Research Information Management: Continuity, Change and ImpactMichael JubbResearch Information Network

UUK Workshop5 December 2007

UK Research and InnovationUK publicly-funded research a success storyReal terms increases in in public investment since 1998Exceptional levels of productivityTotal expenditure on R&D c4% of world shareAt 1.8% proportion of GDP, UK is ranked 7th of G8, and below EU averageUK output of PhDs (rank =3rd) and publications (rank = 2nd) represent c 9% of world shareUK citations c 12% of world share

UK and the Wider WorldA world where knowledge diffuses rapidly away from its source?Highest-impact UK research generally involves international collaboration95% of the worlds science and technology based outside the UKGrowing interest in partnerships, open scholarship and open innovation

UK Research and Innovation Challengesto sustain research productivityto sustain ranking as new research nations increase investment and outputs to maximise returns on public investmentto translate research success into business and public service innovationsome tensions openness and public good purposes of investment in researchknowledge transfer/commercialisation targets

Creating & Using Information SourcesAdding to and exploiting the global knowledge pool at the heart of the research processJournal articles seen as key information resourcekey (sole?) measure of productivity, quality, and impactUK researchers produce c 80k peer-reviewed journal articles a yearThey need to find, access and use the accumulated stock of articles produced since 1665c 1m articles produced each yeargrowth rate c 3% a yearbarriers to accessfinancial and technologicalfor users as well as researchers

Its not only books and journals..Digital research dataProduced in increasing quantities and varieties, dynamic as well as staticRealising the value of dataLinking with publicationsWhats valuable and whats notOwnership?Reports and grey literatureRegistration and creditVisibilityPhysical objects and samplesData and information resources produced by people and organisations beyond the research community

Challenges for researchers as users and creators

Discovery, access and use: comprehensiveness vs speedInformation managementSpeedy communication vs need for registration and certificationMaximising visibility, impact, and opportunities for partnershipCitation, credit and assessmentData curation, access, and preservationHow are they (and HEIs) meeting these challenges?

Quality Assurance and TrustTraditional role of universities, publishers, and the scholarly communications systemRegistration and certification before dissemination and preservationBranding of trusted sitesPre-prints and multiple versionsQA for data?How do QA and trust operate in a social networking world?for the research communityfor users of research outputs

Standards and InteroperabilityJoining information systems and sources together: the $80bn problemCompeting platforms for journals and other publicationsFormalising information sources within relevant content domainsMetadata standardsVisibility and usabilityPotential for text and data mining and optimising the value of information

Roles and ResponsibilitiesInterrelated roles of key playersResearchers and research groups/collaboratorsFunders - both sides of the dual support systemResearch institutions (departments, faculties, libraries, repositories)Publishers, aggregators, data centres, web services (commercial and NFP)Behaviours, policies, services, and strategies all in fluxInterlocking (or not) developments internationallyOECD Principles and GuidanceNSF Cyberinfrastructure VisionAustralian Data CommonsEU Scientific Information in the Digital Age

Promoting ChangeUnderstand the research and innovation information spaceRoles, relationships and interdependenciesUnderstand what researchers, partners and users are doing nowMaximising visibility and usabilityfor researchers and for users/partnersResearch partnerships: collaboration and open innovation Performance managementnational and institutional perspectivesSustaining productivity and impact as the landscape changesOptimising returns on public investment

This all pretty familiar stuff

But important to remind ourselves of just how successful the research part of the UK research and innovation system actually is

Other bits perhaps not so successful.

Not going to repeat what is said in Sainsbury and elsewhere

But clear that improving information flows has an important part to play in improving innovation performanceRetaining our competitive advantage in research is not going to be easy

We do live in a world where knowledge diffuses rapidly, and the HE sector plays its part in that

But weve not yet achieved optimal performance in dissemination of research outputs produced by the HE sector

Thats important when we are seeking to promote partnership and collaboration, cross-sectorally and internationally

And we ourselves need access to the research outputs of the rest of the world

So there are challenges

In the research area, the productivity challenge is to maintain our relative position as one of the most productive research nations

In the innovation area, the familiar challenge is to translate research success into innovation success

And we need to recognise that there are some tensions here between openness and public goods on the one hand, and the kinds of success measures that focus on patents, licence income etc on the other.

Tensions also between institutional and national perspectives and interests

Some of the success measures not really consonant either with moves in the commercial sector towards open innovation

so lets focus for a moment on researchers themselves, and what they do and need

Both creators and users of information resources

Journal articles the most important of the information outputs (but cf arts and humanities)

Whether journal articles should be so dominant as measures of productivity and quality is another qn

But what UK researchers produce each year is only a small part of what they need to gain access to

Great strides have been made in recent years in access, but there are still important barriersAnd there is a whole range of other stuff that is becoming increasingly important, and which raises a whole series of other issues

Two key points

Not all of it is valuable, but some of it is, and we need better systems to determine which is which, along with systems for registration, citation and credit

Not all of it is produced initially by the research community, and there are complex issues of rights that need to be sorted out when researchers do use itSo some real challenges for researchers

They want access to as full a set as possible of the information relevant to their research, but they want it speedily, and this may give rise to a good enough approach

They are often not skilled in the management of information

They want to get results out quickly, but they want them certified as of high quality

They are interested in how their work is cited, how they gain credit for it, and in research assessment (and not just for journal articles)

At least some are interested in data curation and preservation, but they are not expert

And it has to be said that there is substantial room for improvement in all these areas (and more) QA and trust of critical importance in managing and disseminating the results of research

The traditional systems for scholarly communications did these things rather well, but they are under increasing strain Scale of research enterprise puts strain on peer reviewers (there arent enough of them, they cant devote sufficient time to it, and they cant provide guarantees)Time delays becoming unacceptable in a world of rapid communication

So how do we ensure that researchers and users recognise the sites and the content they can trust

Badging and branding arguably of even greater importance in a world of multiple versions and platforms

How do we make research data available in ways that are both usable and trusted, as well as linked into the published literature

As researchers make more use of blogs and wikis, and social networking sites and services, how do we know when they are flying a kite, and when they are saying something really important

Lots of interest in metrics of trust but how reliable are they?

David Ingram, Prof of Health Informatics at UCL, wrote an article for our Newsletter recently about how the lack of join-up between information systems and resources has been estimated to cost $80bn in one field in the US alone

There have been huge advances, but much time and effort is wasted because we dont have agreement on how information should be formalised and formatted

We dont have agreed schemas or metadata standards

We dont pay enough attention to making resources visible over the web, and to making them usable, through user-testing

Publications and other resources are still made available on competing and incompatible platforms

Unless we tackle these problems effectively, we shall miss out on the potential for integrating information resources, and for maximising the value of such integration through text mining and other tools and techniques

Tackling these kinds of issues effectively will require greater clarity than we have at present about the roles and responsibilities of the different groups of key players

The research information landscape in the UK is messy and complex, though in some areas we are ahead of competitors such as the US

The key point here is that roles and responsibilities, activities and strategies, are changing

That in the research information ecology, as in all ecologies, changes by one group of actors have knock-on effects on all the others That universities, their departments/faculties, their libraries/repositories, as well as their researchers, are key players

But remember also that research is itself an international enterprise, and we need to pay attention to international developments in these areas, some of them listed hereWe cant tackle all the issues at once, and we do need to establish a sense of where the priorities are

That means starting from a clear understanding of where we are now, of the research information landscape or ecology, with all its interdependenciesOf how researchers are behaving and making use of information resources and services of various kinds

But then building on that an understanding of where and how we can achieve improvements

Because we shall need to improve the ways in which we handle research information if we are to Sustain the UKs research performanceImprove our ability to collaborate and partner with other institutions, bodies in other sectors, and internationallyImprove the connections between research and innovationOptimise returns on investment at both institutional and national levels