The DRE Project: Integrating the CRIS in the Online Research Environment

1. The DRE-Project at Radboud University: integrating the CRIS in the on line research environment of the researcher. Ed Simons, Radboud University euroCRISStrategicMembership Meeting Barcelona, 11 November 2015

2. For starters: some background information

3. Radboud University • About 20.000 students and 5000 academicstaff. • All faculties, includinganacademichospital, except engineering. • Strong in research: • Brain research. • Physics: home of a “High Field Magnet”, one of the most powerful in the world, which serves as a national research equipmentfacility. • (Psycho)-linguistics: the Max PlanckInstituteforPsycholinguistics, a prominent player in the RDA-community, is locatedon campus.

4. Located in the city of Nijmegen, NL, on the German Border.

5. Nijmegen • Oldest city in the Netherlands: celebratedits 2000th anniversary in 2005. • Regiment city of the Roman Empire, located in the East of the country on the banks of the Rhine, - whichmarked the Northern border of the Roman Empire - where the river enters the NetherlandsfromGermany. • Home of the biggestwalkingevent – and since 2012 officially even the biggestsportsevent - in the World: the “4-days Marches” (held everyyear in July) withsome 45.000 participantsfromallover the World.

6. The Researcher’s reality: before... Research activities Research information activities “Their” World My World

7. The Researcher’s reality: after.... Research activities Research information activities My World My World

8. The DRE-project: some background information • Due to some notorious academic fraud cases in the Netherlands involving research data, and in line with the growing attention for research data within the international scientific community, the management of the University, in 2013, launched a “Research Data Management Policy”, aimed at: • Providing sound guidelines and regulations on how to deal with research data from a scientific integrity and legal point of view. • Putting (IT) tools and services at the disposal of the researchersforanoptimal management and archiving of their data.

9. The DRE-project: some background information Various projects were started within the framework of this RDM-policy, one of them: RDS: Archiving Research Data through the CRIS

10. RDS-project in the CRIS RI Landscape INPUT FROM OUTPUT TO External Publication / Data Resources Publication Repositories (WoS, Scopus, Google Scholar…) Dataset Repositories / Archives Researchers RDS-Project RDS-Project Profiling & Management Applications Administrative Resources Institutional CRIS (HRM, Finance, Project Man.) ((inter)national) Research Portals Institute’s Secretariat Other RIS-systems / formats

11. The DRE-project: some background information Another RDM-projec is the DRE-project: Digital Research Environment Initiatedby the IT-Department of the Medical Centre (AcademicHospital) of the university.

12. What is a DRE: Digital Research Environment? • “A virtual research environment  [editor: or digital research environment] is an online system helping researchers collaborate. Features usually include collaboration support (Web forums and wikis), document hosting, and some discipline-specific tools, such as data analysis, visualisation, or simulation management. In some instances, publication management, and teaching tools such as presentations and slides may be included. VREs have become important in fields where research is primarily carried out in teams which span institutions and even countries: the ability to easily share information and research results is valuable.”(Wikipedia, May 2014)

13. What is a DRE: Digital Research Environment? The previous definition puts the focus on a VRE/DRE as a collaboration tool, in other words as a common, shared environment. The DRE-project at Radboud University however, differs from this view, as it sees the DRE as an online research environment for the individual researcher. So in a way it would perhaps be more accurate to talk about a Personal DRE.

14. What is a DRE: Digital Research Environment? This leads to the following working definition of the DRE within the context of the Radboud Project: “A DRE, digital research environment, is an integrated set of IT tools at the disposal of a researcher for carrying out and managing her/his research”

15. What is a DRE: Digital Research Environment? Initially, in the early preparatory phase of the project, the focus was exclusively on the research activities as such, more specifically data management and analysis (and the tools and services needed for this).

16. The DRE project initially: focusing on research activities

17. The “path of the data” in research selection final dataset data life cycle management analysis temporary storage data collection archiving

18. The data “Paddyfield”concept. The personal or individual aspect of the DRE, is reflected in the central concept (data) “Paddyfield” or “Data Pond” used in the project, referring to the personal datacollections and –management environment as opposed to “Data Lake”, a term to indicate the total, common volume of data, jointly used by researchers. ’ ‘PaddyField’

19. The DRE: changingperspective. Gradually (also through the influence of the RDS-project) the awareness grew that the daily reality (research environment) of the researcher nowadays is not limited to “just doing research”, but also and inescapably includes research information and management aspects, in other words: CRIS-aspectsand that therefore, these aspects should also be integrated into the DRE.

20. The DRE project now: integrating Research Information. Research activities Research information activities

21. The DRE: changingperspective. As a result, in the tender put out for the DRE, the “CRIS-aspect” was explicitly included and applicants where asked to come up with a separate white paper expressing their view on how to integrate information from the insitution’s CRIS-system into the DRE.

22. The DRE: changing perspective So the view on the DRE changedfrombasically these twoaspects(1) : DRE – My Data Management DRE – My Analysis Platform (1) Artificialexamples, notanexisting DRE.

23. The DRE: changing perspective To a broaderperspective, including research informationaspects (metadata) (1): DRE – My Studies (projects) DRE – My Data Management DRE – My Analysis Platform DRE – My Results DRE – My Budgets (1) Artificialexamples, notanexisting DRE.

24. Towards a “CRIS-Paddyfield”? Analoguous to the data paddyfield concept, the idea was raised to work towards a personalised “CRIS-environment” for the researcher as part of the DRE. In other words: a kind of individual or personal CRIS, based on the CERIF datamodel, and fed by information from the underlying institutional CRIS.

25. Towards a personal “CRIS-Paddyfield”? as part of the DRE Personal CRIS-environment Institutional CRIS

26. The DRE-project: where are we now? A consortium that will develop the DRE, and which thinks along the concept of the CERIF-based personal CRIS as part of the DRE, has just been selected two weeks ago. So we are now entering the preparatory phase for the execution of the project.

27. The DRE-project: where are we now? Thank you for your attention. Questions?