uk cerif landscape study

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN is supported by:

UK CERIF landscape study: work in progress

RIM Group meeting

17 November 2011

Rosemary Russell, UKOLN, University of Bath


www.ukoln.ac.uk

CERIF landscape aims:

• To document the extent of adoption and engagement with CERIF in UK HE institutions and related organisations

• Repeat in one year to reveal how much things have moved on…– help to assess impact of JISC RIM programme– future programme planning


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Areas of CERIF use

• CRIS implementations• JISC projects • Funders…• Publishers

• focus here mainly on institutional use – ie via a commercial CRIS software platform

• existing UKOLN documents cover other areas


www.ukoln.ac.uk

CERIF CRIS use in UK HE• Lots of CERIF CRIS procurement in last year - some are in

early stages of implementation• Pure (Atira) - 17

St Andrews, Aberdeen, York, Royal Holloway, Strathclyde, Hertfordshire, Lancaster, Aston, Institute of Education, London, Dundee, Heriot-Watt, Glasgow Caledonian, King’s College London, Edinburgh, University of the Highlands and Islands, Bath, Queen's University Belfast

• CONVERIS (AVEDAS) - 5– Cranfield, Hull, Stirling, MRC Oxfordshire Regional Centre,

Brighton • Symplectic Elements (Symplectic)

– eg Brunel, Imperial, Queen Mary, Leeds…


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Progress to date• 9 interviews carried out

– 7 Pure, 2 CONVERIS– will cover majority of institutions with CERIF CRIS– exception - some very recent procurements which

haven’t yet deployed– all keen to be involved!

• Focused initially on institutions not involved in JISC projects – those we know less about

• Interviewee – ‘CRIS project manager’ based in:– Research Office (3)– Library/Info Services (4)– IT Department (2)


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Preliminary findings: CRIS• Institutions are following similar CRIS implementation processes eg

– integrating HR, finance, student systems, pFACT, IR etc• only one hasn’t integrated CRIS with existing IR - mapping overhead

considered too great– outreach, training researchers– etc

• …and experiencing the same issues eg– no standard view of organisational structures across institution– inconsistent data within systems– mapping problems

• person data especially difficult (lack of unique IDs)

• CRIS seen as middleware – intermediary between institutional systems

• Acknowledgement that pragmatism required when integrating:– “need to focus on what we can do rather than what we did in the past…”


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Preliminary findings: CERIF• Experience of CERIF mediated by CRIS software used

– so more discussion of institutional CRIS, rather than CERIF• Shielded from CERIF • Most have a basic understanding of CERIF – some more• Little direct engagement

– “We licenced the software so we don’t have to worry about CERIF ourselves – someone else does it for us”

• Unless essential, people don’t have time to investigate CERIF– only institutions undertaking development projects get properly engaged with

CERIF– “our focus with CONVERIS has been very much on REF so far”

• Reliance on CERIF expertise in user groups– “we depend on Anna…”

• CERIF viewed as an insurance– “Provides an insurance that if we need to switch to another system, data can be

reused. It doesn’t matter what the standard is.”


www.ukoln.ac.uk

Varied views on lack of CERIF engagement…

• “Worried that lack of expertise in CERIF will hinder us”

• “Don’t care at all about CERIF – although we specified it, it’s more as a proxy for QA… A lot more complex than our needs…


www.ukoln.ac.uk

How does understanding of CERIF help?• “I think it helps to have a broad understanding of

the CERIF model so that CERIF concepts make sense, and you can see eg how relationships work”

• “Helps understand what’s possible and what’s not”• “Understanding how eg projects work in CERIF

stopped us going in wrong direction when taking implementation decisions”

• “Having a concept of CERIF helps when explaining to other people eg academics why things work in a certain way”


www.ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN RIM resources

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/rim/

Landscape study due 16 December

[Plus CERIFy technical outputs to be available…]