Having recently met up with the Research Information Network (RIN) I had the chance to find out what the organisation is about and what its plans are for the coming year. If you are unfamiliar with this body, they are a relatively new outfit having been set-up in 2005. Backers include the British Library, JISC and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Medical Research Council amongst others.
Their remit is to promote the interests of UK researchers and research information. Right now they are in the process of releasing various reports and guidance notes for the UK research community. I imagine they want some active engagement too, so if this sounds of relevance perhaps get in touch and let them know your input.
In terms of their own projects there have been a number of papers already released by the organisation. 2008 looks set to be a bumper year with an abundance of papers being publishing over the coming months. One of the more significant in principle is this month’s paper; Stewardship of digital research data: shared responsibility, mutual benefit.
The RIN say that as digital research data value increases as it is aggregated into collections, its true value isn’t being realised and won’t be until current research policies and practices are modified for the digital era.
With this in mind they have outlined a framework of principles; these call for clarification and structure for roles and responsibilities between researchers, funders and institutions, a standardisation and assurance of data quality across the board. Improved access, usage and credit, protecting the rights of creators, users and publishers alike. Investment into better data management and information access, improving efficiency will be a must with greater volumes of digital data being created. Finally the RIN calls for improved digital data preservation and sustainability, this includes developing suitable protocols and audit trails to determine the process of a piece of data’s history, indicating, they say, who has annotated or amended data, how and when, but optimised for digital works.
A more detailed summary of these principles can be found here, while the full report is detailed here.
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