socio-economic requirements.
• Support initiatives to strengthen national capabilities, for example the Northern Ireland’s ambition to achieve a 10x Economy, the Connecting Capabilities and Strength in Places Funds.
• Align HE-BCI to complementary data collections such as the Scottish Funding Council’s KE Metrics submission.

Proposals (in development):

• Introduction of geographic disaggregation of collaborative partnerships data to identify those taking place across a local, regional, national and international scale.

Aim: Improving the focus of KE-related commercial activity beyond exploitation of intellectual property (IP). Additionally, improve the monitoring of commercialisation over time to present better view of the impacts on society and wider communities. 

Desired outcomes:

• Allow for assessment of the social value and wider contributions of IP exploitation in the form of company turnovers and job creation
• A demonstration of the breadth, scale, and value of IP dissemination
• Develop a greater understanding of the benefits of provider investment in spin-outs and start-ups

Proposals (in development):

• Review of patent lifecycles and further work to identify provider co-authorship.
• Consider implications of perpetual and open licenses.
• Better understand spin-out lifecycles over the longer term and explore measures of longevity and cessation of spin-out status, by collecting company identifiers.
• Considerations of provider ownership and cessation of provider input to continued knowledge transfer.
• A proposed experimental data collection to investigate use of linked Intellectual Property Office (IPO) data.
• Collection of patent application numbers from a sample of institutions.
• Work alongside IPO to obtain datasets.
• Exploration of analytical capabilities of returned datasets.
• Further details to be announced.

Aim: Improving the record of impact and value of social and cultural interactions. Including focused reporting on social and cultural interactions with non-for-profit and third-sector organisations.

Desired outcomes:

• Support providers' demonstration of a commitment to the civic mission – align to the requirements of similar funding priorities, for example Innovation and Engagement Funding and Industrial Challenges funding in Wales and 10x Economy in Northern Ireland.
• Enhance the demonstration of the social and cultural value of provider KE interactions.
• Demonstrate the diversity of communities providers strategically engage with.
• Understand how provider KE interactions contribute to local and national policy-making.

Proposals (in development):

• Expansion to a notion of civic engagement – including but not limited to social and cultural interactions.
• Requirement to evidence public engagement in research.
• Requirement to expand engagement to include partnerships with local authorities and third-sector organisations.

Aim: Exploring the possible links between the HE-BCI data collection and existing HESA records to better understand the diversity of key agents of KE within providers.

Desired outcomes:

• Improved understanding of E&D characteristics of Students and Staff as agents of knowledge exchange.

Proposals (in development):

• Investigation of potential introduction of a KE-related variable within HESA Staff and Student/Student Alternative records to link existing E&D microdata to HE-BCI themes.

Aim: Improve the recording of in-kind contributions to collaborative partnerships and providing enhanced guidance on how to assign values. Improving the focus given to the value and benefit of the contribution to the provider because of the partnership.

Desired outcomes:

• Improved consistency in the reporting of in-kind contributions.
• Enhancing HEP confidence in assigning value to in-kind contributions.
• Improving the application of the record to a diversity of contribution types.
• Support UK funders’ confidence in reported in-kind data.

Proposals (in development):

• Broadening the coverage of in-kind contributions
• Re-defining contributions as those believed to have a social or cultural value that otherwise could not be obtained outside of the collaborative partnership.
• Suggested, but not prescriptive, methodology recommendations – i.e. market/sector value equivalent valuations, or costs to replicate contributions (intangible).
• Support providers in confidently assigning monetary values to contributions and align requirements external data collections.
• Encouragement to use standardised letters of support when establishing collaborations and partnerships.
• Enhanced guidance on receipt of contributions split across multiple providers – account for differing levels of use of contribution.

Aim: Broadening the concepts of agents of KE and enhancing the representation of the diversity of those participating in KE within providers.

Desired outcomes:

• Improved representation of the types of agents engaging in KE at providers.
• Allow for the inclusion of KE interactions currently excluded from coverage due to those involved.
• Allow providers to demonstrate their strategic commitment to supporting staff and students in engaging with KE – as demonstrated by the KE Concordat.

Proposals (in development):

• Inclusion of student contributions – both paid and voluntary student engagement.
• Widen the coverage of KE contributions to include a broader range of provider staff where currently limited to staff or contract type.