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This chapter outlines milestones and circumstances that led to the evolution of the profession of research management and administration (RMA) in Poland. The RMA has a history stretching back around 20 years, with the breakthrough year being in 2007, when the Polish National Council for Research Project Coordinators (KRAB) was established. Currently, the Polish community of RMA is scattered across universities, scientific and research institutes; and its RMAs are employed in research support centres, national/international research programmes offices or welcome offices. At the national level, main activities concerning RMA are centred around KRAB and its pool of activities related to research project management implemented by International Project Management Association (IPMA) Poland. In some respects, RMA can still be considered a semi-profession in the country; and RMAs are that part of the administration staff engaged with the development of scientific excellence in research institutions: they are more often an invisible workforce, but necessary to project development and related activities. There are no dedicated RMA certifications available yet, however, support for RMAs in Poland has been consistently becoming stronger and more widespread over the years in the higher education system (HES) and beyond.

Research managers and administrators (RMAs) should not be forgotten as part of the professional workforce populating today’s research ecosystems of universities or research institutes, with interactions and contributions that matter (Poli, 2018a). Unfortunately, since they are still often regarded as employees who are neither senior management nor researchers, their role still suffers vagueness and ambiguity (Allen-Collinson, 2009). Consequently, RMAs are still unrecognised and unacknowledged, and often misunderstood as support staff or bureaucrats (Rhoades, 2010). This country-specific case study of Cyprus introduces the readers to the Cypriot research ecosystem, so as to contextualise the landscape within which the Cypriot RMAs operate professionally. After briefly discussing the evolution of the RMA profession in Cyprus and glimpsing at what might be the current Cypriot RMA community, the chapter elaborates on RMA demographics derived from the ‘RMA in Cyprus Questionnaire’, which was formulated based on the RAAAP-3 survey. At its closure, the chapter proposes the establishment of the ‘CyARMA – Cyprus Association of Research Managers and Administrators’, as the body to advocate the standardisation, professionalisation and, more importantly, the recognition of the RMA profession in Cyprus.

This chapter presents a narrative description of the evolution in the building capabilities in the process of professionalisation of the research manager and administrative roles in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Colombia. The descriptive approach takes into account the consolidation of the Colombian Science, Technology and Innovation policy to explain the ways that research managers have been setting up their activities to adapt and respond to the challenges that research management has imposed on them. The chapter also includes analysis of results derived from the Research Administration as Profession (RAAAP-3) survey in 2022 for Colombian participants to describe as the roles of research managers and administrators that have grown up in the country, and it considers the future and perspectives to look forward in the professionalisation process in HEIs.

This chapter gives an overview of how the profession has been evolving in Italy and reports its milestones. After explaining the transformation of the national research ecosystem, which in the last decades undertook the transition from a direct state funding model towards a competitive base funding model, the chapter shows the fragmented landscape of associations in the profession and focuses on the features of the current research management and administration (RMA) community. The circumstances that led to the development of the national community are then described.

Finally, it gives some policy recommendations towards the acceleration of the professionalisation of research management in the country.