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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. UKOLN is supported by:. Presentation overview. Brief introduction to UKOLN The UK context

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UKOLN is supported by:

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  1. UKOLN activities on research information management Michael DayResearch and Development TeamUKOLN, University of BathUnited Kingdom euroCRIS membership meeting, Bologna, 26-27 May 2011 UKOLN is supported by:

  2. 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)

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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)

  6. 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

  7. JISC RIM activities (2) • 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/

  8. JISC RIM activities (3) • 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

  9. 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/

  10. 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)

  11. 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)

  12. 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)

  13. RIM1 synthesis themes (2) • 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

  14. RIM1 synthesis themes (3) • 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)

  15. RIM1 synthesis themes (4) • 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

  16. 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 …

  17. 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)

  18. 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/

  19. 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/

  20. Thank you for your attention! Michael DayUKOLN, University of BathBath BA2 7AYUnited Kingdom m.day@ukoln.ac.uk http://www.ukoln.ac.uk

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