Rouages: “Being as close as possible to research”
Delphine Petit and Magali Puech both work in the Research and Doctoral Studies Department (DRED). The former heads the Research Structures and Resources Coordination Service, while the latter heads the Indicators and Steering Service. This month, as part of the "Rouages"video series, they tell us about their jobs.
The DRED is located on the Triolet campus. In Building 7, fourteen people spread across four departments and one office contribute to this essential mission: implementing the University's policy on doctoral training and research. Delphine Petit and Magali Puech are both department heads within this directorate, which works closely with Jacques Mercier, Vice President for Research.
A department dedicated to research policy
"Delphine's and my work is related to research and doctoral training," explains Magali Puech, head of the research steering and indicators department. Still in Building 7, we visit Delphine Petit, who heads the "research structures and resources coordination" department, which has four staff members.
"It's a bit of a mouthful, so among ourselves, we prefer to call it SRECH. In short, my department oversees research facilities, i.e., laboratories, platforms, etc., and the resources allocated to them," explains Delphine Petit. Most of the cases we review are then put to a vote. " This vote refers to the research committee, a body of the academic council where the university's research policy is decided and voted on. "It is up to our two departments, Magali's and mine, to implement this policy, with me focusing on structural, financial, and contractual aspects in relation to research organizations and schools, and Magali focusing on indicators, outreach, open science, and so on."
Magali Puech, producing indicators to improve the visibility of the UM
And indeed, for Magali Puech, whose work involves responding to surveys and producing indicators, among other things, her daily routine most often involves "absolutely gigantic Excel spreadsheets that require a great deal of rigor." Membership indicators take up a large part of her time. "I make sure that researchers mention their affiliation with the University of Montpellier in their publications, and there are more than 4,000 of them each year. This is a key factor in the University's international reputation."
This is central and essential if we hope to climb in international rankings such as Shanghai, which are based, among other things, on the number of publications signed by UM researchers. "Researchers have often kept the habit of mentioning their laboratory or university hospital, which represents a loss for us," she adds . Things are gradually changing, and we now have 85 to 87% of signatures correct," which is double the figure from 10 years ago.
Another indicator monitored by the department is the rate of submissions to the University's HAL portal: "The HAL portal is an open archive where researchers can submit their publications to make them accessible to the international scientific community," explains Magali Puech, who now co-administers the portal with Laure Lefrançois, research support officer at the shared documentation department. This practice is growing in popularity under the terms "open science " and "open access," and for the past three years, Anne Laurent has served as vice president dedicated to this area. "The University is developing a real policy in favor of open science, and this is a major project in my department."
Delphine Petit, coordinating research structures
"My department oversees and monitors the 73 research facilities and 16 technology platforms at the University of Montpellier. This involves a range of activities, starting with updating all information relating to these structures in the Strech application," explains Delphine Petit. Designed and developed by the DRED and DSIN, Strech is a tool accessible from the ENT that allows users to consult the identity files of structures in real time, in particular their supervisory bodies and management.
As its name suggests, Delphine Petit's team is also responsible for allocating financial resources to research structures in accordance with the votes of the research committee. "This concerns grants to research units or doctoral schools, doctoral contracts. It may also concern exceptional resources voted on by the committee."
Another important task for this department is preparing evaluations of research structures by the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES), an independent administrative authority. "My department led this campaign in 2019 and 2020 for all research units and doctoral schools. This requires producing a lot of documents, conducting preliminary surveys to identify any restructuring, and liaising with other supervisory bodies," explains Delphine Petit. "Once these evaluations are complete, we carry out the entire process of creating the structures within the institution and drawing up their contracts."
Two scientific profiles
Although Magali Puech and Delphine Petit's positions are administrative in nature, their specific roles also explain the unique nature of their profiles: both have backgrounds in research. "I have a PhD in biological and medical engineering, " begins Magali Puech. At the beginning of my career, I worked in a laboratory in Lille, then after parental leave and a move, I ended up in administration." Delphine Petit is a chemical engineer. "I also worked in a laboratory and chose to move into administration related to research, first at the DIPA and then at the DRED."
They are certain that these experiences continue to provide them with many advantages in the performance of their duties: "In our daily work, knowing the research environment is a significant foundation, but to really know it, that is, to understand the difficulties and constraints, you have to have practiced it a minimum amount; this is reflected in the way we interact with our interlocutors," they conclude.