Juergen Wastl

Head of Research Information

Research Strategy Office, Cambridge University

Researchfish Interoperability Pilot: Institutional Perspective

Agenda

• Introduction

• Need for Research Information

• Need for interoperability from the HEI perspective

• Cambridge procedure and contribution (and the other HEIs procedure)

• Challenges for systems interoperability, pre and post pilot

• Phase 1 lessons learned

• Phase 2 and the next submission window

Introduction – the Research Information environment

Research Information

team

Research Office

Grant reporting (e.g. Researchfish)

HESA (return on statistics)

REF return

HR CRIS Grants DSpace

Academics

Administrators/ Co-ordinators

University Library

Senior Academic Committees

Research Strategy Office

Need for Research Information

• Managing research portfolio

• Managing compliance & reporting

• Benchmarking

• Analysing research portfolio

Mind the Map: Cambridge Research Information landscape

https://figshare.com/articles/Mind_the_Research_Information_Map/1507607

Researchfish in our Research Information landscape

Need for Research Information

Previous (and ongoing) challenges and opportunities

• Quality of underpinning data

• Curation

Emerging challenges

• External reporting demands and timelines (Researchfish, REF) e.g. OA requirements

• Communication and academic buy-in

Need for Interoperability from a HEI perspective

• Streamline and make reporting as efficient as possible • ‘enter data once, use multiple times’

HOWEVER

• Database models and structures are often incompatible (historic reasons, different focus)

‘Square of opposition’

HEI Researchfish

PI Academic

Award Grant

‘Square of opposition’

HEI Researchfish

PI Academic

Award Grant

jw312

RG12345 ES/N013891/1

M Parker: 93353 M Parker: 494 M Parker: S-436072

Need for Interoperability from a HEI perspective

How to link effectively? • Common standard sets and definitions

• Curated data

Aim

Problem

• reduce errors • reduce frustration • reduce duplication of effort

• incoming/outgoing staff • Award based vs user based • User (PI): Academic vs Student

‘Square of opposition’ - squared

HEI Researchfish

PI Academic

Award Grant

HEIs Funders

‘Square of opposition’

HEI Researchfish

PI Academic

Award Grant

HEIs Funders

Publications Outcomes

Phase 1 of the Interoperability Pilot

Criteria

Awards: RCUK, CRUK, NC3R, Academy of Medical Science (based on award reference number in Researchfish)

Publications: • Journal article of Conference proceedings • Doi/PubMed ID • Published 2014 onwards

Links: • between Awards and Publications • De-duplicated (csv/Excel format)

Cambridge procedure and contribution

Researchfish in Cambridge: 2014: 2400 awards 2015: 4800 awards 21 funders 3300 PIs… Our approach for phase 1 Focus on: 1) a select Group/Department; not the entire institution 2) Quality in this subset

Cambridge procedure and contribution

1) Curate Award references in Symplectic Elements

2) Backfill EXISTING links (publication-award) via existing sources (GtR, Dimensions, manual link in Symplectic Elements)

3) Create NEW links (publication-award) in Symplectic Elements

4) Verify and de-duplicate

5) Format for transfer to Researchfish

Lessons learned BEFORE upload

• Heavy manual workload by centre (60%) Dept admin (30%) and PIs (approx 15) 10%

• Curation (Awards) time consuming and challenging

• Verifying Awards was also challenging (free text fields, supplements, transfers, large awards (e.g. STFC) split in Researchfish)

• Verifying PI names challenging (duplicates, name variants)

• Challenging timeline

Lessons learned AFTER upload

• Still duplicates due to errors in publication meta data

• Difficult to disentangle shifting datasets

• Quality data and links nevertheless; proved the aim of the pilot

• Communication is critical; needs to be concise and clear.

Challenges & opportunities for systems interoperability

Data curation essential on all sides:

common sources of IDs for Award reference numbers, doi etc

Linking publications to grants via OA workflow:

deposit on acceptance has academics’ attention and the ‘enter once, (re)use multiple times’ message could be showcased here

ORCID

ORCiD as facilitator

HEI Researchfish

PI Academic

Award Grant

HEIs Funders

Publications Outcomes

Summary of phase 1 lessons learned

• Communication o Challenging in a fast moving environment (e.g. the submission

period with ORCID available in RF, change in response codes) • Data cuts (moving targets) • Researcher’s view and fixed mindset • Curation of data

Interoperability

• can reduce time spent on reporting • can increase the efficiency of the process • can improve overall reporting… • … and with the new JeS system could offer even more

Phase 2 and the next submission window

Challenge for Cambridge:

• Entire institution, not just a single unit

• Communication

• Timescale

Expectation is that there will be more efficient deduplication & re-use

Thank you

Let’s Talk – Interoperability between University CRIS/IR and Researchfish: a case study from the UK Clements A, Reddick G, Viney I, McCutcheon V, Toon J, Macandrew H, McArdle I, Collet S, Wastl J

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/257357

http://hdl.handle.net/11366/492

www.research-information.admin.cam.ac.uk