UKOLN activities on research information management

UKOLN is supported by: UKOLN activities on research information management Michael Day Research and Development Team UKOLN, University of Bath United Kingdom euroCRIS membership meeting, Bologna, 26-27 May 2011

Presentation overview
Brief introduction to UKOLN
The UK context
JISC RIM activities
Programme support for JISC
Past activities
RIM1 Programme synthesis
CERIFy project
With sincere thanks to my colleague Rosemary Russell and the UKOLN CERIFy team (Mahendra Mahey, Talat Chaudhri and Stephanie Taylor)

Brief introduction to UKOLN (1)
A centre of expertise in digital information management
Has existed for >30 years (in various guises), as UKOLN since the early 1990s
Is based at the University of Bath
27 people
Digital information management:
Bibliographic standards, metadata
Cross-domain resource discovery, interoperability, semantics, knowledge organisation systems
Repositories support, e.g. SWORD
Supporting the developer community
Digital sustainability
Research data management, e.g. Digital Curation Centre
Research information management

Brief introduction to UKOLN (2)
Current funding
Joint Information Systems Committee
JISC Innovation Support Centre
Research grants from JISC and others
Aims
Providing technical advice to the JISC and the wider UK HE community
Undertaking high-quality research

RIM in the UK
UK drivers for more systematic approach to RIM:
Research Excellence Framework
A way of targeting funding to UK HEIs based on periodic peer review (last one RAE 2008)
Becoming ever more metrics based
Institutions responding to extremely competitive situation
Research Councils (and others)
Streamlining reporting requirements from grants
More systematic measurement of grant outcomes
Research Outcomes Project
Annual statistical returns
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)

JISC RIM activities (1)
JISC funds a series of activities under the heading of Research information management (RIM)
Convenes RIM expert group
2 to 3 meetings per year
Includes representatives of HEFCE (REF team), RCUK, HESA, euroCRIS, etc.
Informs the development of JISC activities
Relevant past projects have included:
Building the Research Information Infrastructure (BRII)
Enrich
Readiness for REF (R4R)
ResearchRevealed
NAMES projects

JISC commissioned study on Exchanging Research Information in the UK (EXRI-UK) - published December 2009
Developed various scenarios for the exchange of research information
Appraised various technical options and recommended exploring the potential of CERIF 2008 as a data exchange format
Reflects emerging consensus (in the UK) of the desirability of a common standard to share research information
EXRI UK report: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/448/

Standard data exchange model
Agreed exchange format
Facilitate data exchange between institutions, funding bodies
Support a future national RIM infrastructure
Data alignment:
Several UK projects have mapped their own data models to CERIF
Detailed questions about harmonisation of data structures, vocabularies and syntax remain
With the JISC, UKOLN helped organise a series of workshops in 2010 to look at data harmonisation in more detail

RIM programme support
As JISC funded services, UKOLN and JISC infoNet jointly provide programme support in the RIM area
UKOLN’s main focus on technical aspects
CRIS-OAR project (Knowledge Exchange)
Data harmonisation workshops
Research Information Management in the UK: CERIF and metadata alignment (Rosemary Russell and Nikki Rogers)
Work in the pipeline:
Brief Introduction to CERIF for UK HEIs
Technical synthesis of RIM1 projects (more later)
Organisational identifiers study
Discussion on the RIM strand wiki (internal reporting)
More information at: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/rim/

RIM1 technical synthesis (1)
5 projects from 1st Phase of JISC RIM programme (JISC Grant 11/09)
CRISPool: Using CERIF-XML to integrate heterogeneous research information from several institutions into a single portal (Lead partner: University of St Andrews)
Enquire: Enrich and Research Outputs and Impact (Lead partner: University of Glasgow)
Developing tools to inform the management of research and translating existing good practice (Lead partner: Imperial College)
Using Business Process Management Tools and Methods for Building Research Information Management (Lead partner: University of Huddersfield)
Defining a new role: the embedded Research Information Manager (Lead partner: University College London)

RIM1 technical synthesis (2)
Technical synthesis of 11/09 RIM1 programme
Led by Rosemary Russell (UKOLN)
More general programme synthesis conducted by JISC infoNet: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/research/projects
Role of synthesis is to identify some common themes
Note
Relatively small sample (5 projects)
Different perspectives (stakeholder surveys vs. mapping systems and business-processes from the ground-up)

RIM1 synthesis themes (1)
Lack of system integration within institutions:
Most institutions cited a fragmented research system and lack of integration as fundamental problems (Imperial College surveys)
However, despite experiencing similar problems, BRIM showed that at least some of these problems could be overcome in practice
CRISPool demonstrated that institutions that already have an integrated research system or CRIS have big advantages (e.g., when needing to generate CERIF as an exchange format)
Researcher dissatisfaction:
Academics reported widespread dissatisfaction with current research systems (Imperial College surveys)
Need to minimise burden on academics (Enquire), develop easy to use interfaces
Need to fit systems with researcher needs and workflows (UCL project)

Difficulty of articulating institutional RIM Requirements:
Difficulty of articulating RIM requirements (Imperial College survey), e.g. every institution thinks that it is unique!
Experience with the RIM1 projects suggests that time spent analysing existing business processes (BRIM) and defining requirements (CRISPool) was extremely useful
BRIM main task - capture RIM requirements and create prototype (that integrated with existing business processes using standard interfaces)
Data quality
Data quality identified as a big issue (Imperial College surveys)
Data was the single greatest cause for concern for researchers (UCL project)
Need resource for data cleansing

Person identification
An issue that was very frequently cited …
Huddersfield - principal difficulty lies when members of staff enter their co-contributors details, meaning manual reconciliation of names
CRISPool used UK Learner Provider number as a prefix to institutional IDs
But see also … NAMES project, ORCID, etc.
CERIF issues:
Value of CERIF as a means of understanding the limitations of existing institutional data structures (BRIM)
General support for the EXRI conclusion that CERIF be used as the exchange format within the UK research information sector (CRISPool)

Recording ‘soft’ measures like Impact
Recording impact is Increasingly important in justifying research funding (RCUK) and will play significant role in REF
However, RCUK requirements kept changing during project timeframe (Enquire)
Little evidence of collaborative working across the sector
Institutions developing or procuring their own solutions in isolation (Imperial College survey)
Corporate memories of bad experiences with older collaborative IT projects

JISC RIM2 - JISC Grant 15/10
Second phase of JISC RIM projects
February - July 2011
Main focus on CERIF and data alignment
4 Projects:
BRUCE: Brunel Research Under a CERIF Environment (Lead partner: Brunel University) – presentation yesterday
IRIOS: Integrated Research Input and Output System (Lead partner: University of Sunderland) – presentation at Rome workshop
MICE: Measuring Impact under CERIF (Lead partner: Centre for e-Research, Kings College) – presentation this afternoon
CERIFy (Lead partner: UKOLN, University of Bath) – brief overview now …

CERIFy project (1)
CERIFy: Increasing engagement with CERIF in UK Higher Education
Funded as part of the 2nd phase of JISC’s Research Information Management programme (JISC Grant 15/10)
Lead partner: UKOLN, University of Bath
Partner: Trinity College Dublin
Pilot institutions: Aberystwyth University, University of Bath, University of Huddersfield, Queen’s University Belfast, Thomson Reuters
Very short-timescales (February - July 2011)
Aims:
Increasing engagement of the UK HE sector with CERIF (and CRIS more generally)
Evaluating, testing and demonstrating CERIF with four pilot UK HE institutions and one commercial organisation (Thomson Reuters)

CERIFy project (2)
Current activities:
Institutional site visits (now complete)
Data management workshop (CERIFy Data Surgery, Bath, 19-20 May 2011)
Proposed outputs:
Documenting the experiences of pilot institutions
CERIF Health Check, Institutional Readiness for CERIF report, etc.
Demonstrators for 2 institutions
Guidance for other UK HEIs
Website: http://cerify.ukoln.ac.uk/

Further information
UKOLN: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/rim/
JISC infoNet: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/research
JISC RIM programme: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/ themes/informationenvironment/researchinfomgt.aspx
CERIFy project: http://cerify.ukoln.ac.uk/

Thank you for your attention!
Michael Day UKOLN, University of Bath Bath BA2 7AY United Kingdom
[email_address]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN activities on research information management

by Michael Day

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