Designing Research Services: Cross-Disciplinary Administration and the Research Lifecycle

1. Designing Research Services: Cross-Disciplinary Administration and the Research Lifecycle Greg Madden Senior Advisor for Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure Office of the Vice President for Research Penn State University

2. Presenter Background • Work at intersection of researchers, research administrators, research cyberinfrastructure, research computing, IT security, and library services • Broad advisory role for areas including high performance computing, cyberinfrastructure, research computing governance, research network, data centers, electronic research administration, data acquisition, data security, data compliance, general researcher support services, open data, open access • Routinely interdisciplinary on both the academic and administrative sides • Literally never *not* doing interdisciplinary work

3. Motivation for Presentation (1) Give research time back to researchers and their research groups Make it easier to acquire research data Make it easier to acquire research cyberinfrastructure Make it easier to meet open research and open data recommendations Broadly, make it easier to do research Will focus on data today as the framing example, but applies equally to cyberinfrastructure-related services

4. Motivation for Presentation (2) • Importance of interdisciplinary work in academics widely recognized • Less formally recognized on the administrative side of the university • For academics, we have our Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Office • For administrators, we have nothing of the sort • Administrative services are expected to figure out how to work with one another even in the absence of shared tools and shared communications forums • Lack of institutional self-awareness means that different units frequently do not know what one another do, if they even know one another exist • Why does this matter?

5. Motivation for Presentation (3) • Seemingly simple regulations/recommendations can have widespread impacts across many different units in a university, e.g. • “Must cite this data source if data is used in a publication” • “Must protect the data adequately” • ”Must make the data public at time of publication” • Impacts often across many years – from proposal through post-publication • Yet the many units affected lack tools for working together effectively • Recent example on next slide…

6. Who needs to notice?“acquire data with security conditions” • Researcher • Grad Students, Research Associates, Post Docs • Research Design Specialists • Data Management and Data Access Plan Writers • Grants and Contracts Offices • Sponsored Programs Office • Purchasing, Risk, Export Control, Information Security, Privacy Office, and General Counsel • Office of Research Protections/Compliance • Data Security Auditors • Electronic Research Administrators • Office of Information Security • Desktop IT • Server IT • Storage IT • Network IT • High Performance Computing facility • Data Center Services • Secure Network provider • And post-publication… • Open Access Repository • Open Data Repository

7. Current State Services lack sufficient information about one another Services don’t successfully communicate upstream to ensure that they receive the information they need Services don’t know what information to communicate downstream so the next group can do its job successfully Services lack tools with which to pass workflow among themselves Processes used by one service may not match up well to processes used by others Researchers may need to know which service to contact, in which order, to keep things moving along Sheer number of services means that even if each is excellent, the inevitable delay at each handoff point can add up quickly

8. Five Opportunities for ImprovementEasiest to Hardest (1) • Common Communications Forums • i.e. big meetings with lots of people talking to one another • Addresses the problem of institutional self-awareness • People learn who other people are and what they do • People learn what services are available to them and to researchers • People can ask each other: what would make this easier for you? • Advantage: rapid short-term decrease in delays and misunderstandings • Advantage: reduces requirement for researchers to figure out the system • Disadvantage: informal, person-based, doesn’t result in repeatable processes

9. Five Opportunities for ImprovementEasiest to Hardest (2) Research Concierge Service Creates value by facilitating connections on behalf of the researcher, and on behalf of the various services The concierge learns the ecosystem, understands the services offered by the various units in the ecosystem, and connects those services in the right order, at the right time, over time Advantage: only the concierge has to learn anything new Advantage: the researcher only needs to know about the concierge Advantage: no one has to change the way they work or improve their work Disadvantage: the concierge service has to be founded, funded, and administered

10. Five Opportunities for Improvement Easiest to Hardest (3) • Hero Service • one group shoulders the burden to the benefit of all • Electronic Research Administration is in a great position to be the hero • Grants Submission and Tracking Software can be revised and repurposed • New fields can be added to handle metadata around security, compliance, cyberinfrastructure capacity demands, open access, open data, etc. • New functionality can be added to trigger message-passing between various services • Advantage: everyone gets to keep their own workflow tools • Disadvantage: requires significant business process analysis across the ecosystem • Disadvantage: requires dedicated funding and additional capacity for a single unit

11. Five Opportunities for ImprovementEasiest to Hardest (4) • Common Workflow Tools • Advantage: formalizes workflow messaging between services • Advantage: formalizes information that needs to be passed between services • Advantage: decreases delays and miscommunication • Disadvantage: needs high-level executive support across multiple university organizations • At least VPR, VPIT, CISO, Colleges, General Counsel and Risk, *researchers ?!?* • Funding model and and an administrative unit for the tool both have to be identified • Disadvantage: requires significant business process analysis across the ecosystem • Comment: Needs strong commitment to compromise and change • Do research administrators adopt the IT Security workflow tool or vice versa? • Do we start from scratch with a new tool that no one has used before?

12. Five Opportunities for ImprovementEasiest to Hardest (5) • Organizational restructuring • Create an organization specifically optimized to respond to challenges surrounding research data and cyberinfrastructure across the research lifecycle, from pre-proposal to post-publication • Advantage: distinct competitive advantage in proposal submissions, security, compliance, cyberinfrastructure planning, public access • Disadvantage: could affect up to ~20 diverse administrative units • Who, by definition, have not always worked effectively together in the past • And for whom issues surrounding research data and cyberinfrastructure may only be a small part of their overall work

13. In Summary • Increasing regulatory and contractual requirements surrounding research data have exposed limitations in the way universities organize themselves • We are not organized to optimize our handling of research data • Particularly over the long time scales of research projects • This will likely be a strongly cross-disciplinary effort for the foreseeable future • Many approaches will work, at least in part • Important to address this at the institutional level and start making progress

14. Questions? Greg Madden gem19@psu.edu

15. AppendixPresentation Abstract The sheer number of technical and administrative offices involved in the research lifecycle, and the lack of shared governance and shared processes across those offices, creates challenges to the successful preservation of research outputs. Universities need a more integrated approach to the research lifecycle that allows us to: recognize a research project as it is being initiated; identify the data associated with the research project; document and track any compliance, security, access, and publication requirements associated with the research and its data; follow the research and its associated components across the research lifecycle; and finally recognize that the research has come to a close so we can trigger the various preservation, access, and communications processes that close the loop, inform the public, and promote the continued progress of science. Such an approach will require cooperation, communications, and shared workflow tools that tie together (often across many years) PIs, research design methodologists, grants offices, contract negotiators, central research administrators, research compliance specialists, desktop IT support units, server administrators, high performance computing facilities, data centers, specialized data transfer networks, institutional research repositories, institutional data repositories, and research communications groups, all of which play a significant role in the technical or administrative success of research. This session will focus on progress towards improving cross-disciplinary cooperation at Penn State University, with an emphasis on generalizable approaches that can be adopted elsewhere.