Newcastle University is a member of the Russell Group of universities and a research-intensive institution. As such the University needs a well developed infrastructure to support its research activity.

 

The University is divided into three faculties each of which has a Research Dean. In addition there is a Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation who has a cross-disciplinary remit. A central, University Research Office (URO) provides support and development for research. The URO employs a Research Funding Development Manager for each faculty. These managers are co-located with their respective faculty's Research Dean and work closely with the other members of the URO who are centrally located.

 

The University is engaged in a large-scale development of its Research Information Management (RIM) systems with a view to:

 

• Improving its ability to meet its statutory reporting obligations
• Providing a better service for its research community
• Providing comprehensive management information for research managers
• Providing comprehensive information of the University's research landscape to the wider community

 

Historical Context

 

In the wake of the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) the Faculty of Medical Sciences built an in-house Institutional Repository, called MyProfiles.

 

Subsequently the repository was rolled out across the entire University. The system acts as a hub for other research systems such as:

 

• Research Awards
• Postgraduate Research (PGR) student registrations
• Human Resources (HR) information

 

This, in turn, feeds Personal Plans with an initial set of data that individuals could add reflecting on information about research, teaching and other activities. These are used for annual appraisals and, as well as historic data, contain a section on future plans. Additionally, Personal Plans feed web profiles which, amongst other things, show each individual's top six publications. Interested readers can, if desired, then access other publications by following the 'More Publications' button at the bottom of the list.

 

The system can, and does, provide good Management Information and has functions to group staff together and report on their outputs, PGR students and research projects.

 

For RAE 2008 a Research Information Management system was built that took information from MyProfiles and other corporate (SAP) systems. Publication data was provided by MyProfiles. This allowed individuals to be formed into Unit of Assessment (UoA) groupings and profiles of the groups built. The system allowed individuals to be flagged as eligible/ineligible, submitted/not submitted, etc, with in-built functionality to scenario plan for all aspects of the RAE. This then allowed the University to do sophisticated modelling and anticipate how the RAE results would look. There was a significant amount of planning prior to submission of the data to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The system generated Extensible Markup Language (XML) to feed the HEFCE RAE data collection system. Most importantly it brought all the information on an individual into a single 'location'.

 

For the RAE, reports were sent to individuals showing all their data that was to be submitted (papers, income, PGR). This received a large, and mostly positive, reaction because it was the first time that all the information had been presented in a single (unified) format. However publication data in the system was frequently incomplete as it relied upon individuals accessing MyProfiles and manually adding in the bibliographic details of research outputs.

 

MyProfiles is now regarded as a mature system and any development has now been frozen. Only essential work is permitted. It is, effectively, a historic warehouse.

 

System Overview

MyImpact is the successor system to MyProfiles and builds on the foundation of its predecessor.

 

While MyProfiles had been very valuable, it had started its life in a single faculty and utilised technology that was not widely understood or supported. As a result developing the system was problematic and a business case was developed for its replacement.

 

In late 2007 the University Research Office submitted a bid to the University Executive via the Finance Committee to replace MyProfiles with a more robust, maintainable and scalable system to be known as MyImpact.

 

The proposal considered and rejected the feasibility of a proprietary solution on the grounds that the functionality was insufficient for the University's needs. Any bought-in solution would require so much customisation and development that it would be very difficult to implement subsequent supplier upgrades etc, so an in-house solution was chosen. It was also acknowledged that MyProfiles already provided most of the functionality required and in some cases was better than the commercially available alternatives.

 

The cost benefit analysis was very favorable and the project was granted £348k for an in-house development (the £348k was not a Full Economic Cost (FEC), as project management and other 'fixed costs' were not included).

 

The system is being phased with the first phase concentrating on research outputs.

 

The project was approved in January 2008 and actually started in June 2008.

 

Principal drivers for change were (in order):

 

• Research Excellence Framework (REF)
• Improving management information
• Improving research performance
• Streamlining of systems and improving data accuracy

 

The development resource was an information analyst with two developers. Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) was not a consideration when designing and developing the system, but in light of recent developments, is now being considered.

The MyImpact system will eventually be the single place of truth for all research information. It already has this status for publication and output data. The system will take information from a variety of sources including MyProfiles and an existing e-Prints repository. In addition the University has bought upload licences from both Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus.

 

Integration with other corporate systems was difficult and a significant portion of the budget was spent developing an 'individual linker' to identify an individual to various corporate systems.

 

The system is predicated on the individual and larger groupings, such as departments, are then aggregated from the individual data.

 

Usage Model

 

In the past the responsibility for quality assurance (QA) of outputs rested with the individual researcher. However this caused a number of difficulties and the responsibility now rests within the library.

 

An output is entered into the system by either an academic or a secretary. There is then a grace period of two weeks during which the academic can amend the item before it is 'passed' to the library for QA. The library also checks the system for duplicates entries (eg joint authors both entering the output). Once everything is correct, the status is changed to 'approved' and finally to 'published'. There is an option for not making an item visible on the web in which case the output remains 'approved' but not 'published'.

 

Every two weeks there is a web crawl of Web of Science (WoS) looking for articles with a 'Newcastle' author. If previously unknown articles are found they are sent to the academic asking them to confirm that they are the author and, if so, whether they want to add the article to their publications. If no reply has been received after fourteen days they are reminded and if, after a further seven days, there is still no reply the article is 'locked' by the Library, checked and then added to the individual's list. It is then down to the individual to make it visible on the web. There have been problems identifying an individual as they can use variations on their name e.g. Anthony, Tony, A, T; may all refer to the same individual.

 

If the researcher wishes the full text of the output to be made publicly accessible, they can upload it easily into MyImpact and it is then managed by the Library's dedicated e-Prints officer (copyright checked, etc) and then placed in the e-Prints repository.

 

The system will produce much richer and more relevant Management Information. Much of the information in MyProfiles was textual and subject to various different interpretations but MyImpact is much more structured and consequently the quality of the data and therefore the accuracy of the reports is higher.

 

Current Developments

 

Currently the library is working on de-duplicating the back catalogue (from MyProfiles, ePrints, WoS, Scopus) and getting citation counts from WoS and Scopus.

 

The intention is to produce CVs, appraisal and promotion papers from the information held in the system in an effort to increase the use of the system and the accuracy of the data, as well as streamlining the processes for producing such reports.

 

As the scope of the system is increasing it will need a broader based steering group and, possibly, new champion.

 

In order to increase the resilience of the development team, they will be transferred from the Research Office into the central Information Systems and Services who will assume responsibility for system maintenance and development. The University Research Office (URO) expects a loss of flexibility and responsiveness but welcomes the greater resilience that this reorganisation will provide.

 

Governance

 

The project is run from the University Research Office (URO) with the Head of URO as the project manager. The project reports to the Research Committee. The project champion is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (PVC) Research and Innovation and principal stakeholders have been identified as:

 

• The University Research Office
• The Library
• Researchers
• Research Managers