Research Information Management Infrastructure: Seeing the Wood for the Trees

David Kane is a systems librarian at Waterford Institute of Technology. He joined the library in 2004. He worked as a research assistant in the TSSG, a leading telecommunications and Internet research group, also based in Waterford I.T., and was a web developer before that. As part of his role he manages the institutional repository, and is involved in research support. He has a BSc Hons. in Zoology, a Postgraduate diploma in Internet System development, and an MSc Econ in Information & Library Studies.

Becoming familiar with the range of software and services now available to research managers can seem daunting to someone new to the area. I was recently asked to submit an opinion on Elsevier’s SciVal information service, and this gave me pause for thought. I felt that it was an opportunity for me to reflect on the bigger picture of research information management and to form a more concrete view of what’s involved.

I work at Waterford Institute of Technology, we are part of a grouping of 14 Institutes of Technology across Ireland that often works collaboratively in areas of overall strategy. In Ireland, higher education is mostly provided by seven universities and 14 institutes of technology. This is analogous to the university/polytechnic dichotomy that obtained in the U.K. until 1992, before all became universities. My own institution is one of the largest and has competencies in research in life sciences and software engineering among others. The bulk of research output, as measured by publications, comes from the university sector, but the institutes of technology are developing a strong research culture and matching research support infrastructure.

The range of software and services that support research management has increased rapidly over the last 15 years, or so. It has very much helped me to understand what has driven these changes, and what the specific problem domains are for research information managers.

The challenges fall under one or more of three key headings:

• Strategic management
• Back-office processes
• Dissemination.

Processes in any of these areas can be helped by software which enables efficient capture and re-use of data connected to researchers, and which facilitates data flow between the different systems that exist within an institution, and beyond.

It is important to realise research information management has emerged as its own service category in the last 15 years, [i] and to understand this emergence has been driven by the ongoing global shift in emphasis towards competitive research funding from direct institutional allocations. [ii] As a result of this change, research culture has moved from being a rather genteel, informal pursuit to a highly competitive, almost commercial, outward-looking venture. Research collaborations between partner institutions on large-scale projects are now the norm, their character being formal and contractual. Besides the increase in competitiveness, universities and institutions also inhabit a more rigorous regulatory environment, which demands good data.

As a result, an array of software packages and services have been developed, which helps research managers to keep on top of that information.

The diagram below illustrates the point of the three domains of research information management:

Central Theme: Streamline Research Administrative Processes

When looking at the core research administrative processes, the key word is integration. Effective use of the available information is hampered by the fact that it is scattered across different departments within institutions, such as HR, the registry, academic departments, and the library. Amy Brand’s blog post on this subject describes this situation clearly and is worth a read. [iii] She speaks from the perspective of a US academic, but the situation is very similar in Ireland, where I am based. Research administration is made easier by uniting information from the different institutional systems under a common interface. This is achieved through the use of a CRIS (Current Research Information System). [iv] A key function of a CRIS is to make the generation of reports and the gathering of funder-compliance information easy. A number of CRISs exist on the market today. Here is a table showing a few examples:

In the UK and Italy, [v] where there is a national research assessment framework, there has been a move towards an independent, free, profiling system called ORCID, which stores this data and uniquely distinguishes the researchers throughout their careers, regardless of their employers’ institutions or countries. The ORCID platform is worth a mention, [vi] as it has two characteristics shared by all good software platforms. It has a core competency or functionality which it executes very well, and it also has an API (Application Programming Interface) that allows other systems to exchange data with it seamlessly. This leads to a host of benefits based around efficient re-use of data. For example, all major CRISs support data migration into and out of ORCID. Also, having an ORCID field in a funding agency online application form can save valuable time, as empty fields can be pre-populated with data from ORCID. Like many systems or services, ORCID does not sit squarely under one heading, but strays into the dissemination domain, as it helps to make references to research publications more discoverable on the Web.

Sometimes CRISs are referred to as ‘profiling systems’, which alludes to their role in tracking data about the publications and other scholarly activities of researchers. This information is stored in the CRIS itself as a list of bibliographic references which can be used to maintain CVs or researcher profiles on an institutional website. The bibliographic references in these online profiles may link to an open access repository containing freely available full-text versions of the publications.

Disseminate & Promote Researchers, Institute, and Research

Research dissemination has moved from the print to the digital medium. The Internet has changed this landscape drastically, first with the Open Access movement and now with the widespread use of social media. Web-based tools, including open access repositories and online researcher profiles, fit under this heading of dissemination. The various social media can also be included in this category, not just the ‘likes’ of Facebook and Twitter, but also more specialised platforms such as Figshare, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate.

In addition to this, there is a powerful emerging class of social media analytics tools such as Altmetric, Impactstory, and Plum Analytics, which are now becoming an essential means for researchers and institutions to monitor – and influence – the public conversation around their research. These tools straddle the dissemination and strategic domains of research information management.

Support of Strategic Management of Research

Strategy is of transcending importance in today’s competitive research environment, where managers want to direct resources to the areas that are going to give the best return. The two preeminent products in this domain are Elsevier’s SciVal and Thomson’s InCites. They are based on the Scopus and the Web of Knowledge citation indexes, respectively.

The most concrete way we have of measuring research impact is through counting citations. A paper that has been cited more times than another could be said to have had the greater impact. Citation indexes facilitate this, and more.

A citation index is a very large database that tracks thousands of quality journals and proceedings simultaneously, logging key data about each article, such as its authors, where they are from, which other articles in the database it cites, and which subsequent articles cite it. From this complex dataset, inferences can be drawn about the performance of institutions and individuals relative to others in the same domain of knowledge, or geographic location. The data can help strategists to identify gaps that can be exploited, or potential areas for collaboration with groups in other institutions.

The increased need for such analytical rigour in research management mirrors the increasing importance of business intelligence in the commercial sector: both have been driven by competition and supported by advances in information technology.

Conclusion

When choosing software, it is important to remember that a good system is one that does its core job well and exchanges information with other systems in a transparent and programmable manner.  Be a little cautious when presented with a solution that claims to be a master of all trades, because information needs are going to be different for different institutions.  I have a notion of an ‘information ecosystem’, where each system operates both autonomously and in harmonious exchange with the other parts.  I think this is a vision worth aspiring to.

It is beyond the scope of this blog post to do anything other than give you, the reader, a feel for the research information management landscape.  If, like me, your thoughts were not entirely clear, then I hope to have offered you a frame of reference upon which you can build your own personal understanding of the subject.

[i] Lorcan Dempsey; 6 October 2014 Research Information Management Systems – A New Service Category? http://orweblog.oclc.org/research-information-management-systems-a-new-service-category/.

[ii] University World News: The Global Shift to Competitive Research Funding  http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130811091923186 11 August 2013.

[iii] Amy Brand; 28 April 2015; US Universities Need to Invest More in Coordinated Management of Research Information; https://www.digital-science.com/blog/perspectives/us-universities-need-to-invest-more-in-coordinated-management-of-research-information/.

[iv] You will also hear these systems referred to as RIMs (Research Information Management systems).

[v] David Kane; 1 July 2015, ORCID: Major Policy Announcements in Italy and the UK http://davidkane.net/orcid-major-policy-announcements-in-italy-and-the-uk/.

[vi] V. [does he have a first name?] Weigert; 3 October 2013;  What is ORCID and Why is it Important https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/what-is-orcid-and-why-is-it-important-03-oct-2013.