RCUK Research
Information systems:
ROS & GtR
“Managing linked open research
data” data.ac.uk & ARMA,
London, 5/7/13
Gerry Lawson (NERC/RCUK)
RCUK recognises the reporting
burden for HEIs
• In 2010 HESA, AHUA and UCISA undertook a survey of
reporting with 40 HEIs and found 550 unique reports/year:
• Of which:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
HE Funding Bodies
HE Regulation and Reporting
NHS
Optional surveys/ publications
Other funding bodies
Professional/academic accreditation
Statutory reporting
TOTAL
112
43
17
56
68
154
98
543
http://landscape.hesa.ac.uk/hebrg-survey-of-statutory-and-external-returns-help-us-to-help-you/
Research Information collection
in everyone’s interest
Accountability:




Specified in Council Delivery Plans and scorecards
Regular monitoring, including indicators
Performance management – impact reporting
Ad-hoc reporting to Ministers, Parliament, Public
(metrics AND narratives)
Advocacy:
 Bidding in Comprehensive Spending Reviews
 Working with national & international funding partners
Awareness
 Council Grants on Web Systems
 Gateway to Research portal and API
Impact Reporting Requirements
for BIS
BIS Impact Reporting (2)
BIS Impact Reporting (3)
Implementing ROS in ePrints
The ROS Outcome Collection
Types
1. Publications
2. Collaborations
3. Other Research Output
4. Collaboration/ Partnership
5. Further Funding
6. Staff Development
7. Dissemination/
Communication
8. IP/Exploitation
9. Award/Recognition
10. Impact
11. Key Findings
Collecting metadata on datasets
ROS Development Issues
• Still a young system - started only in 11-12 (12-13 for NERC)
• Redevelopment will take place before next collection
campaign in Jan 14
• Current Issues
 The Excel bulk upload omits 3 of the Outcome Types
 The CERIF upload is (so far) only available for publications
 Master data problems if a PI accesses ROS independently of data collected in
a HEI CRIS system)
 Data quality – CrossRef metadata completion is not 100% reliable for all
publication types; “Authority Lists” are needed for organizations
 Updating of new and revised grants not frequent enough.
 Scope for harmonisation of Outcome Types, Attributes & Vocabularies?
 Scope for greater interoperability with Research Organisations
 Microsoft’s repository system (Zentity) is no longer supported
ROS & RF Harmonisation – is it
possible?
• RCUK – is conducting a review of ROS and Research Fish
• Possible harmonisation of Outcome Types, Attributes and
Vocabularies (LOVs) – some of which will remain Council specific.
Main differences highlighted…
ROS Outcome Types
1. Publications
2. Collaboration/Partnership
3. Further Funding
4. Staff Development
5. Dissemination/ communication
6. Impact on policy
7. Other Research Output
8. Intellectual Property
9. Exploitation
10. Impact Summaries
11. Award and Recognition
12. Key Findings
RF Outcome Types
1. Publications
2. Collaborations
3. Further Funding
4. Next Destinations
5. Engagement Activities
6. Influence on Policy , Patients & Public
7. Research Materials
8. Intellectual Property
9. Development of Products & Interventions
10. Impacts on the Private Sector
11. Awards and Recognition
12. Use of Facilities
Gateway to Research - Aims
• To deliver, by December 2013 a web-based Portal giving a single
public point of access to search and analyse information from 7
Councils (plus TSB) on
– Research inputs (money, people, abstract, objectives, planned
impacts, initial partners) – from RCUK Grants Systems
– Research outcomes (publications, impacts, key findings, patents, IP,
collaborations, next destinations etc) – from ROS and Research Fish
• Joint BIS/ RCUK/ HEI initiative to increase the visibility for RCUK
funded research, and eventually to include other research funders
• To have an initial focus on improving the link between the research
base and Industry – particularly SMEs.
• Emphasis on Open Access to Research Information and Research
Data
Gateway to Research –
Developments Needed
http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/
Improvements needed: faceted search (pre or post main search); fuzzy searches;
intramural funding; studentships; classifications; co-funding; consortium/split awards;
project partners; more research outcomes – including datasets; improved person and
organisation identifiers; weekly updates from ROS/RF/JeS; show collaborator types;
better ranking of search results (e.g. relevance, publications, citation impact – not just
project finance); APIs & Hack Days.
JISC Partner Project – G4HE
Gateway for Higher Education

Aims to engage with GtR to
improve the information
exchange between Higher
Education Institutions and the
Research Councils.

Develop tools and interfaces to
allow both human and machine
access to data held on GtR, and
elsewhere where that is
required;

Based on validated use-cases
shown to have specific and
demonstrable value to HEIs.
Names Authorities: Organisation
IDs
•
•
Higher Education Institutions - 300+ listed by UCAS)
Research Organisations - 250 funded by RCUK (including some overseas)
– Independent Research Organisations (56 recognised by RCUK)
– Research Council Institutes (BBSRC 6, MRC 33, NERC 6, STFC 5)
•
•
•
Organisations (JeS lists 47,000 parent organisations and 160,000 in total)
HESA “Institution Profile Record” 12/13 will clarify UK HEI department
names annually from 2013 – and map in % terms to “Cost Centres” and REF
“Units of Assessment”
Other sources of OrgIDs:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Ringgold (350k organisations worldwide with publisher focus – linked to ISNI)
Companies House (3 million+ companies in UK)
Dunn and Bradstreet (213 million companies globally)
UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN - 25,000 providers in UK)
EU Participant Identification Codes (number not available)
International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI 6.4 million, 747,979 researchers)
Names Authorities: ORCID
Users
Researchers
Research Organisations
Research Funders
Information Aggregators
50 members
Uptake
7,500 IDs with UK email accounts
23,000 Unique UK IP contacts
Features
Multiple email addresses
ResearcherID, CrossRef, AuthorID
Scopus, DataCite (ODIN) links, ISNI
interoperability
Information Systems
Altmetric, ANDS, AVEDAS,
CrossRef,DataCite, Faculty of 100
Figshare, Knode, OCLC, Pubmed
Europe, Symplectic, Thompson
Reuters
Interoperability – the UK Research
Information Shared Service (UKRISS) ?
See: http://ukriss.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/uk-research-information-shared-service-ukriss-project/
ORCID/ISNI
People &
Organisation
Names Authority
ROS
ORCID/
CrossRef
FundRef
PMC
CrossRef
Publication
Names Authority
Research
Fish
HEBCI
Gateway to
Research
UKRISS
HEI CRIS/
IR (e.g.
PURE)
Publishers
HEI CRIS/
IR (e.g.
Symplectic)
Repository
Broker
????
Research Grant
Names Authority
HEI CRIS/
IR (e.g
Avidas)
WOS, DCI,
Scopus
DataCite
Dryad
DataCite
Dataset Names
Authority
Don’t forget other funding
sources
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_302928.pdf... (ONS, March 2013)
Open Research Information Going Forward .....
•
Researchers – ORCID is a great success – now it is adding Affiliations, Patents and Grants.
•
Research organisations – we need an international Names Authority (ISNI) to link commercial and UK Institutional
systems (Ringgold, Companies House, HESA Campus Survey, RCUK- CDR, ORCID etc.)?
•
Research funding – GtR could perhaps be a UK Research Funding “Names Authority” (also possible role for the
Global Research Council). It will develop its API jointly with the community.
•
Researcher expertise – metadata is held in ORCID & research council systems – reviewer matching is possible using
semantic matching against subject based thesauri (e.g. Mesh, Geotree, Engineering Village, Compendix, Gemet etc).
•
Research facilities – move to UK register of facilities/equipment availability.
•
Research outcomes – move to standardisation of types, attributes, vocabularies.
•
Research open access – need greater standardisation of OA metadata and DC Extensions – including APCs.
•
Research careers – need consistent use of OrcIDs, OrgIDs and timestamps – WoS and Scopus can help.
•
Research classifications – move to national standard like JACS4?
•
Research data – we need inks to DOIs and PURLs from papers, projects, institutions; also need more standardisation
of discovery metadata. DataCite gives a good format for citations. The Data Citation Index may have a big impact.