Find out more about the programme’s change projects at our next event on Wednesday 25 July

One of the common questions we’ve had – especially in the past few weeks – has been “What is the Research Lifecycle Programme going to do?”

Read on to find out how we’ll be answering that question…

News

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that this newsletter was pushed back by a week. That’s because we wanted the chance to prepare some more information about the progress of the programme and arrange our next event.

The business case has been approved

Angus Hearmon, Head of Research IT and Director of the Research Lifecycle programme, presented our business case at the Change and IT Process (CITP) subcommittee on Monday 18 June. He outlined how the scoping phase had been undertaken with extensive consultation and supplied a range of scenarios, as previously mentioned in our presentation at our June open house event .

We’re extremely pleased to announce that the business case was approved. We can start to really get to work on implementing the programme’s change projects, looking at the specifics for each of the 18 projects.

As agreed with the CITP, the programme will be delivered in a ‘modular’ way, with individual business cases being brought to the CITP each year for consideration and approval. Benefits and savings which have not yet been articulated can be included in the individual business cases, estimates will be refined, and cost recovery and efficiencies will be clarified.

Now this has happened, we’re able to start working on the change projects which will take place over the next five years, and can give you more details about what the RLP aims to achieve.

To find out more about what the programme intends to do, read our overview of the change projects and attend our next open house event on Wednesday 25 July, where you’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions.

• Overview of the RLP’s change projects
• Our next event

There’s still a way to go before we can drill down to very specific details, and this is where your feedback and involvement is going to be very useful. We are more than happy for you to get involved, so email us if you’re interested.

The past few weeks

As you can imagine, we’ve been quite busy since Newsletter 9 was released. In addition to a great deal of background work, we’ve attended the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health’s Research Staff Reps’ meeting, and the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences’ away day. We found both of them extremely useful; a number of questions were asked, and we came away with a few new considerations to take into account.

We’re also attending the PSS Conference at the Alliance Manchester Business School next week, and if you’d like us to attend events in your school or faculty, email us to discuss.

Events

Wednesday 25 July – The change projects

12.30 – 1.30pm, Room 1.009 Roscoe Building

Now the business case has been approved, we can talk in more detail about the change projects taking place as part of the programme.

While we only have an hour (including time for your questions), we’ll be able to give you an overview with more information about the projects.

• Register for July’s event

Save the date – 11 September – New Research Data Management platform

Research data management tools and services were identified as a major priority for researchers during the consultation for the Research Lifecycle Programme. To help address this, there will be an event on Tuesday 11 September from 2pm to 4pm, to demonstrate Mendeley Data (see below), a new research data management platform that has been developed by Elsevier in collaboration with the University.

This event will include the chance for you to use the platform and feedback to the supplier on what functionality would be helpful. There will be more details about this meeting and a formal invitation to follow later in the summer.

The University is partnering with Mendeley Data to influence and shape the research data management and publishing tools they are developing. The meeting in September will be an exciting first opportunity for researchers to see and give feedback on the beta version of the Mendeley Data platform which will include dataset co-editing, file referencing from Dropbox and custom metadata tools. We expect this platform will complement the existing facilities within Schools, Centres and the Research Data Storage service.

Invitations to attend the event will be sent out later on this summer, but in the meantime, email the Research Data team with any questions.

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