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What Researchers Want from IT

What Researchers Want from IT. Sandra Braman Professor University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ECAR Fellow. Why it matters. Research success is mission critical for many institutions Ability to do work is central to researcher identity, ambitions, goals

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What Researchers Want from IT

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  1. What Researchers Wantfrom IT Sandra Braman Professor University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ECAR Fellow

  2. Why it matters • Research success is mission critical for many institutions • Ability to do work is central to researcher identity, ambitions, goals • Will trade-off salary &/or switch institutions to improve support • IT a research collaborator, not service provider

  3. How do we know what we know? • Direct & indirect info in • national reports (NSF, NRB, ACLS, etc.) • conversations with faculty • anecdotal & systematic reports from CIOs • scholarly publications on research trends • scholarly publications on research methods • trade press reports

  4. In this presentation ... • I: Factors affecting researcher use of IT • II: Issues raised by IT engagement with research • III: Researcher needs & IT opportunities

  5. I: Factors affecting researcher use of IT • Research culture • Institutional issues • Researcher incentives • Research & teaching

  6. Research culture issues • Rapid spread of computationally-intense research across disciplines • Continuous & fast innovations in research methods • The generational tide - driven by graduate students • Disciplinary differences more important than institutional culture to uses

  7. Institutional issues • Competition for resources • History of privileging certain faculty, units • Homogeneous service principle • Assumptions about activity in units • Inertia regarding institutional innovations • Opportunities for IT unit patents • Researcher ignorance of basic IT supports (e.g., space, energy, back-ups)

  8. Researcher incentives • Intellectual leadership • Efficiency • Support for other research goals • Support for other institutional goals

  9. Research & teaching • Faculty seek alignment of research & teaching • Multiplier effect of graduate education • Growing use of high performance computing in undergraduate courses • Online education a stimulus • Opportunities for IT collaboration with researchers in methods courses

  10. II: Issues raised by IT engagement with research • Hiring • Resource allocation • Infrastructure development • Hardware tailoring • Software tailoring • Long-lived data archives • Research policy

  11. Hiring commitments • Promises made at the hiring point regarding IT rarely involve IT units • Too often institutions find themselves unable to deliver on these commitments • Irrecuperable loss of researcher commitment to institution

  12. Resource allocation • Research competes with administrative & teaching needs • Support for FEW computationally-intense disciplines now must deal with MANY • Principle of homogeneous support across campus now must address needs to tailor • Often requires a shift in decision-making approaches

  13. Infrastructure development • Growing gap in infrastructure sufficiency • Economic & support efficiencies can be maximized through synergies across research projects & units • Multiple models for achieving • Collaborative decision-making • Coordinated grant proposals • Intra-campus agreements

  14. Hardware tailoring • Higher ed institutions increasingly falling behind in computational capacity • But new techniques, such as mesh computing, can help • NSF now looking at how to design OS to best support specific research designs • New types of data collection equipment to be accommodated

  15. Software tailoring • Needs range from simple scripting all the way up • Again reliance on graduate students • Software specialization as national institutional niche • Finding researcher-authored software • Software collections (specialized, obsolete, tailored, etc.)

  16. Long-lived data archives • Many types of storage • project-specific repositories, institutional repositories, disciplinary repositories, long-lived data collections of global importance • Many types of storage venues • researcher, unit, institution, project home, discipline, national proxy institution • Rising & complex preparation needs • Policy issues (access, control, raw vs. cooked, etc.) • Currently experimenting with support mechanisms

  17. Research policy • Intensifying legal environment around research data • Cyberinfrastructure raises new issues • Implementation of traditional issues often now managed digitally • Knowledge of issues & compliance with policies increased if IT-researcher relationship is strong

  18. III: Researcher needs &IT opportunities • Participation in hiring • Collaborative decision-making • Grant-writing • Training • Software training & tailoring

  19. Participation in hiring • Participation in hiring process serves IT units, institution as a whole, & the researcher • Inclusion on interview schedule • Collaboration in development of offer • Follow-up with new hires when arrive • Bonus: Strong relationships with researchers

  20. Collaborative decision-making • Multiple options not mutually exclusive • Single formal advisory council • Multiple working groups around research problems, methods, platforms, or software • Open meetings • Survey input from faculty & administrators • Sustained informal relations, etc. • Rare but successful when used • For resources & infrastructure

  21. Grant-writing • IT units increasingly writing their own grants • & collaborating in grant proposals with researchers • Much development work to be done at middleware & ap levels for research • Opportunities for intellectual property rights for IT units • Intimate engagement with research

  22. Software training & tailoring • Gap between graduate education & current research practices • Research horizon continues to move • Intense & spreading needs for help in • choosing best software for a research problem • tailoring use of that software to specific projects • additional programming to adapt as necessary • Training can help in software customization • Institutional & inter-institutional synergies • Linkage with methods courses

  23. Conclusions • Enduring issues such as capacity remain, but new needs have emerged • Which needs will be most important for a given institution varies by • areas of research strength • extent of infrastructural development • strength of collaborative networks

  24. The New Big Two • Researchers need more support for learning, adapting, & writing software specific to their research problems • Researchers need help managing their data as it enters worlds of public presentation & long-lived data archives

  25. And . . . • Participate in hiring process – and follow through on promises made • Multiple utility from collaborative decision-making around research problem, method, platform, software, & resource allocations

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