When research support works well, it moves the entire institution forward.

Start with real challenges

The forum brought together leaders of grant and project offices from research institutions across the Czech Republic. They were joined by experienced members of the Czech Association of Research Managers and Administrators (CZARMA), who acted as coaches during facilitated sessions and helped participants identify solutions tailored to their institutional contexts.

The first session focused on identifying the key challenges currently faced by grant and project support offices. Regardless of institutional size or research focus, similar issues emerged repeatedly: overloaded teams, unclear definitions of the role of research support, complex communication with institutional leadership and other departments, recruitment and retention of qualified professionals, staff substitutability, and the development of research management competencies.

Participants also shared experiences of moving beyond a reactive project-support model towards a strategic partnership approach that actively contributes to achieving institutional goals. This reflected the forum’s original purpose: to create a space for strategic reflection, experience sharing, and open peer-to-peer discussion with a strong emphasis on practical applicability.

Grant offices as strategic partners

One of the most engaging sessions was the panel discussion on building and developing grant offices.

Insights shared by experts from CATRIN at Palacký University, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague), Masaryk University, and CEITEC demonstrated that effective pre-award support can become a powerful strategic asset for an institution.

Panelists agreed that the trust of researchers and institutional leadership is built through expertise, a service-oriented mindset, consistently high-quality work, and long-term support for researchers facing everyday challenges. Grant specialists should not simply wait for completed proposals shortly before deadlines. Instead, they can play a much more proactive role by identifying funding opportunities, encouraging potential applicants, helping build grant portfolios, and supporting projects with the potential to drive institutional change.

At successful institutions, pre-award support was often closely connected to institutional leadership. This is particularly important for prestigious funding schemes, where a successful application requires significant commitments from the host institution, such as establishing a research group, providing co-funding, allocating space, ensuring access to state-of-the-art equipment, or securing other resources.

Participants exchanged numerous examples of tools and approaches that improve the quality of grant support. These included ERC mock interviews, training programmes for future principal investigators, phased pre-award support models, seed funding for international collaborations, and active work with high-quality proposals that were unsuccessful in their first funding attempt.

Another key topic was the ability to say no. High-quality grant management is not about maximising the number of submitted proposals. Rather, it is about setting priorities thoughtfully, supporting high-quality projects, and managing available capacities responsibly.

People as the foundation of successful research management

The second day focused on leadership, motivation, and professional development.

The morning session, Leadership Essentials, addressed leadership styles, psychological safety, motivation, managerial communication, and decision-making.

In the afternoon, participants returned to working groups to discuss practical questions such as how to recruit and retain talented staff, how to develop team competencies with limited budgets, how to use the RM COMP framework, how to build international consortia, and how to strengthen international partnerships.

The discussions highlighted that professionalising research management begins with recruitment. Effective practices include well-designed vacancy announcements, practical tasks during recruitment processes, multi-stage selection procedures, and realistic expectations. Equally important are onboarding, shadowing experienced colleagues, regular one-to-one meetings, continuous performance feedback, and systematic knowledge sharing within teams.

Considerable attention was also devoted to long-term sustainability. Institutions that invest in the expertise of research managers need to adopt a longer-term perspective by developing career plans, bridge-funding mechanisms, and clear career pathways.

Participants discussed a wide range of professional development opportunities, including international internships, Erasmus+, programmes offered by TC Prague and CZELO, EARMA Academy, CARDEA Academy, professional communities, mentoring schemes, and networking through CZARMA. The consensus was that success depends less on having a large training budget and more on systematically using existing opportunities and sharing acquired knowledge within teams.

Competencies, strategy, and internationalisation

Substantial attention was also given to discussions surrounding the RM COMP framework and the question of how competency development can be linked to institutional strategy.

Participants agreed that competencies only create real value when they are aligned with specific organisational roles and priorities.

A similar conclusion emerged in discussions on internationalisation. Thanks to their knowledge of funding opportunities and international environments, grant specialists increasingly contribute to institutional strategy development and partnership building. However, participants also stressed that international activities should always be linked to long-term institutional objectives and regularly evaluated for their actual impact and added value.

First define what we measure — and why

The third day focused on modern approaches to research assessment.

The session entitled “Leaving the MATRIX” highlighted that the problem is not metrics themselves, but rather their uncritical use.

The fundamental question, therefore, is: What exactly are we trying to measure, and why? Only then can appropriate indicators and assessment tools be selected.

The discussion also explored more contemporary approaches represented by initiatives such as DORA and CoARA, both of which advocate broader and more responsible approaches to research assessment. Participants acknowledged, however, that no assessment model is universally applicable across all disciplines and contexts. Any evaluation system must respect disciplinary differences, contextual factors, and the limitations of individual indicators.

The programme emphasised the need to move beyond simple metric-based scoring towards a balanced combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches that better reflect the actual value and impact of research.

A network of experts that continues beyond the forum

The event concluded with a joint reflection session and the creation of an expertise map among participants, designed to support future collaboration beyond the forum itself.

Participants identified areas where they have experience and are willing to share knowledge with others. As a result, the forum generated not only ideas and inspiration but also new connections and foundations for future cooperation.

This reflects one of CZARMA’s greatest strengths: research management is built on expertise, trust, and a willingness to share experience.

The Strategic Forum demonstrated that the Czech research management community is committed to working together to improve the quality of research support and help institutions succeed in both national and international environments.

At the same time, it confirmed that grant and project support offices face remarkably similar challenges regardless of institutional size or type. Sharing experience, engaging in open discussion, and learning from one another therefore remain some of the most effective ways to advance the profession.

If project and research support is to genuinely move institutions forward, it must be viewed not merely as a service unit, but as a strategic partner that connects institutional strategy, people, funding, and international collaboration. Helping research managers and administrators develop precisely this role remains one of CZARMA’s long-term contributions to the Czech research ecosystem.