Developing a Safe to Fail Research Culture
There is a small, but growing, literature on what ‘failure’ is, what it means to academics, and how it shapes our working environment. In 2025, we conducted a scoping review of that literature to better understand what “failure” means for researchers in higher education (this will be published soon!).
We also collated all the different recommendations we could find in those texts and shared them with focus groups comprising of academics from all career stages to explore potential benefits and drawbacks. We worked with Nifty Fox to summarise those recommendations and critical reflections in this interactive infographic.
An audio accessible version is available here.
You can also download a static summary here.
Normalising and depersonalising failure
The provision of a safe, inclusive, and supportive research environment, in which all can thrive, isa central tenet of a ‘good’ research culture. This includes recognising that ‘failure’ is a predominant feature (not a ‘bug’) of academic research that affects every level, from early-career researchers to senior professors.
Historically, little attention had been given to how “failure” affects both individual wellbeing and a University’s research culture.
But more recently there have been initiatives across academia and within Warwick to better understand the effects and implications of non-success and failure.
There are two key aspects to this. Normalising failure is simply to recognise the extent that failure is part of academic life. Whether it is not being successful with a grant application, having a paper rejected from a journal, or not getting a job – we should openly recognise that these happen toeveryacademic.
This recognition can help us to depersonalise failure. This is not to ‘blame’ others, but to place our personal setbacks within the context of how research operates.
Being fourth in a competition for three grants does not mean you did not work hard work or failed to provide a high-quality submission. You can do your part, but we all need to accept that whether you are successful or not is beyond any one individual’s control.
Resources and support
If you have experienced an academic set-back, been unsuccessful with a funding application, or had a paper rejected and are looking for help, you may find the Warwick self-help resource useful. As well as providing techniques and tips for dealing with the emotions that come from experiencing failure, this resource suggests new ways of thinking about what failure is and how it is part of academic development.
If your experiences have brought you to contemplate your career progression, then you may want to consider having a coach or mentor to explore your challenges, ideas and career aspirations? Both are available at Warwick. Find out more here.
The Ambassadors for Better Research Culture are periodically host ‘Safe to Fail’ session with academics sharing their experiences of and learning from failure. Details of upcoming sessions will be posted here and advertised in the WMS newsletter.
There is much more to be done and is being done across Warwick and higher education. If you see a resource you found helpful, please let us know so we can share it here by contacting us.
Additional wellbeing resources that you may find helpful are signposted from here.