ALIA Information Online 2017 Conference, 13-17 February 2017 Sydney: Data Information Knowledge
[Peer reviewed] This conference paper discusses a project by the University of South Australia to develop a system to manage research ouputs.
Abstract: The challenge of ensuring that research outputs are captured in a timely manner, academics are not frustrated with administrative processes and using powerful tools such as ORCiD to their full advantage is one faced by all universities. Coupled with senior managers’ increasing information needs to use research outputs data to answer key questions such as ‘who should we be collaborating with?’ adds additional pressure for streamlined whole-of-university processes, often when different areas work at cross-purposes. Through an intentional ‘one team’ collaboration between Library, Business Intelligence and Planning, Information Strategy and Technology Services, Research and Innovation Services, and Human Resources teams, UniSA has managed to support schools and academics to deliver enhanced end‐user services and to introduce efficiencies across the organisation with the support of the Deputy Vice Chancellor: Research and Innovation. The benefits of this approach have led to the following in a time period of only 18 months:
- the creation of the Collection of Research Outputs (CRO) online submissions and management system for all UniSA research outputs including journal articles, books and book chapters, conference papers, reports, patents, creative works, and Higher Degree and Masters by Research theses. CRO is currently harvesting 70% of all journal articles
- widespread adoption of ORCiDs
- output metadata being sufficiently complete and of high quality to automatically populate new design publicly-available staff home pages
- significantly increased compliance with UniSA’s Open Access Policy which has required Library staff to develop new workflows to support post‐print lodgement into the University’s institutional Research Outputs Repository (ROR)
- a more complete and up to date source of data to support Deputy Vice Chancellor: Research and Innovation’s desire to introduce measures of research productivity, which in some cases, will report and benchmark performance on outputs not necessarily included in statutory reporting requirements
- integration of citation counts and Altmetrics, and affiliation and collaboration metadata into staff home pages, staff performance reports and ROR pages.
The project leveraged existing enterprise systems including Appian business process management workflow software, the Alma library management solution and vendor APIs. The system delivers academics automated weekly notifications of new research outputs harvested from Scopus and Web of Science. Academics then either claim or reject the output and upload the post-print where applicable. Academics are also able to use a DOI lookup or manually submit publication details. The development of the new Repository discovery interface was informed by stakeholders and the display also includes additional citation details, funding, and linked research datasets. A comprehensive whole‐of‐university communications plan (including support resources) was executed with capability building sessions delivered by Library and other staff. The system has been in operation since August 2015 and initial uptake has exceeded expectations with academics quickly adapting to and engaging with the new process. Typically, academics claim outputs within a week of notification and the average time for a researcher to review and finalise an output is under five minutes.