UKOLN activities on research information management

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN is supported by:

UKOLN activities on research information management

Michael DayResearch and Development Team

UKOLN, University of BathUnited Kingdom

euroCRIS membership meeting, Bologna, 26-27 May 2011


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)


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


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


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)


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



• 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/



• 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


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/


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)


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)


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)



• 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



• 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)



• 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


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 …


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)


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/


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/


Thank you for your attention!

Michael DayUKOLN, University of BathBath BA2 7AYUnited [email protected]://www.ukoln.ac.uk

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UKOLN activities on research information management