Systems
This section sought information on which areas of Research Information Management were covered by computer systems and the degree of sophistication of the systems and their inter-relationships. (41 replies)
- What systems do you have in place for managing research information?
- Single integrated RIM System
The results for this were broadly as expected and showed that a minority, twenty two percent, of the respondents had a single integrated system. This figure was somewhat higher than anticipated and was made more puzzling by the responses to question 4 (see below).
- Grant management system
Almost eighty percent of institutions have software for managing grants and grant income. Of these a large majority were in-house systems.
- Funding Alerts
Over seventy percent of institutions have funding alerts software. Unsurprisingly a very large majority of these (68%) are proprietary systems.
- Research Staff Management
Fewer than half the sample institutions have systems for explicitly managing research staff. Of those that have systems, the split between in-house and externally supplied is exactly equal (22%)
- KT/IP/Patent Management
A relatively small majority of institutions (54%) have software to manage KT/IP/Patents. Of those with systems there is no difference in the numbers of in-house versus bought-in systems.
- Publications Database/Research Outputs Catalogue
A clear majority of institutions, seventy eight percent, have some form of publications DB etc. Again the split between in-house and proprietary is very nearly even (37% against 41%).
- Institutional Repository
Only seventeen percent of the institutions in the sample do not have an institutional repository. Given the large footprint of open source repositories, it is unsurprising that of the institutions with a repository a large majority (51% of the total sample) are externally sourced.
- Are the above systems integrated?
Given that twenty two percent of the respondents to question 3 had replied that they had a single integrated system the zero return for 'completely' integrated was somewhat unexpected and difficult to explain. One possible explanation is that the institutions in question have systems that span more than one application area but not the entire scope of RIM systems. However the fifty one percent of respondents whose institutions had no integration between their RIM systems confirmed earlier work that suggested that system development in RIM had been piecemeal.
There was no clear pattern as to which systems are integrated, however Grant Management systems seem to be linked to a variety of other systems in six different institutions.
- If 'completely' or 'partially', how is the integration managed?
This question was designed to gauge the sophistication and completeness of the integration for those respondents who had replied positively to question 4.
There were eighteen responses to this question. The total number of responses was greater than the number of respondents indicating that in some institutions more than one method of integration is in use.
With the exception of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) all other approaches are well represented with no obvious favoured solution. No other significant methods were highlighted by respondents.
- Are any of your systems based on the CERIF standard?
Of the six institutions which responded 'yes', one is currently implementing the PURE system, the others all cited their institutional repositories.
- Do your current systems provide a range of regular or on-demand management information such as grant income and research outputs by various groupings?
The degree to which Management Information can be retrieved from a system is a reasonably good guide to the versatility and value added elements of a system. There were thirty seven responses to this question.
There was a significant majority of respondents, sixty two percent, whose systems did provide MI.
- If 'Yes' to the previous question, do you use a Business Intelligence tool(s)?
The question was designed to gain an insight into how flexibly and responsively can data be retrieved and modelled from the RIM systems? There were twenty five responses to the question.
Only twenty four percent of respondents used a BI tool to access information in their RIM systems. Of those the two most common tools were 'SQL Server Reporting Services' and Cognos with two each.
Commentary
Given the degree to which an Institutional Repository provides a superset of the functionality of a Publications DB/Research Outputs Catalogue it is perhaps surprising that a significant number of institutions have both a publications DB/research output catalogue and an institutional repository. This could be explained by a desire on the part of institutions to separate their public and internal operations. Eleven percent of respondents had neither an IR nor publications DB, while sixty nine percent claimed to have both.
In other systems there is a similar split between proprietary and in-house solutions. Compared with other administrative systems, such as HR and Student Record, the percentage of in-house development is high which suggests that either the commercial market is still somewhat immature in this area or that funding for system purchases has been difficult to secure.
Other RIM systems that respondents identified were:
- Expertise (3)
- PGR student management (2)
- CRM (1)
- Project management (1)
Summary of Findings
As expected all institutions have some level of system support for their research activity. The bulk of the systems seem to be either financially facing (grant management) or output facing (Institutional Repository and Publication Database).
The level of integration is very variable with no institutions claiming complete integration and a minority claiming some integration. Methods of integration are very mixed which may reflect on both the age of the systems and their relative sophistication.
Very few systems are CERIF based and those that are, are overwhelmingly IRs.
Very few of the institutions make full and dynamic use of their systems to provide Management Information and Performance Indicator data.
Generally there is a low level of integration between the various elements of RIM systems which will tend to cause inefficient and error prone planning and reporting.
