A research group charter or team / lab manual helps set clear expectations, shared values, and standard practices so that your group can collaborate efficiently and avoid confusion. They can be a valuable resource for getting new recruits up to speed quickly, saving you time during induction. Some research leaders send the manual to prospective students or postdocs so that they can see what to expect from the team.

There are many examples of these available for you to adapt to your own circumstances. However, one of the most important things is that these are living documents, and the team feel a sense of ownership over them. The conversations around what should go in them are as valuable as the documents themselves.

The following resources help you think about how you might approach writing a manual, charter or handbook for your group.

• Creating a research group ‘Charter’ – The Auditorium: a research culture and researcher development blog
• Interactive Guide to Creating Your Lab Handbook – York Research Database
• Lab Handbooks – Oxford University Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging

If one of the aims of your team charter is to ensure your team is inclusive, you may find these resources provide some helpful considerations:

• Disrupting the Default: Anti-Ableist Research Culture – White Rose University Consortium
• Building Inclusive Teams – Overview (UKRI Future Leaders Fellow toolkit, with advice from Fellows on inclusive team meetings and practices).

Finally, this handbook-type resource was created by the Turing Institute to reflect some of the collaborative and interdisciplinary challenges in data science, with practical tools and solutions to address these. It includes advice on writing a team manual and planning meetings or collaborative communication.