Abstract

A Current Research Information System (CRIS) has become an essential tool for the day-to-day work of Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs). Making large amounts of research information usable for all university stakeholders is a huge administrative task for RMAs. A CRIS brings research information from all university data sources onto a single, intelligent and secure platform. Its fully interconnected data model empowers universities to gain a comprehensive overview of all research activities, collaborate beyond borders, maximise funding opportunities, promote open science activities and showcase the impact of the university's achievements.

The appetite to make research data publicly available has grown rapidly, along with the increasing support for open science, FAIR data principles and the need to develop and promote best practice in the assessment of scholarly research in line with the Dora principles and more recently the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (COARA). While we welcome these requirement for greater transparency, and we agree on the need to reform research assessment practices, for those of us tasked with managing and analysing our university's research data output, these new developments exert a pressing need to improve the ways in which the university captures, measures, promotes and reports on the output of our scientific research.

Research can greatly benefit society with researchers tackling some of the world's greatest challenges. Researchers and universities are under increasing pressure from Governments and Funding Agencies to demonstrate the impact of their research. A CRIS helps to showcase the social, economic, cultural and societal impact of the university's research along with the public policy and quality of life impacts.

A CRIS can help facilitate a more interoperable research ecosystem. When universities use a CRIS solution, it can deliver substantial benefits in efficiency and facilitate the implementation of open science, including the possibility of linking specific outputs (publications or data) to the research equipment used in their production for example. It enables the leveraging of organised insights and helps to drive strategic decision making, thereby unlocking the university's full research potential.

Join this discussion on the benefits of implementing a CRIS solution and hear the lessons learned at SETU during the development and implementation process. When undertaking a software implementation project there are always challenges to overcome, and this session covers some of the unforeseen challenges in implementing a CRIS solution at SETU. Together we can discuss the benefits (or otherwise) to RMAs of implementing a CRIS at a university to help capture and manage the growing array of research data and explore how a CRIS can facilitate the increased research reporting requirements.