The following post is part of a series based upon the OCLC Research Information Management in the US reports.
Research information management (RIM) is a rapidly growing area of investment in US research universities. RIM systems that support the collection and use of research outputs metadata have been in place for many years, with greatest maturity in Europe and the Pacific Rim. However, in the absence of national research assessment requirements in the United States, RIM practices at US research universities have taken a different—and characteristically decentralized—course.
The Research Information Management in the United States two-part report series from OCLC Research examines the practices, goals, stakeholders, and uses that comprise the RIM landscape in the US, documenting how it is used to support reputation management, interdisciplinary research, faculty annual reviews, and strategic planning and reporting. In the course of documenting RIM practices at five case study institutions, the authors have synthesized six high-level recommendations for US institutional leaders and decision makers.
I’m sharing a quick highlight of these recommendations here, with more details offered in Part 1 of the report.
Six recommendations for institutional leaders
We encourage institutional leaders to:
1. Invest in institutional data curation
Quality data that is fit for purpose doesn’t just happen—it requires significant institutional investment. RIM systems can provide significant insights into institutional activities, strengths, collaborations, and areas for additional investment and promotion—but only if the data is sufficiently granular, deduplicated, complete, and transparent.
Librarians possess extensive expertise in publications metadata, a foundation of knowledge that no other campus stakeholder group possess, and we recommend that institutions rely upon librarians with metadata expertise to curate RIM system data, which we document in the Penn State and Texas A&M case studies.
2. Support adoption of persistent identifiers (PIDs)
In an environment where digital information about research outputs and their contributors is distributed across the network, machine readable and interoperable persistent identifiers such as DOIs and ORCID IDs enable the identification, disambiguation, and harvesting of metadata, as well as supporting linkages between different types of entities.
This facilitates an improved understanding of research relationships, offering the ability to link publications to persons, to organizational affiliations, to grants, to funders, and much more. Widespread adoption of PIDs is crucial for metadata harvesting at scale, and more PIDs for more entities with more linkages will provide us all with better data—with the promise of reducing administrative burdens on researchers, too. For instance, today researchers can create a biosketch for NIH and NSF grant proposals using the SciENcv biosketch tool that is integrated with ORCID, facilitating data transfer rather than rekeying.
Libraries and publishers have long understood the value of PIDs and have been active proponents of their adoption. But stronger support by institutional leaders and faculty will bolster their adoption, which in turn will result in benefits to researchers and institutions alike. The faculty senate resolution in support of ORCID adoption at Stanford University is an excellent example of this type of support.
Furthermore, there is growing urgency here in the US, as a January 2021 White House memo from the Trump administration directed federal funders to establish policies and requirements for researchers receiving federal funding to be registered with a service that provides a digital persistent identifier. Further guidance announced in January 2022 directed funding agencies to “work to implement [digital persistent identifiers] into their electronic systems and processes” in order to “bolster research security and integrity while reducing administrative burden.” I interpret this to mean that federal agencies will soon begin requiring ORCID identifiers (and authentication) in grant applications, updates, and reports. This requirement will also provide a big boost in the adoption of ROR identifiers for research organizations.
3. Don’t expect a turn-key system
RIM system vendors may emphasize that their system is easy to set up and can be operational within a matter of days. This promise can lead to disappointment when the implementation process seems to take forever.
The reason for implementation delays is often that it can be difficult and time consuming to extract, transform, and load the institution’s own data into the RIM system—information about people, job titles, affiliations, campus units, and more. Institutional data is rarely fit for purpose for reuse in a RIM system. The RIM implementation may be the first attempt to unite this data in a single place, and it can expose inconsistencies and gaps in campus data that will require remediation.
In particular, organizational units and their hierarchical relationships present a near-universal headache for RIM implementations because the institutional hierarchy may not be adequately captured in any other campus system, a situation that is particularly acute for research institutes and centers. Information may need to be extracted from multiple systems and then harmonized. Abbreviations may need to be spelled out. And the relationship between researchers and their affiliated unit(s) may also be unclear.
4. Support cross-functional teams
The skills required to successfully implement, manage, and use a RIM system are diverse, including expertise in metadata management, technical support, project management, communications and marketing, and research and reporting. Cross-functional teams comprised of multiple stakeholders working harmoniously together are required. We defined this concept as social interoperability in a previous OCLC Research report, the “creation and maintenance of working relationships across individuals and organizational units that promote collaboration, communication, and mutual understanding.”
We found Virginia Tech to be an outstanding exemplar of this approach, documented in detail in Part 2 of the report. Throughout the case study, there are examples of listening, learning, responding to new challenges, and adjusting near-term objectives in service of institutional goals. There, the result of strong institutional collaboration and social interoperability is a single RIM system that supports multiple business needs and institutional objectives.
Explicit executive sponsorship of RIM efforts—particularly when expressed in concert by multiple institutional leaders—can help facilitate cross-unit social interoperability.
5. Invest in dedicated personnel
RIM systems will not run themselves, and institutional investment beyond the purchase of a vended product is essential. We encourage institutions to realistically consider staffing needs in advance or else risk being disappointed in the results and usability of their investment. The investments are not inconsiderable: two-thirds of the institutions responding to a global survey of RIM practices reported having at least two full-time staff members supporting RIM activities.
6. Include research information in enterprise data governance efforts
Advancing technologies, standards, and networked information make it possible to now collect and manage information about research outputs at scale—something impossible only a few years ago. We encourage institutions to recognize publication metadata as a university asset, like student, finance, and HR information. When combined with other internal and external data sources, it can offer significant and granular insights into the relative strengths, growth, and opportunities for the institution through reports, visualizations, and actionable recommendations.
It should also be included in campus-wide data governance and stewardship efforts. Ideally the metadata about research outputs should be collected and stored centrally, where access is secured, facilitated, and controlled, providing a convenient decision support platform for academic and administrative decision makers. This approach is also exemplified in the Virginia Tech case study.
Consult directly with the OCLC Research Library Partnership
We encourage you to learn by more by reading the reports. Additionally, I am available to consult directly with decision makers at your institution if your university is affiliated with the OCLC Research Library Partnership.
Rebecca Bryant, PhD (she/her), previously worked as a university administrator and as community director at ORCID. Today she applies that experience in her role as Senior Program Officer with the OCLC Research Library Partnership, conducting research and developing programming to support 21st century libraries and their parent institutions.
