SHAREing’s organisation

Working groups: how we identify what SHAREing should provide

SHAREing is organised into various working groups, each responsible for a few work packages. The groups meet sporadically and organise most of their work asynchronously via email and Slack conversations. Their core job is to run scoping exercises: the groups brainstorm which types of activities SHAREing should fund in the future to accomplish its vision. Eventually, the working groups write and collect proposals for miniprojects that they want to see implemented to push the work package’s agenda further—essentially, to fill SHAREing with content.

Calls for miniprojects

Once the consortium has approved the miniprojects, SHAREing advertises these projects. RTPs or groups of RTPs can bid to realise the miniprojects that SHAREing wants to commission in this phase. Bids typically comprise an estimate of the arising costs, an envisaged timeframe, and all the realisation details of how the team plans to meet the project’s deliverables.

We expect regular calls for projects (3-4 per annum), and in each call there are many different projects on the table describing what the consortium wants to see delivered. Obviously, there’s usually quite some scope for how this will be achieved. Some projects deliver actual reports or training material, others comprise the organisation of events or questionnaires, case studies, or general services to the community.

Miniproject selection

The bids for miniprojects are collected by SHAREing’s admin office. It is then the job of the Advisory Board to rank the bids for projects. The board selects them taking into account how to get the best value for money, cover all the flavours of RTPs, how realistic it is that a team will succeed, and, obviously, how much budget we have available per call. Eventually the board commissions projects from all the suggestions and bids submitted. If we fail to find people who are interested in a project or if SHAREing wasn’t able to fund a project due to budget constraints, we refer them back to the working groups.

While we still wait for UKRI to confirm who sits on our Advisory Board, the consortium steps in and commissions the projects.

Success

Once commissioned, the RTP teams complete their work and hence make a contribution towards SHAREing’s overall vision. They also are supposed to report back to the working groups, such that their insights and work can be taken into account as we scope new projects.

How to get involved

At the moment (summer 2025), working groups are, by default, open to SHAREing consortium members only. However, we plan to open up the groups to a wider audience and engage with the whole UK community in the long run. Please contact the working group leads if you would like to participate at this early stage already. We are looking forward to having members from the whole UK community—we just don’t want to launch an official call for participation yet. In the long term, working group membership is your opportunity to shape SHAREing’s direction of travel.

In the first year of the project, the budget for miniprojects is ringfenced, meaning only RTPs from the consortium members are eligible to bid for the projects. If you are not a member of the SHAREing consortium, the way to participate in the realisation of work packages is to team up with a consortium member. In the long term, we plan to open up all calls to the whole UKRI community.