Updated vision of UCT eResearch environment

1. The UCT Research Portal:
a head-in-the-clouds view

2. The way we thought it should be (mid-2011)
eResearch Tab on
UCT Home Page
Outside View
Showcase
Scholarly Search Research
Profiles
work Experts Facilities
Libraries Vula
and My
Repository Tools
My eResearch
My
Storage
My Students My Contracts
Finance My Staff
My Grants My Ethics
HR Research Office
Inside View

3. The way we think it should be now (mid-2012):
eResearch Tab on
Showcase = Research Office Site UCT Home Page
Experts
Research
Scholarly Resources Profiles Facilities
Libraries Vula
and My
Repository Tools
My eResearch
My
Storage
My Students My Contracts
Finance My Staff
My Grants My Ethics
HR Research Office
Secure access for researchers to portal; public access to RO site

4. What is happening now? Phase 1, live Feb 2012
Created and linked / redesigned Web pages, linked a database, established Portal site
Research
Facilities
Libraries Vula
and My
Repository My eResearch Tools
NOTE: we presently do not know what to use for Portal – several options exist
NOTE 2: FULL implementation has to wait for UCT Web renewal

5. What is planned for longer term?
Phase 2, live by Nov 2012
Create some dynamic access links to Irma / other databases, create templated Profiles
which include “Scholarly Resources” – publication lists and other forms of publication
Search Experts
Research
Scholarly Resources Profiles Facilities
Libraries Vula
and My
Repository Tools
My eResearch
NOTE: both Scholarly Resources and Profiles require significant development
and policy decisions. Eg: SR not just database output; also represents “non
conventional” publications for Humanities etc – video, digitised artworks?

6. What requires serious integration?
All modules that get information from other systems: SAP for finances, PeopleSoft for
student information, University Office for ethics, contracts and publication counts
Experts
Research
Scholarly Resources Profiles Facilities
Libraries Vula
and My
Repository Tools
My eResearch
My
Storage
My Students My Contracts
Finance My Staff
My Grants My Ethics
HR Research Office

7. Objective for Profiles: 1
One of the key is to reduce the number of times that a UCT academic has
to provide the same information for different institutions or purposes, to
one time only! The two obvious points of overlap are with NRF and the
UCT Research Office.
NRF:
• Many/most UCT academics have registered with the NRF and have
provided extensive information in the NRF online system. We suggest the
following data flows between NRF and UCT:
• The primary capture point for personal and contact information should
be the NRF system. In general, this information from NRF would be sent
to UCT after capture or update and uploaded into the Research Portal to
pre-populate or update the fields in the Profile/CV database in the
sections for Personal Information, Qualifications and Career Profile. To
cater for those academics who have not registered with the NRF, provision
must also be made for this information to be captured in the Research
Portal.
• The primary capture point for Scholarly Outputs should be the Research
Portal, with the subset of information required by NRF being sent to them
automatically. We envisage a once-off transfer of this information from
NRF to UCT to get the existing “Own Contribution” text for each output
object into the Research Portal database.

8. Objective for Profiles: 2
UCT Research Office:
• The Research Office prepares the UCT publication count and claim and for this
purpose needs standard bibliographic information about all publications, together
with the identification of which authors are affiliated to UCT. We propose that a
UCT affiliation indicator should be captured against all authors in the Scholarly
Outputs section of the Research Portal Profile/CV.
• All new or updated Scholarly Outputs which meet the requirements for the
publication count should then be automatically uploaded to IRMA.
It is no longer sensible to capture any bibliographic information that is readily
available via a web-based system (e.g. Scopus or Web of Knowledge) or a
reference management system (e.g. RefWorks or EndNote). We need to
implement an automated upload mechanism utilising a standard format.
Use by Faculties / University Committees (eg: URC):
These bodies could make use of Profiles and Scholarly Resources information to “pull”
data for specific purposes into forms to be used for academic assessment and leave,
and applications for travel and research and equipment funding

9. We’re live….

10. Home Page –
accessible via
standard login

11. Access Statistics to May 2012:
Top destinations (pages being visited):
1. funding.aspx
2. referencing.aspx
3. blogroll-and-archives.aspx
4. scientific-computing.aspx
5. research-facilities.aspx
6. dataservices.aspx
7. datasets-and-collections.aspx
8. ratingassessments.aspx
9. researchresources.aspx
These are the top referrers in order:
http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/commerce/news/2012/pages/eresearch.asp
http://www.researchoffice.uct.ac.za/
http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/research-help/research-support-links
http://www.icts.uct.ac.za/modules.php
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/research-portal-news

12. News feed direct from
UCT Research Office
site

13. Most accessed resource: note
Research Professional Africa
site is a highly comprehensive
and up-to-date catalogue of
Africa-specific funding
opportunities worldwide

14. Second most popular page: a collection of
bibliographic tools for management of formal and
informal publications and constructing reference
lists

15. Increasingly popular page:
access to various means of
accurately assessing your own
or others’ publication outputs
– including informal or social
media mentions

16. Collaboration tools for research: these include popular public tools
like Dropbox, as well as UCT-specific tools like Vula and Sharepoint /
MESH. Video conferencing information is also available.

17. The UCT HPC cluster recently achieved the
impressive benchmark of 100,000 computing
hours in 1 year. The support team has an
excellent record in adapting all sorts of software
to run on the cluster and on the SA Grid.

18. The Research Facilities
database is a rapidly-
growing interactive
register of top-end
research equipment and
facilities at UCT. It
provides instant access to
information on what is
available, whether it can
be accessed by outsiders,
and what the costs of
operation / use are.

19. Sample view

20. Sample equipment entry

21. Home Page access to blogs and resources related to UCT Research

22. …and especially
this…B-)