In collaboration with ADR UK, RCM Cooperative facilitated the co-creation of a set of recommended operating principles (technical and socio-technical) for research communities working with administrative data.
We ensured the guidelines reflected the priorities of both ADR UK and the community leaders by developing a high degree of trust and alignment between all involved, using our deep expertise of working with academic communities and our inclusive collaboration approach.
Strategic objectives & methodology
We used a multi-modal engagement strategy to achieve four primary goals:
Network Seeding: Established a network of ADR UK community leaders from diverse sectors with four Nations representation.
Principles Development: Used an iterative prioritisation process to define generalisable operating principles for communities.
Capacity Building: Delivered foundational training in the skills, structures and staging required for effective research community management.
Equitable Collaboration: Provided experiential learning of equitable co-creation process, ensuring participants felt empowered as experts in the collaborative development of recommendations.
Recommendations for community success
Together we identified four essential pillars for the success of ADR UK’s research communities:
Collaborative Infrastructure: A critical requirement for robust digital and physical co-working spaces to ensure broad participation and opportunities for members to discover synergies.
Brand Visibility and Legitimisation: A desire for formal recognition by the funding body through visible branding and dedicated space on official platforms to enhance credibility with stakeholders.
Operational Efficiency: The adoption and communication of clear objectives, meeting agendas, and community charters to respect participant time and ensure high-value knowledge exchange.
Community-Led Missions: A strong preference for models where activities emerge organically from member interests rather than top-down prescriptions, aligning with academic freedom.
Outcomes
High Engagement: The programme attracted consistent participation throughout both the online and in‑person phases.
Knowledge Transfer: Participants reported that the activities meaningfully strengthened their understanding of how to build and support research communities.
Immediate Application: Many participants indicated they planned to put their learning into practice straight away, either in their day‑to‑day roles, in teaching, or within public‑facing research activities.
Empowerment: Participants felt their contributions were genuinely valued by ADR UK and that they were well supported to share their expertise.
Impact
Following the workshops, one participant was successfully awarded funds to set up the UK Data Linkage Community (UK DLC). The community lead and participant in our project, Mike Edwards had this to say about the impact of our work:
“Before this workshop, I was very unlikely to seek funding to establish a community. The course gave me the frameworks to clearly formulate my vision for the UK DLC, which was essential in presenting a successful proposal to funders, co-chairs and potential community members. Discussions with a diverse group of participants and the RCM Cooperative team helped me refine our goals and gave me the confidence to communicate my work across different audience levels. The ‘Empowered Groups’ participation framework really struck a chord, and has become the core narrative for our community development. It has also been really well received by the wider community and provides a lot of mutual benefits across the ecosystem.” (Mike Edwards, University of Swansea)
Further communities are soon to be launched, lead by the leaders we supported in this project! ❤️
What happened next
ADR UK have worked hard to develop their internal organisational policies to meet their communities need for ‘Brand Visibility and Legitimisation’. Some notable next steps planned by ADR UK include:
Recognition of communities with a formal ‘affiliate’ status;
A communities logo;
Listing on the ADR UK website;
Increased resourcing and strategic focus on supporting communities.
This work is a strong demonstration of ADR UK’s commitment to meet the needs voiced by their community leaders, building on the trust which is essential for successful community engagement.
RCM Cooperative’s specialised service model
RCM Cooperative provides the expertise necessary to scale these outcomes for your organisation:
RCM Training and skill-building: Programs of training, mentorship, and “Community Clinics”, to support community leaders in developing professional skill sets and navigation of community leadership issues as they arise.
Cohort development: Building connections and relationships between community leaders to strengthen their capacity for collaboration and collective action.
Collaboration Cafés: Facilitated online co-working to support complex co-creation into valuable community outputs.
Community data collection and communication: Community data management and interactive visualisations to monitor the impact of investment in your communities.
In partnership with the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI), RCM Cooperative successfully delivered a pilot training program designed to formalise and professionalise the Research Community Management role. This initiative recognises the growing number of Research Software Engineers (RSEs), and particularly SSI Fellows, who are leading community projects but have little access to training in community management practices and strategy.
Strategic objectives & methodology
The project was structured around our “RCM101” framework, focusing on the functional and strategic processes required to lead sustainable research communities.
Curriculum Development and Training Delivery: Creation and delivery of reusable training materials covering fundamental skills including guidance for assessment, structuring, and staging engagement methods for managing communities.
Interactive Pedagogy: Facilitating post-training “Community Clinics” to contextualise the practical frameworks and ground theoretical RCM principles in real-world research challenges.
Open Science Methodology: Throughout the process, we ensured adherence to open science principles by providing recorded sessions, templates, and documentation for asynchronous learning and future reuse. A citable version of all resources were published on GitHub and Zenodo.
Outcomes
Proof of need: The partnership validated the need for community strategy focused training and resources, and in particular, highlighted the value of facilitated group coaching in the form of Community Clinics.
Alignment across communities: Participants highlighted the significant value of our frameworks and articulated processes, supporting alignment in the use of these tools across RSE roles.
Communicating about their work: In their feedback, participants highlighted the impact of the simple metaphors we used to describe RCM work, such as “Documentation is our love language”, “RCMs are glue”, and “If you are doing it alone, you are doing it wrong”. They also valued the framing around the purpose of communities as both a marketing tool and complex problem-solving ecosystem.
Although a foundational training, these facilitated sessions served as an important instrument to help participants understand the core concepts and practices of Research Community Management. A dedicated safe space for open interaction allowed the learners to dig deeper into how best practices could be applied in their work, and improve how they communicate about what they do, using shared language and accessible metaphors.
”The training and clinics were immensely helpful and boosted my confidence as a community manager! The tools made it easier to analyse key factors, map out activities, and ideate potential solutions that play a key role in community management. This has made me more time-efficient and able to prioritise my responsibilities and goals for the community. The discussions helped me understand new methodologies and approaches to project management, governance and collaboration, which has been useful in scaffolding other projects and helped me identify new collaboration opportunities. The reminders to acknowledge our wins more often and trust the process were crucial for me. They made me reflect on what we have already achieved as a community and left me excited for what’s coming up!”
What happened next
Following this training, SSI has commissioned OLS and RCM Cooperative to deliver “RCM for Leaders” training as part of their Cohort Based Open Leadership Training and Mentoring programme, funded by DisCouRSE - a UKRI-funded Network+ project that will encourage and support the development of leaders across all digital Research Technical Professional (dRTP) roles.
Cassandra Gould van Praag was selected as an SSI Fellow this year, through a competitive application and assessment process. She will be joining Emma Karoune and Malvika Sharan among a large network of Fellows dedicated to improving software in research.
RCM Cooperative’s specialised service model
RCM Cooperative leverages the breadth of our expertise to bring bespoke community solutions to your organisation.
Professional RCM Training: We deliver the RCM101 curriculum, tailored to your sector’s specific technical and social requirements.
Strategic Coaching & Mentorship: We offer “Community Clinics” to help project leads navigate complex member environments and build consensus.
Open Infrastructure Design: We provide technical expertise in setting up equitable collaboration tools (e.g., GitHub, Slack) and documented workflows to ensure operational transparency.
Stay connected and shape the direction of our work
Open to anyone who wants to stay connected to the RCM Cooperative and the wider practice of Research Community Management.
Community membership will be offered to anyone who has either:
Attended at least two events in a year, and/or;
Demonstrated sustained engagement and contribution to RCM Cooperative the via our communication channels for a minimum of three months.
Once the membership offer is accepted, it is valid for 1 year.
Community members vote on high strategic decisions such as elections the Board, approving changes to our constitution, rules and governing policies, special resolutions and profit distribution. Every Community Member gets one vote. All Community Member votes combined count for 25% of the total outcome on each voting decision.
For people actively shaping the cooperative’s work by taking responsibility for a deliverable or sustained active involvement in decision-making and activities.
Core membership will be offered to anyone who has:
Contributed for a minimum of six months toward a Co-Op deliverable; and/or
Shown consistent active engagement and contribution to our community workspaces for a minimum of six months.
Once the membership offer is accepted, it is valid for 1 year.
Core members vote on high strategic decisions such as electing the Board, approving changes to our constitution, rules and governing policies, special resolutions and profit distribution. Core members are additionally eligible to stand for the Board and to review cooperative publications. Every Core Member gets one vote. All Core Member votes combined count for 75% of the total outcome on each voting decision.
Our Code of Conduct sets out how we engage with each other, across the co-op and any spaces we facilitate. We’re committed to a welcoming, harassment-free environment for everyone, and we take a restorative approach when things go wrong, focusing on repairing harm and rebuilding trust rather than punishment. Concerns can be raised directly with our Directors, and all reports are handled with care and confidentiality.
Alexandra is Senior Research Community Manager for BridgeAI at The Alan Turing Institute, where she supports UK organisations, particularly SMEs, to adopt and benefit from AI. She joined the Institute in 2023 as Research Project Manager for The Turing Way, where she supported the launch of the Practitioners Hub and contributed to the project professionalising infrastructure and research roles in data science.
Before moving into research, Alexandra led as CEO of a 250-staff theatre production company and subsequently managed research projects on mental health and wellbeing across the UK and Global South. She has also founded an award-winning SME in London. This breadth of experience, spanning community building, organisational leadership, and research practice, informs her approach to cooperative development.
She is also a mentor for Laboratoria+, supporting the professional leadership of women across Latin America.
Danny is a neuroscientist and meta-scientist, who splits their time between researching colour vision and trying to make academia more accessible, more efficient, and happier. They currently use their time being the community manager for the Digital Reserch Academy, starting a housing co-op (and helping others to do the same), and thinking about how co-ops might be a useful business structure for groups of people working in (and around) research.
Sara is a researcher with more than 10 years of experience in experimental and computational resarch in healthcare (cancer and neuroscience genomics). She is a natural problem solver, and thrives working collaboratively and including different disciplines and actors into her and other’s research.
Sara’s collaborative nature has led her to work as a Community manager for different scientific communities, like The Turing Way (shere she is part of the Community Management Working Group), DSxHE and OLS. Her love for continuous improvement drives her training work, where she is working on bringing open science skills to diverse actors and projects.
Sara believes in empowering people to do what they do best, and has a special interest in introducing open leadership and training concepts to academia. Always putting people first.
Cass has a PhD in Neuroscience (2014) and 5 years experience building data science communities across a broad range of sectors at the Alan Turing Institute and University of Oxford, with a particular focus on embedding open research practices.
With both qualitative and quantitative research expertise, she is a skilled analyst, strategist and creative problem solver.
She aims for maximum transparency and reproducibility in her work, and prioritises inclusive and joyful participation.
She is a contributor to The Turing Way, an inaugural participant of the Wellcome Trust Success on the Board programme, and Co-Founder of Open Research Calendar.
Emma is a Principal Researcher at the Alan Turing Institute, leading the Research Community Management team.
She applies her open research and community-building expertise to a range of projects in health and biomedical sectors, and The Turing Way.
She also leads initiatives focused on professionalizing data science roles and advancing biomedical data science careers.
Emma has a PhD in Archaeobotany, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow and a FAIR Data Stewardship Training Fellow, dedicated to promoting accessible, inclusive, and open scholarship practices in research.
Malvika is an open source/science practitioner, educator and leader with a background in life sciences and bioinformatics.
Previously, she held research and leadership roles at The Alan Turing Institute and European Molecular Biology Laboratory, where she led and scaled data science and bioinformatics community initiatives, notably The Turing Way and EMBL’s Bio-IT.
Malvika co-founded Open Life Science (OLS), an international training, mentoring and capacity builiding organisation, before co-founding RCM Cooperative to mobilise and connect Research Community Managers from across organisations.
She has advised initiatives like NASA Open Science, the Society of RSE, Open Bioinformatics Foundation and Data Science Without Borders.
Malvika is a Mozilla Open Leaders Fellow, Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, and was named among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics (2024) and INvolve Empower Top 100 Future Leaders (2025). A lifelong learner, Malvika is dedicated to improving open research, community building, collaboration, governance, and ethical practices in data science and AI.
