The Flemish model and indicators chosen Implementation of a CRIS at University College Ghent

1. The Flemish model and indicators chosenImplementation of a CRIS at University College Ghent Dr. Els Stuyven Director Department of Research Affairs University College Ghent

2. Outline • From a business management point of view… • Metadatamodel • Implementation of the system • How we plan to use it • Some conclusions

3. University College Ghent • Largestuniversity college in Flanders • In terms of budget, number of students, study programmes on offer • About 17.000 students • About 2300 staff (450 involved in research) • 13 faculties, 98 departments • Wide diversity (including arts) • Professional bachelors, academic bachelors en masters

4. University College Ghent • University College Ghent strives to excel in education, research, service provision and practice of the arts. Through the competence of its staff and graduates and the valorization of its research, University College Ghent wants to make a valuable contribution to a critical, creative and open society. (mission statement)

5. Research • active researchers • 2009: 487 • 2005: 244 • 2009: 291 research projects (incl. 137 PhD projects) • Research budget • 2009:15.241.507€ • 2005: 6.942.495 € 2009? What about 2010?

6. Research • Mainlyapplied research, artistic research • Wide diversity in domains • Wide diversity in output • Focus onquality • Focus oncollaboration How do we measure? What is our expertise?

7. What does management need? • Accurate & up-to-date information • About research potential • About quality • Using this in a fact based research policy and allocate money and personnel efficiently • Too much time is spent on inventarising information of too low quality • Unlocking the rich research potential (internally & externally)

8. What do researchers need? • Solution for reporting overload • Research portfolio • Accurate information about their expertise, projects, output,… on the website • Feedback on the quality of their work

9. Research information system • Spring 2009: decision to implement a research information system (budget: Research Fund) • In collaboration with EWI (for metadata model and data input in FRIS) • PURE-system (Atira)

10. Research information system • Portfolio for researcher (incl. artistic research) • Business intelligence system for research processes • Linked with Personnel information system, (future: student administration and financial system) • CERIF-compliant • Research portal

11. Research information system • Workflow for validation of input about publications, projects, … • Reporting based on text, statistics en graphics, • Webservice-technology for import-export data • Data-history • Import & export to individual CV-formats (EndNote, RIS, BibTex,…) • Export to PDF, Word, Excel, …

12. Metadatamodel • Applied and artisticresearch: wide range of output • Only Web of sciencepublications, patents, spin-offs,… wouldnarrow down the richness of the output and miss somecrucialinformation • Metadatamodelfor the output of artistic research • Building in criteria forevaluating and ranking

13. Global data editor Classification schemata Master data editors Overview PURE-datafamilies Education-programmes Publishers Financing-programmes Events Journals External organisations Organisation User Person Projects Master-thesis Services Research output Research infrastucture Activities Internships Submission editors

14. Multiple relations between PURE-datafamilies

15. Implementation • More complex and much more time consuming than anticipated • Need to review and rethink research processes… • …but also personnel and financial processes! • Internal dynamic on integrated data management and efficient processes • Status: approaching acceptance of system and portal, some debugging and fine-tuning left

16. Test version

17. Overview of Publications

18. Overview of Projects

19. Focus on “history logging” and “artistic output”

20. Ranking of output

21. Succes ratio: Submitted projects/ accepted projects

22. How we plan to use it • Building in the system in our administrative processes • Using information in the system to allocate financial means • Incentives for researchers (CV-module, portal-function)

23. How we plan to use it • CRIS will provide information to support internal decision management : e.g.: • Research Council and expert panels to select project-proposals that apply for our internal Research Fund • Consolidate strategic research lines per faculty or department (clusters of expertise?) • Monitoring the “academisation process” : bridging links between education and research

24. How we plan to use it • CRIS-platform will provide data to support External decision management : • Ghent University on academisation indicators • Provide data to FRIS (EWI) • Annual report tables/statistics • International reporting (e.g. OESO-indicators) • Remark: Alignment of reporting requirements at an international level preferable (Flemish alignment ongoing)

25. How we plan to use it Embeddedness in socio-economic and cultural fields CRIS could plot ournetwork of partners : • SME’s, • Non-SME’s, • Not-forprofit, • Universities Also international network!

26. Future implementation • Link with Student administration • Up-to-date personnel – study programmes • ECTS? • Link with Financial system • Link with Biblio system Ghent University (output)

27. Challenges for CRIS-models • Link with education processes • Academisation= embeddedness of education in research. How to evaluate this? • expertise present outside research processes • Research lifecycle processes • we know the boxes but not the arrows • our metadatamodels are not ready for tracing and tracking research lifecycle

28. PhD-project RESEARCH PROJECT RESEARCH process Prototype Publication Master thesis Conference contribution Internship Training on demand EDUCATION-process Study report Education module Course material, syllabi, lecture book,… Researcher learning curve Student learning curve

29. We mightneed a causalontology.. sothat CRIS can provide answers to: • Howmanyprojectsdidcontribute to that patent ? • Who’smasterthesisinfluencedthat project proposal ? • When was the project output used in the master student course? • Howmanynegative project proposalevaluationsdidthatsuccesful product survive?… • Show me all PhD’sfrom HEI-X thatresulted in a product within 5 years… Causal patterns as metadata

30. Some conclusions • At this point the information is on a low aggregation level. Which indicators (and which weights) we will use in our future fact based policy still needs to be decided upon in detail. • From 2011 on we hope to fulfill all our reporting needs rather automatically • We need sufficient incentives for our researchers to use the system • Quality control by workflow validation at our department & library • We need flexibility to be ready for changes (e.g. new higher education landscape in Flanders from 2013-2014)

31. Some conclusions • CRIS-implementation is an iterative process • CRIS-platforms are a must for evaluation of research • CRIS-platforms need a synchronisation on a European level • CRIS-platforms need to incorporate the education processes: CERIF-extension ? • CRIS-platforms are NOT yet ready to monitor research lifecycles….the datamodel is missing ??

32. Contact Department of Research Affairs University College Ghent Schoonmeersstraat 52 9000 Gent Belgium els.stuyven@hogent.be dirk.vervenne@hogent.be research@hogent.be www.hogent.be