2.2 Research, development, and innovation activities and artistic activities with impact

HEI's self-assessment

Research, development and innovation (RDI) with a purpose

Our commitment to improving the lives of individuals, the success of businesses, and the society in general while also advancing science begins already at the planning stage of RDI projects. We actively engage with the industries, municipalities, and other organisations to identify areas, where our RDI activities might create change for the better. We work with trends and phenomena to identify areas where RDI work is most impactful and supports the society in a meaningful way. The activity creating probably the biggest impact is integrating RDI into learning. The work we carry out in our RDI projects serves our teaching and learning activities by creating new knowledge and competences.

Commitment to open RDI at the policy level and in practice

Haaga-Helia is committed to the Declaration for Open Science and Research, which has been jointly created by the Finnish research community and approved by the Finnish National Open Science and Research Steering Group.

The starting point for open RDI is to open up infrastructures and environments, data and materials, methods, and results when possible. Our recently implemented Research Data Policy guides our open and responsible RDI activities. We have created our recommendations and guidelines for open RDI activities jointly with research services, library and IT services. In addition, data protection officer and lawyer were involved in the work. The guidelines can be found on Haaga-Helia’s Open RDI website. The website is updated based on new solutions and recommendations for open RDI.

We develop our competences and raise awareness on open RDI activities in many ways. Examples include campus tours, RDI coffees, open online guides and academic writing training with open RDI as one theme.

We participate in the national level development e.g. by being an active partner in the national UAS network for open RDI. Our goal is to develop open RDI activities and competences and foster a transition towards increasingly open RDI activities. In our development work we also take into account international open RDI policies through joint commitment to open RDI together with Ulysseus partners.

Clear processes for ensuring responsible research conduct

We are committed to follow all guidelines for the responsible conduct of research and for handling allegations of misconduct (the RCR guidelines), outlined and published by The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK), appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

We have a clear process outlining the responsibilities for the handling of research permits when the research targets our students, staff, or alumni. Externally funded RDI activities go through a process for acceptance where the person responsible for the project proposal receives permission to start preparing the project. This ensures commitment to responsible RDI activities.

Picture 18. RDI project preparation process
Picture 18. RDI project preparation process

Haaga-Helia is a member of The Human Sciences Ethics Committee of the Helsinki Region Universities of Applied Sciences providing ethical review and statements to its member organisations. Additionally, the committee promotes training in research integrity, contributes towards maintaining and enhancing the quality of research and serves as an expert body on research integrity. All of our researchers can ask the committee for an ethical review.

Monitoring and enhancing the societal engagement and impact of RDI

Societal impact is achieved through our actively open operating models. We follow up on the impact of our RDI projects systematically by conducting an impact survey to all RDI projects. The results of the survey are analysed at the Haaga-Helia level and compiled into an annual RDI impact report. All project leaders are committed to publishing a blog text on the impact of the project.

Given our objective to grow and internationalise our project portfolio, we enhance our influence on EU’s RDI policies together with our 3AMK partners by improving our understanding of EU decision making, building strategic plans and networks for long-term EU influencing and by creating knowledge on how to write successful proposals with impact for the EU. We also work in close collaboration with Helsinki EU Office to reach these goals.

Our researchers have strong individual networks creating impact. Our strategic 3AMK and Ulysseus alliances provide opportunities to build reliable consortia and successful projects with impact. Going forward, we also need to better involve our existing business partners in RDI activities.

Participating the scientific discussion and communicating with the wider public

We publish the results of RDI activities in open channels whenever it does not conflict with the terms of the funder, partners, or publisher. All RDI projects have a communication plan, according to which the results are published. Articles published by our staff in scholarly journals, series, conference proceedings, or other compilations are included in the open access national Theseus-archive.

One of our key open publishing channels is eSignals. It is Haaga-Helia’s online journal, where our experts discuss current topics in an interesting and effective way. We describe how we, together with businesses, develop education and the surrounding society. Articles submitted by our experts and students are processed by the eSignals editorial committee.

 

Strengths Enhancement areas
Systematic follow-up of RDI activities Involving more of our commercial partners in RDI
Ulysseus alliance increases EU project and funding possibilities Further implementation of phenomenon-based approach
Institutional level RDI Processes from preparation to publication Building a solid project administration support
Clear plan for increasing the ambition level of peer-reviewed publications Developing common and joint metrics for evaluating research activities with partners both nationally and internationally

Assessment of the audit team

Haaga-Helia collects relevant information on its RDI activities in order to enhance its performance

Clear procedures have been defined to apply for and conduct RDI projects. The project manager of every RDI project produces a final report that explicitly describes the societal impact of the respective project. This aims to guarantee that project managers and other members of the RDI project team are aware of the importance of the societal impact of their RDI activities. An annual RDI impact report provides an overview at the Haaga-Helia level.

RDI projects are required to comply with the overall Haaga-Helia strategy. According to the researchers that have been interviewed, Haaga-Helia has a much stronger interest in developing effectiveness and business cooperation compared to traditional research universities. Nevertheless, the interviewed researchers did not feel restricted due to the frame provided by Haaga-Helia’s RDI strategy.

Haaga-Helia should increase the provided resources for RDI projects in order to improve societal engagement and impact

Existing regional and international networks are used to initiate Haaga-Helia’s RDI activities. A good example for RDI activities in the region is the engagement of Haaga-Helia in the project “Finnish AI region” with a total budget of approximately 3,2 million euros coordinated by the City of Helsinki. It addresses mainly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the region and the topic is both application and future-oriented. The auditors encourage Haaga-Helia in this venture as it presents many future potentials.

Despite the intrinsic motivation of many staff members, there were signals that human resources for RDI projects at Haaga-Helia are limited. Currently, only 39% of teachers are involved in externally and competitively funded RDI projects, and just 9% of their time is dedicated to RDI activities. To improve and expand RDI activities, the audit-team recommends that Haaga-Helia should acquire more external funding for RDI projects. Doing so would likely lead to an increase in the number of permanent researchers at the institution, which is currently comparably low.

Refereed publications should increase the visibility and acceptance of Haaga-Helia’s RDI activities

Haaga-Helia´s management is clearly committed to open science. Haaga-Helia has signed a declaration for Open Science and Research. Recommendations and guidelines are available and accessible via Haaga-Helias’s Open RDI website, which is updated frequently. The number of publications has increased significantly during the last few years. In the time span from 2018 to 2021, the number of publications almost doubled. However, only a minority (in 2021 app. 11%) of the publications were refereed articles. It is recommended that the percentage of refereed publications should increase. That would increase Haaga-Helia´s impact and visibility in the research community.

Approximately half of all articles have been published via Haaga-Helia’s own open publishing channel eSignals. Haaga-Helia is responsible for ensuring that scientific quality requirements are met. This is the responsibility of the editorial committee. The audit team recommends that Haaga-Helia should evaluate the application of Open Science recommendations and guidelines in their RDI projects on a medium-term time span.