Open data has potential to transform research management and sector efficiency says new Jisc report
New report highlights several 'quick wins' that could reduce bureaucracy and enable greater innovation in UK research management.
Jisc has today published open data about research management: a landscape review, outlining the current status of open data about research management in the UK. The report emphasises the potential of open data to increase efficiency, reduce administrative burdens and improve the potential for innovation across UK research.
Jisc was asked by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to lead on the implementation of digital and data recommendations of the Independent Review of Research Bureaucracy led by Professor Adam Tickell:
Recommendation 19: For the higher education sector, Jisc should lead on the creation of sector-wide groups responsible for overseeing the development and further integration of the research information ecosystem, including research management data.
Why open data for reducing research bureaucracy?
The bureaucracy review digital working group identified the need for identifying more common approaches to help integration of the research information ecosystem. The open data about research management report highlights the huge opportunity in giving data about research management an open licence and making it available through publication schemes, particularly in the case of public sector organisation data. This simple change alone could unlock significant amounts of publicly available data relevant to research management by making it universally findable and accessible through existing policy approaches and as part of the administrative process of its collection and management.
The report also notes:
- Simplifying and stabilising data as open data with common, low bureaucracy standards for metadata, for supporting application programming interface (APIs) developments could help to build a more efficient system by making data interoperable
- Data about the outputs of research appear to be more openly available than data about research management, probably attributed to drivers for the open science movement
- There is no universal approach, the landscape is complex, with a mix of discrete and overlapping data sources provided through many different platforms and systems covering particular areas of activity creating inefficiencies and increased costs
- The reliance on proprietary formats is currently limiting the potential for data to be open and there are readily available routes, such as the open data movement in the wider public sector and infrastructure such as data.gov.uk which can help open data about research management for efficiency and innovation
James Hetherington, director of the advanced research computing centre and pro-vice provost for the data empowered society grand challenge at University College London, said:
"The development of an open and interoperable research management data ecosystem is a central part of enabling automations which will reduce administrative burden in the research system. This report provides an essential landscape overview of the opportunities and challenges in this policy area. Government, funders and research organisations will need to work together with Jisc to make the vision a reality."
Rob Johnson, managing director of research consulting, said:
"This report will provide vital information to support the next steps of the bureaucracy review digital working group. This group is coordinated by Jisc, on behalf of DSIT, and provides a forum for the sector to work together on creating a more efficient, sustainable and low bureaucracy research management data ecosystem."
Co-author of the report, Victoria Moody, director of higher education and research at Jisc, said:
“There is a real opportunity for the focus on reducing research bureaucracy to support better access to open data about research management. Valuable data is often engineered within platforms which exceed the level of functionality needed to access the data simply. We found more than 100 non-sensitive datasets with different levels of accessibility. In some cases, a single platform gives access to a single data source and some are composed from a number of different sources. The opportunity to simplify the landscape and offer more accessible open data is one which will should be taken to support efficiency and reduced administrative burdens."