Practices and patterns in research information management : findings from a global survey

Abstract

In order to examine how research institutions worldwide are applying research information management (RIM) practices, OCLC Research partnered with euroCRIS to conduct a web-based survey that was administered from October 2017 through February 2018, yielding 381 responses from 44 countries, demonstrating the global nature of research information management activities. A working group comprised of subject matter experts in RIM practices representing both OCLC Research and euroCRIS worked collaboratively to synthesize the data and to write the report Practices and Patterns in Research Information Management: Findings from a Global Survey. The report details the complexity of RIM practices and examines how commercial and open-source platforms are becoming widely implemented across regions, coexisting with a large number of region-specific solutions as well as locally developed systems. It also considers the urgent need for system-to-system interoperability—with both internal and external systems—and demonstrates how the use of identifiers, standards, and protocols are perceived as most valuable when they can also facilitate interoperability. The growing need for improved interoperability between managing open access workflows and the curation of institutional research outputs metadata is giving rise to the increasing functional merging of RIM systems and institutional repositories and further reinforcing the need for complex, cross-stakeholder teams to support institutional RIM activities, commonly featuring research offices, and increasingly, the library. OCLC Research and euroCRIS plan to repeat this survey in the future, developing longitudinal data and knowledge about evolving RIM practices in order to help inform the global research community.