University of St Andrews Case Study

(Common European Research Information Format-Based Proprietary Systems)

St Andrews is Scotland's first university and the third oldest in the English-speaking world, founded in 1413. Over six centuries it has established a reputation as one of Europe's leading and most distinctive centres for teaching and research.

Research varies from single scholar endeavours to large research groups within the 18 Academic Schools. Over 40 Research Centres and Institutes bring researchers together to focus on specific topics with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research.

In the most recent UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2008, the University of St Andrews was placed second in Scotland and 14th in the UK for research, with internationally leading research recognised in all academic disciplines.

Historical Context

The University had lost most of the expertise gained in creating the RAE 2001 submission which meant that the RAE 2008 was more testing that it might otherwise have been.

An in-house research expertise database was developed for RAE2008 which collected and managed the RA2 - Research Outputs submission but did not integrate well with other research information across the institution.

Following RAE 2008 a paper was created on the data used in the submission. The paper addressed the areas that went well and badly. The paper highlighted that:

Some data were not fit for purpose
Some business processes were not fit for purpose
The systems holding research information needed further integration
There were gaps in information, such as PGR award dates
Management information (MI) was ad-hoc for the most part eg held in spreadsheets

As well as highlighting the problems the paper also proposed a solution which involved:

Addressing data quality
Addressing business processes
Joining up the systems

Additionally it addressed the need to be able to assure the quality of research data when the RAE was not an active driver ie eliminate periodic upheavals in favour of a continuous high level of accuracy.

The paper went to the Principal's Office for consideration.

The papers resulted in a project to develop a Research Information Management (RIM) solution for St Andrews. There was a real possibility that the University was going to adopt a 'new broom' strategy and decide to replace all RIM elements. This was neither necessary nor desirable as such a large project would have been too large to manage with the available resource. Consequently the paper limited the scope of the project to those areas that needed urgent attention.

System Overview

It was realised that the introduction of a new Current Research Information System (CRIS) would not solve all of the issues that the University was facing. As well as a new system, the existing data warehouse would need to be enhanced in order to provide better management information reporting across the University, not just for Research. A new Business Intelligence tool would use the data warehouse to supply outputs tailored to each set of stakeholders.

The University adopted a very simple selection process, and also entered into a partnership with the University of Aberdeen, which was involved in a similar process.

The option to further develop the in-house system at St Andrews was rejected due to the limited resource available to develop and maintain in-house systems. In addition, there were now cost-effective and fully functioning commercial CRIS options available: this was not the case in 2003 when the in-house system development began.

The business case had established that there was an overwhelming need to redevelop the RIM systems in order to effectively manage research. Therefore, because the benefits were so dramatically more than the costs, a cost/benefit analysis was unnecessary.

The project team had already carried out some initial market research. As a result the budget that was allocated to the project was based on the expected spend on the systems that the team had identified.

One of the requirements of the project team was that the solution was based on the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) standard. This would support exchange of research information with other sector bodies e.g. HEFCE for REF, RCUK for outputs and outcomes. In addition the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has a strategy of research pooling across Scottish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The use of a standard data format would also support this strategy.

Following the normal procurement process, two suppliers of CERIF-CRIS systems were shortlisted: Atira and Avedas. Atira (suppliers of Pure) were subsequently chosen to be the University's solution provider.

The system will feed the University's new research portal 'Research@StAndrews'.

Usage Model

The entry of research information will be at individual level and the University Library will have a quality assurance role for bibliographic data. Once entered into the system research outputs and activities will appear in the University's new research portal 'Research@StAndrews'.

Individual researchers have access to corporate project, personnel and post graduate student data via the CRIS. Any queries concerning these data can be reported to a central helpdesk which directs each query to the appropriate data steward (Finance, HR or Registry).

The Library also provides resource to support and encourage researchers to deposit full-text versions of publications into the institutional repository, which is fully integrated with the Pure CRIS.

The Research Policy Office (RPO) will have the responsibility for generating management information from the system and generating performance indicators from it. All research-related statutory information will be generated by the RPO.

Governance

The day to day project team was very small consisting of:

A data architect from the Business Improvement department
A member of the Research Policy Office
A member of the Library

Additionally there was input from HR, Registry and Finance in their separate roles as data stewards over Staff, Student and Project data, respectively.

The project reported to a Steering Group which was chaired by the Vice-Principal (VP) for Research. As well as the members of the project team and the Vice-Principal the Steering Group consisted of:

The Directors of Research from three of the schools covering a range of humanities and science
The Director of Business Improvement
The Director of Information Technology Services
The Deputy Director of the Library

The project officially was part of the University's 'Programme to Improve Data Quality'. The VP Research controlled the budget though initially it had to be approved by the Quaestor and Factor (a post unique to St Andrews which equates to a combined director of Finance and Estates).