Online learning is fragmenting the traditional model of the university as a single site for both education and research. In this LSE Blog post, Jon Treadway and our Daniel W Hook, discuss how this digital transition is reshaping universities and how altmetrics might enable higher education institutions to redefine themselves in an increasingly aspatial academic environment.

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Supporting Culture Change

GRID passes the torch to ROR

Digital Science has decided to pass on the torch to ROR and retire GRID from the public space.

What shape will the post-COVID university take

Online learning is fragmenting the traditional model of the university as a single site for both education and research.

Research leaders invited to the fourth Transforming Research Online conference

Digital Science is sponsoring Transforming Research.

Interoperable Technologies

GRID passes the torch to ROR

Digital Science has decided to pass on the torch to ROR and retire GRID from the public space.

What shape will the post-COVID university take

Online learning is fragmenting the traditional model of the university as a single site for both education and research.

Intuitive Tools

An invaluable system for fostering cross-institutional collaboration

We offer something completely new such as its integration, reporting capabilities and a user-friendly design, which sets it apart.

One of the highest-rated grant management systems

A Consumers Guide to Grants Management Software lists CC Grant Tracker as one of the highest-rated grant management systems.

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Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to fundamentally change many industries, which include banking, music and the publishing industry. This report will zoom in on the potential of blockchain to transform scholarly communication and research in general. By describing important initiatives in this field, it will highlight how blockchain can touch many critical aspects of scholarly communication, including transparency, trust, reproducibility and credit.

Moreover, blockchain could change the role of publishers in the future, and it could have an important role in research beyond scholarly communication. The report shows that blockchain technology has the potential to solve some of the most prominent issues currently facing scholarly communication, such as those around costs, openness, and universal accessibility to scientific information.

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The infrastructure for information on science and technology has a strong influence on the patterns of communication and the visibility of research. Thus scientific journals have shaped the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge since the birth of modern science in the 17th century.

In recent years, new forms of exchanging information have been developed, allowing the possibility of more ‘open science’ – a system of scientific communication that is more transparent, cheaper and more accessible to all researchers, stakeholders and the wider publics. However, to which extent is ‘open’ science also more ‘inclusive’ science? How can ‘open’ science facilitate wide access to information and knowledge that was previously marginalised in mainstream journals and databases?

Since the 1960s, the visibility of science was influenced by the bibliographic database of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) (now Web of Science). This database was built following Eugene Garfield’s notion that a small ‘core journals’ published most of the all the research of significance, and that the ISI database only needed to cover these to capture most relevant science.  These core journals of ‘international’ scope that ‘controlled’ most scientific communication were mainly published in a few Western countries. The databases were often used by managers to stratify science into high-quality cores (top quartile journals), second class science and ‘invisible science’.

Since the 1980s, researchers in the global south such as Hebe Vessuri and colleagues, and in some disciplines such SSH, have increasingly voiced discontent about Garfield notion of ‘core’, in particular about its consequences in terms of the invisibility of ‘peripheral’ journals and the effects of journal stratification on knowledge production. For example, there have been worries of suppression of research on topics relevant to developing countries or marginalised populations (such as tropical neglected diseases), in particular when they are published in local journals in languages other than English.

The great changes in information and communications technology (ICT) in the last two decades have facilitated the pluralisation of scientific information –and the addition of `alternatives’ to the mainstream journals and databases, such as Scielo or Redalyc that explicitly aim to fill in gaps in coverage. Moreover, the advent of open access technologies that can make ‘local’ journals accessible across the globe. Also new forms of science dissemination, such as blogs or Twitter, or new forms of publishing (e.g. data sharing), are making scientific information more diverse.

This succession of transformations would suggest that more ‘open’ science would also be more ‘inclusive’ – in the sense that it allows non-mainstream research to be accessed. However, as we have learned in the world wide web, accessibility is not the same as visibility. The high connectivity of the contemporary world might lead towards concentration rather diversification. For example, Larivière and colleagues recently showed a highly increased concentration of journals into an oligopoly of publishers in the last 20 years.

On 14-16 September, we are holding the 2016 S&T Indicators Conference, which this year focuses on indicators in the margins, in ‘peripheral spaces’ – i.e. the topics, geographies, disciplines, or groups that were overlooked or inappropriately represented by indicators. The flawed representation is often due to exclusion of science from developing countries or less ‘important’ issues from the information infrastructure.

The conference will aim to discuss, first, the diverse strategies for developing infrastructure with an open and comprehensive coverage and, second, the governance of the scientific information infrastructure in the face of new forms of communication.

In the first place, it has been shown that current multidisciplinary databases (Web of Science or Scopus) have a limited coverage while only databases that are specific to some sectors achieve a more comprehensive coverage (such CABI). However, most S&T indicators and benchmarking (e.g. UNESCO’s reports) are based on conventional ‘core’ databases. Should more comprehensive databases be developed, mixing different types of science – e.g. more ‘local’ and more ‘universal’? How should indicators of these databases be interpreted? How is open access best provided and maintained?

Second, the development of robust and publicly trusted indicators of the new scientific communication needs an open and transparent data infrastructure. What type of governance should be established for scientific data to ensure public critical analysis? Which types of organisations should manage the data? Should these be distributed or centralised systems?

Previous studies of standards and infrastructure have shown the deep political implications of apparently technical choices. If we aim to make science not only more open, but also more democratic and inclusive, we need to be highly reflective on how we develop the new information infrastructures.

You can follow the conference on Twitter, they are @STI2016VLC.

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Becoming familiar with the range of software and services now available to research managers can seem daunting to someone new to the area. I was recently asked to submit an opinion on Elsevier’s SciVal information service, and this gave me pause for thought. I felt that it was an opportunity for me to reflect on the bigger picture of research information management and to form a more concrete view of what’s involved.

I work at Waterford Institute of Technology, we are part of a grouping of 14 Institutes of Technology across Ireland that often works collaboratively in areas of overall strategy. In Ireland, higher education is mostly provided by seven universities and 14 institutes of technology. This is analogous to the university/polytechnic dichotomy that obtained in the U.K. until 1992, before all became universities. My own institution is one of the largest and has competencies in research in life sciences and software engineering among others. The bulk of research output, as measured by publications, comes from the university sector, but the institutes of technology are developing a strong research culture and matching research support infrastructure.

The range of software and services that support research management has increased rapidly over the last 15 years, or so. It has very much helped me to understand what has driven these changes, and what the specific problem domains are for research information managers.

The challenges fall under one or more of three key headings:

• Strategic management
• Back-office processes
• Dissemination.

Processes in any of these areas can be helped by software which enables efficient capture and re-use of data connected to researchers, and which facilitates data flow between the different systems that exist within an institution, and beyond.

It is important to realise research information management has emerged as its own service category in the last 15 years, [i] and to understand this emergence has been driven by the ongoing global shift in emphasis towards competitive research funding from direct institutional allocations. [ii] As a result of this change, research culture has moved from being a rather genteel, informal pursuit to a highly competitive, almost commercial, outward-looking venture. Research collaborations between partner institutions on large-scale projects are now the norm, their character being formal and contractual. Besides the increase in competitiveness, universities and institutions also inhabit a more rigorous regulatory environment, which demands good data.

As a result, an array of software packages and services have been developed, which helps research managers to keep on top of that information.

The diagram below illustrates the point of the three domains of research information management:

Central Theme: Streamline Research Administrative Processes

When looking at the core research administrative processes, the key word is integration. Effective use of the available information is hampered by the fact that it is scattered across different departments within institutions, such as HR, the registry, academic departments, and the library. Amy Brand’s blog post on this subject describes this situation clearly and is worth a read. [iii] She speaks from the perspective of a US academic, but the situation is very similar in Ireland, where I am based. Research administration is made easier by uniting information from the different institutional systems under a common interface. This is achieved through the use of a CRIS (Current Research Information System). [iv] A key function of a CRIS is to make the generation of reports and the gathering of funder-compliance information easy. A number of CRISs exist on the market today. Here is a table showing a few examples:

In the UK and Italy, [v] where there is a national research assessment framework, there has been a move towards an independent, free, profiling system called ORCID, which stores this data and uniquely distinguishes the researchers throughout their careers, regardless of their employers’ institutions or countries. The ORCID platform is worth a mention, [vi] as it has two characteristics shared by all good software platforms. It has a core competency or functionality which it executes very well, and it also has an API (Application Programming Interface) that allows other systems to exchange data with it seamlessly. This leads to a host of benefits based around efficient re-use of data. For example, all major CRISs support data migration into and out of ORCID. Also, having an ORCID field in a funding agency online application form can save valuable time, as empty fields can be pre-populated with data from ORCID. Like many systems or services, ORCID does not sit squarely under one heading, but strays into the dissemination domain, as it helps to make references to research publications more discoverable on the Web.

Sometimes CRISs are referred to as ‘profiling systems’, which alludes to their role in tracking data about the publications and other scholarly activities of researchers. This information is stored in the CRIS itself as a list of bibliographic references which can be used to maintain CVs or researcher profiles on an institutional website. The bibliographic references in these online profiles may link to an open access repository containing freely available full-text versions of the publications.

Disseminate & Promote Researchers, Institute, and Research

Research dissemination has moved from the print to the digital medium. The Internet has changed this landscape drastically, first with the Open Access movement and now with the widespread use of social media. Web-based tools, including open access repositories and online researcher profiles, fit under this heading of dissemination. The various social media can also be included in this category, not just the ‘likes’ of Facebook and Twitter, but also more specialised platforms such as Figshare, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate.

In addition to this, there is a powerful emerging class of social media analytics tools such as Altmetric, Impactstory, and Plum Analytics, which are now becoming an essential means for researchers and institutions to monitor – and influence – the public conversation around their research. These tools straddle the dissemination and strategic domains of research information management.

Support of Strategic Management of Research

Strategy is of transcending importance in today’s competitive research environment, where managers want to direct resources to the areas that are going to give the best return. The two preeminent products in this domain are Elsevier’s SciVal and Thomson’s InCites. They are based on the Scopus and the Web of Knowledge citation indexes, respectively.

The most concrete way we have of measuring research impact is through counting citations. A paper that has been cited more times than another could be said to have had the greater impact. Citation indexes facilitate this, and more.

A citation index is a very large database that tracks thousands of quality journals and proceedings simultaneously, logging key data about each article, such as its authors, where they are from, which other articles in the database it cites, and which subsequent articles cite it. From this complex dataset, inferences can be drawn about the performance of institutions and individuals relative to others in the same domain of knowledge, or geographic location. The data can help strategists to identify gaps that can be exploited, or potential areas for collaboration with groups in other institutions.

The increased need for such analytical rigour in research management mirrors the increasing importance of business intelligence in the commercial sector: both have been driven by competition and supported by advances in information technology.

Conclusion

When choosing software, it is important to remember that a good system is one that does its core job well and exchanges information with other systems in a transparent and programmable manner.  Be a little cautious when presented with a solution that claims to be a master of all trades, because information needs are going to be different for different institutions.  I have a notion of an ‘information ecosystem’, where each system operates both autonomously and in harmonious exchange with the other parts.  I think this is a vision worth aspiring to.

It is beyond the scope of this blog post to do anything other than give you, the reader, a feel for the research information management landscape.  If, like me, your thoughts were not entirely clear, then I hope to have offered you a frame of reference upon which you can build your own personal understanding of the subject.

[i] Lorcan Dempsey; 6 October 2014 Research Information Management Systems – A New Service Category? http://orweblog.oclc.org/research-information-management-systems-a-new-service-category/.

[ii] University World News: The Global Shift to Competitive Research Funding  http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130811091923186 11 August 2013.

[iii] Amy Brand; 28 April 2015; US Universities Need to Invest More in Coordinated Management of Research Information; https://www.digital-science.com/blog/perspectives/us-universities-need-to-invest-more-in-coordinated-management-of-research-information/.

[iv] You will also hear these systems referred to as RIMs (Research Information Management systems).

[v] David Kane; 1 July 2015, ORCID: Major Policy Announcements in Italy and the UK http://davidkane.net/orcid-major-policy-announcements-in-italy-and-the-uk/.

[vi] V. [does he have a first name?] Weigert; 3 October 2013;  What is ORCID and Why is it Important https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/what-is-orcid-and-why-is-it-important-03-oct-2013.

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Richard Padley is the Chairman, CEO and co-founder of Semantico, a specialist software company who creates innovative digital publishing solutions for publishers and information providers. He is known for his passion on topics such as access and managing online identities, the semantic web, taxonomies and discoverability, and mobile and cross platform delivery.

As a community we have made huge advances in providing the infrastructure needed to uniquely identify contributors to scholarly works. The recent launch of the ORCID auto-update functionality adds a missing link by allowing ORCID records to automatically update as new papers are published. However, there is another missing link that I want to focus on here; the link between individuals and their institutions.

 1.       The missing link

Within our sector there is a general shift in focus from institutions to individuals, which in turn is being accelerated by the increasing adoption of open access revenue models. This adds momentum to the growth in uptake of ORCID as a persistent identifier for individual researchers and contributors. We currently lack an equivalent persistent identifier structure for organisations and institutions, however, as I’ll mention later, there are some interesting contenders. Without this structure, it is impossible to unambiguously link a researcher to all of their affiliated institutions. Consequently, this lack creates a blind spot for metrics and adds friction in a number of ways for readers, researchers, publishers and institutions.

2.       Metrics and impact 

Whilst conventional measures of impact are calculated at the journal title level, the provision of persistent identifiers for researchers greatly facilitates the calculation of impact and other alternative metrics at the individual researcher level. This is an important step in helping reduce the iniquities in researcher assessment in the cases where this is still based on the impact factor of journals where a researcher has published.

Metrics can also be aggregated and measured at other levels; the recent introduction of Crossref’s Open Funder Registry provides a standardised list of funder names necessary to accurately link published content back to funding organisations, thus allowing aggregate measures of research output, including impact, to be calculated for each funding organisation.

By this line of reasoning it should also be possible to calculate aggregate impact for a given institution, publisher, or, perhaps more interestingly, at the learned society level too. Certainly this would be desirable from the institutional funding perspective given the political climate where research assessment places an ever increasing demand for quantifiable and reproducible metrics. I believe this would also be valuable for learned societies as it would strengthen the rationale around their publishing programmes at a time when these are under stress from the growth in OA.

3.       Analytics

Of course journal impact factors are only one measure in the broader field of analytics. Here too the same concerns about identity are equally present. Measuring usage and understanding user behaviour all hinge on the ability to identify both individuals and organisations in their journey across the whole scholarly ecosystem. Institutional identifiers also enable the functioning of our software service infrastructure to deliver business intelligence; turnaway data which is currently unusable can be turned into actionable sales information when institutions can be reliably identified.

4.       Learned societies

Identity has always been important from the society perspective. Clearly, societies need to identify their members in order to deliver membership services. As these membership services may not always be delivered by the society directly there is a need to for software services delivering identity management both internally and externally to third parties including partner publishers. Again, here is a place where a stable organisational identifier system would benefit the society in both managing entitlements to services as well as providing analytic and impact data around society activities.

5.       Publishers

Publishers need to manage institutional identity in a whole raft of different contexts; subscription systems, CRM, marketing databases, hosting providers and APC processing to name just a few. Often these functions are managed in separate systems, resulting in complex data unification challenges in order to derive business intelligence. Using a stable institutional identifier is the first step towards decreasing the complexity in the data flows between these systems. But an identifier on its own is not enough: simply copying data and identifiers between individual systems leads to drift and synchronisation headaches. A key enabling technology here is the provision of a software service specifically for identity management to ensure integration between multiple systems is effective and efficient.

6.       Existing initiatives

Given all of the benefits I have outlined above, it would be surprising if work had not gone on in this field already. We already have two formally standardised institutional identity systems: ISIL and ISNI. ISIL is focussed on providing identifiers for libraries, and ISNI on identifiers for contributors to creative works (including organisations). In our experience both of these systems lack organisational infrastructure and have complex data sharing and re-use requirements which contribute to their low uptake within the scholarly community.

Other initiatives include OrgRef, Ringgold and GRID. GRID, from Digital Science, seems particularly promising in that the data is available under an open CC-BY licence and they are providing value added services such as disambiguation as part of their revenue model. GRID is brand new and it’s not yet clear to me yet just how persistent the standard is or how third parties can create their own IDs, although I’m told that this is intended to be the case.

At Semantico we have a significant interest in this area as our SAMS Sigma product is focussed on identity and access management. This provides the essential software service – identifying individuals and organisations – needed to unlock the benefits I have described above. SAMS already leverages both individual and organisational identifiers to provide real single sign on across the scholarly web; stronger uptake of a standard identifier in our community will enable these identities to flow more seamlessly across the scholarly ecosystem.

7.       What we need to do

I believe there is an opportunity for the scholarly community to come together and address the challenge of providing a stable persistent identifier for institutions. This conversation should clearly involve the existing stakeholders I have listed above. But a standard alone is insufficient for success; both ORCID and Crossref demonstrate the need for organisational infrastructure, services and outreach in order to drive uptake and ensure success.

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