Using Business Process Management Tools and Methods for Building Research Information Management
BRIM Project Based at University of Huddersfield
View the project's Final Report on issuu.
This project investigated the feasibility of implementing Research Information Management (RIM) tools to satisfy the management needs of a university which is significantly growing its research activity.
The University of Huddersfield planned to utilise the state-of-the-art information processing ideas such as business process modelling, service orientation, and knowledge bases called ontologies, and integrate them with legacy core business computing systems. The idea was to investigate a method to expose existing business systems as services usable by other computing processes, in such a way that their interfaces were self-describing and conforming to an international standard.
The project started with interviews with stakeholders (school research administrators, research senior management, finance staff and research budget holders) in order to elicit their requirements. Current data and core business systems were assessed.
The approach taken was to split the project into three tasks:
- To capture requirements and create a prototype system that integrated with existing business processes using standard interfaces
- To evaluate the existing core business process tools with respect to their capabilities to share data and processes
- To investigate the use of rich data representations, called ontologies, for representing and storing research information, in particular publication information
To make the aims attainable in a 6 month period the University focused on two areas:
- the research project bidding process
- the research publication data repository
Initial findings indicated that it would be difficult to integrate and use data from existing computer systems in the University in a fully standardised, service-oriented approach; but it would be possible, nevertheless, to create a research information layer which integrated with and harvested data from existing systems.
During the project Huddersfield demonstrated a pilot system, using technology that integrated data from existing computer systems in a standard, component-based way, and stored it in a model based on a developing research information management standard known as the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF). The technology allowed the systems to be viewed as 'services', but was reliant on the systems being produced by a particular software company. Therefore, although Huddersfield had to compromise on the 'openness' of the technology, the solution adopted preserves features of the service-oriented approach and utilises the CERIF standard.
A key result of the project was that it demonstrated how data stored in a university publications repository can be reconciled with other university computer systems to create accurate management information about staff publications.
