Research information management (RIM) is traditionally the
domain of the research office in modern institutions, traditionally with little
input from other departments. However
currently thinking and systems integration is turning this notion on its head.
An OCLC report, Research Information Management: DefiningRIM and the Library’s Role[1],
published in October 2017, aims to place libraries as not only a stakeholder in
the RIM space, but as an active participant.
What follows is a summary of this report.
But what is meant by RIM?
According to the OCLC report, RIM is the “aggregation, curation and
utilisation of information about research”, or “institutional curation of the
institutional scholarly record”. Another
very succinct definition by Science Europe is that it is the “data about
research activities, rather than the research data generated by researchers.” An important thing to note is that RIM data
is metadata only – it rarely, if ever, includes the actual artefact being described. For example, RIM publication data is at the
metadata level, and doesn’t include the actual publication itself. This is usually held in a different system,
such as an institutional repository.
No matter how it is defined, over the years institutions
have developed many systems, practices and workflows in order to capture the
varied types of information sourced from many different areas of the
institution. At my own institution, RIM
activity is sourced from four enterprise systems and an unknown number of local
departmental systems, all owned by the research office, library, human resources,
finance and the faculties themselves.
Not all of this information comes together in the one place but much of
it does, with faculties, libraries and the research office selectively (and
often manually) supplementing the data with additional information if the
situation requires it. This lack of
interoperability between systems is something that many institutions, including
my own, is struggling with. Having such
disparate systems, often managed by different departments with different
workflows, creates huge barriers to the flow if RIM metadata. Collaboration and communication between
stakeholders is key to effective RIM management.
So what can, and what does, the library bring to the
table? The OCLC report states that RIM
systems collect and store metadata on research outputs and activities including
those shown in the figure below.
Source: 2017. Research Information Management: Defining RIM and the Library’s Role, pg 6.
This data can be utilised in a variety of ways including
academic progress, grants management and in researcher profiles, to name a
few. This is best displayed in the
figure below from the OCLC report.
Source: 2017. Research Information Management: Defining RIM and the Library’s Role, pg 8.
So, where does the library fit into this. Traditionally libraries have been viewed as
places of collection development and not much else. My institution isn’t too different. There is a huge student focus on the
activities of the librarians, to the extent that many stakeholders are only
just realising the value that the library can bring to RIM discussions, and unfortunately
some don’t realise it at all. However, libraries are hot-pots of expertise in
scholarly communication and they should be pushing to be recognised as such.
The report segregates library expertise in four groups:
publications and scholarship; training and support; discoverability, access and
reputational support; and stewards of the institutional record, all of which
are critical ways in which the library can support RIM activities.
Publications and Scholarship Expertise
Metadata, bibliographic records, publication indexes and
more are all bread and butter to many librarians. It is the stuff they have been doing since
graduating from university (and in many cases, before). This is what librarians do, and they do it
well. They have the relationships with
the vendors that supply citation products, many of which also now have their
own RIM systems. They are knowledgeable
about trends in the publishing sphere, and in my experience, are extremely
skilful in identifying and correcting duplicate or incorrect bibliographic
metadata for research publications or indeed about the researchers
themselves.
Training and Support for End Users
Librarians are expert trainers, having trained scores of
students throughout their degrees in bibliographic searches, data management,
citation management, publishing and open access, and research metrics. While at my institution librarians do not
train directly in RIM, I don’t think anyone else does either. This leaves a perfect opening for the
librarians to get involved and fill the gap.
Discoverability, Access and Reputational Support
In a day where reputation is everything, libraries are
uniquely situated to provide reputational impact for institutions. Research publications are a major output of
universities and they are largely externally facing meaning that the reputation
of an institution is judged in part on the quality of the research being
conducted. This is largely communicated
via publication outputs (although impact metrics and research data are fast
becoming legitimate indicators of reputation).
Libraries, through institutional open access repositories, provide data
to profile pages, comply with funding open access mandates for the institution,
make outputs more discoverable thereby providing the potential for higher
citation rates, and offer a wide range of bibliometrics and altmetrics that
support researcher reputation.
Stewards of the Institutional Record
Libraries, including my own, play an integral role as
stewards of the institutional record.
Receipt, curation, discoverability and preservation of scholarly outputs,
as well as archival material, is a core component of the libraries work. This is often an outward facing collection
that is the basis for a large amount of institutional reporting.
The library has a great deal to offer institutions in the
research information management space, much of which goes unnoticed by
potential stakeholders in those very institutions. RIM reporting benefits
institutions in many ways, providing insights into the school, faculty or
institutional level, benchmarking and collaboration information, and impact and
engagement narratives. I recommend that
anyone working in the RIM space to have a read of the OCLC report, particularly
in the library field, although any RIM stakeholder will find the information
valuable.
[1]
Bryant, Rebecca, Anna Clements, Carol Feltes, David Groenewegen, Simon Huggard,
Holly Mercer, Roxanne Missingham, Maliaca Oxfam, Anne Raul and John Wright.
2017. Research Information Management: Defining RIM and the Library’s Role, OH:
OCLC Research. DOI:10.25333/C3NK88
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