Ted Hewitt, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) visited Queen’s University on Wednesday, Jan. 13, with executive vice-president Brent Herbert-Copley, to speak with students, faculty and administration. During his visit he participated in a roundtable with graduate students, met with Principal Daniel Woolf and Steven Liss, Vice-Principal (Research), and presented an update on the ongoing and future vision of SSHRC to faculty members and researchers in a town hall meeting. Afterwards, Gazette editor Andrew Carroll spoke with Dr. Hewitt about the organization’s role in the ever-changing field of research and research training.

GAZETTE: Looking ahead, how can SSHRC ensure that Canada maintains or improves its position as a global leader in social science and humanities research and training?

TED HEWITT: Our mandate, in some respects, is not very complicated. As it is stated in the legislation that created us, there are two aspects to our mission: one is to promote and support research and training in the social sciences and humanities; and second, to provide advice to the minister in certain areas that touch upon this mandate. One of the key things for us, given the nature of the mandate and its fundamental objectives, is to deliver on it the best way we can and ensure excellence in all aspects. 
That entails making sure our processes are maintained at a very high level, that we compare internationally, that we constantly undertake reviews and evaluations, that we listen, through visits like this, to our colleagues, that we engage effectively with the academic community and that we engage effectively with government and with other stakeholders. 

We are also in the process of finalizing our strategic plan for 2017-2020. That is directed wholly towards maintaining the high quality of service and the high quality of operation within SSHRC and we’re looking at doing that with a focus in three areas: helping researchers build and maintain excellence in research and the changing research environment of the 21st Century, through inter-disciplinary work, international work, digital scholarship and so on; focusing on the need to leverage and develop partnerships that would allow us to expand the range, scope and impact of our funding; and making sure that all of our stakeholders in the community and the Canadian public in general are aware of the importance of this work. 

GAZETTE: How is SSHRC promoting greater investment in Canadian research from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors?     

TH: There are a couple of elements to this. One is promoting a strong working relationship with government, and in this case with the new government, to make sure they are well apprised of the contribution that we make to research in social science and humanities in Canada and, through our mandate again, to government itself in terms of policy development and to assisting the government to achieve its goals.  This in turn assists us in making the case for new or additional support that would help us to expand the work that we do and to provide those benefits at an extended or expanded level. 

The other piece is through leveraging, which I mentioned earlier, which will enable us to work with partners outside government, potentially – typically other agencies such as NSERC, CIHR and MITACS, but also provincial governments. We want to remove barriers where we can and to build opportunities for our researchers to more easily access additional funding programs.

GAZETTE: How is SSHRC promoting greater internationalization of social science and humanities research? 

TH: We are currently focusing our efforts in this regard on the Trans-Atlantic Platform, a European Commission-funded multi-national collaboration bringing together research funding agencies across Europe, North and South America, in order to build a unique and effective funding platform for cross-agency research. That will launch with the first call in February 2016, we expect, in the area of digital scholarship. Other areas of focus will be developed by the consortium in due course.

The second way is actually built into SSHRC’s own funding platforms to encourage international collaboration. Currently, in many programs, such as the Partnership Grant Program, it is possible for co-applicants on grants to be located outside of Canada as long as the primary applicant is in Canada. Through this mechanism, we are able to directly fund the work of partners in other countries. It’s fairly simple – it’s one application, one assessment, one outcome. 

GAZETTE: SSHRC’s plan to advance open science by promoting open access and the stewardship of research data will involve significant changes for institutions and researchers including increased costs. How is SSHRC supporting researchers and institutions as they comply with changing program guidelines?

TH: First let’s look at the open access issue. The policy for that has been in place since May 2015. For the researcher, the costs of ensuring compliance with the policy are eligible expenses within the SSHRC granting process. Researchers may also place near-final versions of their publication on their own repositories or their own websites, so long as articles are searchable or findable, which helps to reduce costs significantly, so long as that’s permitted by the journal in which they published.

On the other hand we are working with institutions and other organizations to ensure that journals, particularly Canadian journals, libraries, other repositories, are in a position to effectively manage the demand that will occur as a result of the policy on open access. It may not mean funding per se since we typically fund researchers but it may mean working with institutions, organizations and the journals to make sure they have or are able to develop the right kind of business models that will allow them to absorb the influx. 

When it comes to data, that is a longer conversation as the focus in the short term is on open access. However, to some extent we will be looking to develop a similar approach when it comes to data management.