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Research Data Shared Service Pilot Institutions & Research Data Network

This blog post announces the results of the call for formal expressions of interest to be a pilot institution in Jisc’s research data management shared service and also announces an accompanying ‘Research Data Network’ to engage with interested institutions who are not part of the pilot.

Pilot Institutions

In October Jisc invited formal expressions of interest for institutions to take part in Jisc’s Research Data Management Shared Service Pilot, which aims to design and procure a Jisc hosted beta service that can be taken up by higher education institutions to enable their researchers to easily deposit data for publication, discovery, safe storage, long term archiving and preservation.

Jisc had a good response to the call and as a result there were tough decisions to make. We aimed to create a balanced portfolio of pilots based upon factors such as:

  • institution type,
  • institution size,
  • research profile,
  • research systems in use,
  • types of data,
  • RDM Readiness.

We wanted the portfolio of pilots to reflect the needs and use cases of as many types of institutions as possible and to work with as many research systems as possible to enhance interoperability between systems in the sector.

We are very pleased to announce that the institutions selected are:

Cardiff University

CREST – Consortium for Research Excellence, Support and Training

Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine

Plymouth University

Middlesex University

Royal College of Music

St George’s Hospital Medical School

University of Cambridge

University of Lancaster

University of Lincoln

University of St Andrews

University of Surrey

University of York

 
We are currently carrying out procurement activity to provide the systems for the service and will have a framework of system suppliers ready in April. At the moment responses to the initial procurement questionnaire are being reviewed.

Research Data Network

The attendance at last November’s shared service requirement gathering workshop showed that there was a large appetite within the sector to be able to learn from each other and exchange knowledge around implementing RDM systems. There have been a number of requests for a wider set of HEIs beyond those in the pilot to be engaged in wide exchange on research data management issues. Jisc would like to facilitate an exchange via meetings and virtual discussion, we’re going to call this the Research Data Network, and in effect it will be a set of meetings and ways to share information as part of the Jisc Research at Risk activity. We hope that this will stimulate greater discussion within the community around RDM issues and system development and implementation and to allow a dialogue to inform the shared service, other Jisc services and institutional RDM provision.

We are planning to hold the first meeting of the network in April and more details will be available shortly. The likely agenda for the first meeting will include:

Future meetings will allow Jisc and the community to identify any use cases and ‘pain points’  that need attention, and will also allow us to showcase early outputs from the shared service and other projects in the Jisc R&D portfolio and will allow us share any knowledge gained with the sector. We also hope it will be an opportunity to share other gems and solutions that the sectors and stakeholders are working on.

Jisc will set up a web presence for the network where key topics can be highlighted and Jisc and institutions can share useful resources.

More updates on the RDM Shared Service and the Research Data Network will be circulated soon.