University of St Andrews Outcome Agreement 2018-19 1. Introduction 1.1 To expand and deepen our understanding of the world, the University of St Andrews nurtures and attracts academics and professionals of the highest international standing. We strive to create an environment that encourage curiosity and tirelessly pushes human enquiry forward. Advancement and excellence are amongst our core values and have driven enquiry and discovery at this university for over six centuries. 1.2 This endeavour exposes our students to the practice of academic disciplines in action, introduces them to researchers and teachers who dedicate their lives to scholarship and ensures that they join us in an internationally Scottish community of ideas. Our commitment to research-led teaching distinguishes us and enables us to develop the talents and ambitions of students into innovative, global opportunities. 1.3 The University is proud of and actively supports the benefits this brings to the national economy (£422.8m GVA in 2014/15), employment (6,600 jobs), Scottish cultural and intellectual life, and the education system. 1.4 In November 2017, the Scottish Government introduced ‘intensification’ to speed up the delivery on key Government priorities which also included a stipulation for a regional approach to delivery. The University’s key contributions to intensification are focused on the delivery of national access objectives, where the Principal continues to offer leadership as coordinating chair of the Universities Scotland admissions group, and as member of the Scottish Government’s Access Delivery Group; and regional collaboration. We are committed to meeting ambitious targets in respect of the percentage population from the most deprived backgrounds, SIMD20, and contextual admissions. Our key regional engagements are centred on the Tay Cities deal bid, Access to Rural Communities Programme and the new collaborative graduate entry Medical programme, ScotGEM. 1.5 As part of widening access, we are committed to achieving the outcomes recommended by the Commissioner for Widening Access (COWA) report. By 2020/21, we aim to have 10% of our Scottish domiciled entrants from SIMD20 areas through increasing our intake each year incrementally. This will be a significant achievement for St Andrews and a step change compared with 2008/09, when the SIMD20 intake was 3.0% (16 students), compared with 7.4% in 2017/18 (42 students). To achieve this target, we build on the work from the previous years, such as focusing outreach programmes, adding routes from FE (articulation), summer Schools and gateway programmes. From 2018/19, we are introducing the new Gateway to Arts and Humanities. 1.6 The diversity of our international student and staff body is a major strength of the University of St Andrews. It enhances the quality and cultural enrichment of our learning, teaching and research activities, and encourages diversity of thought across the activities of the institution. 1.7 Our dedication to pushing knowledge to its limits requires us to be co-operative and resourceful (ranked 35th in the world for International collaboration in The Leiden World Scientific Ranking). By working to ensure academic and civic cultures talk to and respect each other, we can contribute expertise to challenges including Brexit, healthcare, social justice, climate change, and international security. 1.8 However, tackling inequality of opportunity is not simply about University admissions. While we are championing contextualised admissions to ensure socio-economic factors do not restrain the potential of any Scottish student with the talent and ambition to excel, we are working in a variety of ways, across disciplines, to promote fairness: The University is a key partner in a new UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence – examining ways in which the availability, cost and design of housing impacts on people’s aspirations, their health and wellbeing, and children’s education; Our School of Management is playing a critical role in understanding the relationships between economic development, welfare policy and inequality; Our Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance is developing new perspectives on financial inclusion; 1.9 Our contribution to the research published earlier this year, Delivering Diversity1, made clear recommendations that British businesses must break their silence on the under- representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups in key roles. 1.10 We are excellent at what we do – Times Higher Education ranked St Andrews top in Scotland and 14th in the UK for the quality of our research output in REF 20142, with over 70% of research submitted judged to be world leading or internationally excellent. 1.11 Taken together, these are clear evidence of an open, welcoming place where people set out every day to learn new things, test innovative ideas, and transform our intellectual inheritance. These values and ambitions are currently constrained by a high degree of uncertainty which is felt right across our operating environment, including short-term funding commitments. For this reason, we will focus our Outcome Agreement on the year ahead, in order to ensure our expectations are measurable and realistic. We will set out clear outcomes in terms of our defining contributions: innovative research; research-led teaching; widening access and participation; promoting leadership, empowering communities; and maintaining a reputation for excellence. It is in these ways that we will help define Scotland’s place in the world. 1http://www.managers.org.uk/~/media/Files/PDF/Insights/CMI_BAM_Delivering_Diversity_2017_Full_Report_Website_Copy.pdf 2 https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ref-2014-results-table-of-excellence/2017590.article Page 2 of 22 2. Innovative Research 2.1 World leading research is at the heart of what St Andrews does, as evidenced by our performance in REF 2014. 2.2 Interdisciplinarity 2.2.1 Supporting collaborative and interdisciplinary work is key to achieving our goals. Research at the University of St Andrews takes place within and across our academic schools, with the University supporting a large number of cross-discipline or cross- institutional research Centres and Institutes3 where collective endeavours are delivering added value. 2.2.2 The success of the joint submissions to REF 2014 by St Andrews with the University of Edinburgh in Chemistry and in Physics and Astronomy is a direct result of the Scottish research pooling initiatives. These pools continue to benefit the training and development of postgraduate and post-doctoral researchers. We continue to investigate new and innovative ways to engage with researchers on a global platform. 2.2.3 To help cement Scotland’s reputation as a leader in oceanic research and species protection, construction has already begun on the Gatty Project4 . When complete the Centre will deliver a modern, world-class marine biology facility which will be the permanent base of the Scottish Oceans Institute and will include the Sea Mammal Research Unit, and the executive office of the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS)5. 2.2.4 Our commitment to research excellence is demonstrated by the establishment of a number of new, often interdisciplinary, research centres, including: the Centre for Minorities Research, the Centre for Poetic Innovation, the Centre for Anatolian and East Mediterranean Studies, the Centre for Philanthropy and the Public Good, the Centre for Exoplanet Science, and the Centre for Landscape Studies. 2.2.5 In general, we promote and support cross-disciplinary research impact projects through mechanisms such as Research Council Impact Acceleration Accounts, Global Challenges funding and the University’s internal KE & Impact Fund. 2.3 Open research 2.3.1 The University of St Andrews is strongly committed to ensuring the widest possible access to its research6 and to supporting the opportunities that the move to open scholarship provides7. We have had an open access policy in place since 2013 and a research data management policy since 20148. We established an Open Research Steering Group in 2016 to oversee the University’s alignment with the evolving open research policy and cultural environment. 2.3.2 The Institution is closely monitoring compliance with the ‘REF2021: Decisions on staff and outputs’. Our current levels of compliance (at Feb 2018) with both REF2021 and RCUK policies exceed 90% and we continue to encourage open access for publications outside the scope of these policies. 3 https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/research/university/centres/ 4 https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2016/title,344202,en.php 5 http://www.masts.ac.uk/ 6 https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/services/researchsupport/openaccess/oapolicy/ 7 https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/about/governance/university-strategy/ 8 https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/staff/policy/research/researchdata/ Page 3 of 22 2.3.3 As of July 2017, 10,000 open access outputs (articles, conference proceedings, theses, datasets) have been logged in our institutional repository and are available from our public research portal9. We will continue to support our authors in making their outputs as widely available as possible. 2.3.4 We provide 0.5TB of secure, resilient, centrally-managed data storage for all Principal Investigators with additional storage available at a highly competitive rate. We are a pilot institution in the £ 1 million Jisc Research Data Shared Service project10, which aims to provide cost-effective