Research Innovation
Open Research
The Library is leading a transformation in the way that open research is supported across The University of Manchester. Through dedicated programmes we have developed a Research Data Management Strategy, and an Open Research Strategic Action Plan and in Spring 2022 we will launch a new Office for Open Research to oversee and ensure delivery of this plan.
The University’s ambitious scope for open research is broader than any individual Directorate can achieve alone so the Library is coordinating a strategic organisational partnership across Professional Services and the research community through the creation of a new Library-led Open Research Facilitators Network.
The programme of work is a key part of the Library's Imagine2030 vision and represents one of the most significant investments in the future of publishing, data and open knowledge by any UK university, reaching across all humanities and science disciplines.
Metrics
Through our Research Metrics Service we continue to play a key role in helping The University of Manchester to monitor, understand and showcase its research activities.
In April 2021 Manchester was named the world’s best university for action on sustainable development, and the University's Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021-22 acknowledged the key role that the Library played in providing supporting metrics data for this report.
Building on our pioneering Open Access+ service we have continued to innovatively use metrics data to increase engagement with social media campaigns to promote the University's research beacons. In February we supported a University social media campaign to coincide with World Cancer Day.
Recognising our responsibilities as a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), we are continually improving our support and guidance around the responsible use of metrics, and as part of our Open Research Programme produced a set of recommendations for the University to ensure our local practices are in alignment with this agenda.
REF Support
The Library’s Research Services Team played a critical role in supporting the University's REF (Research Excellence Framework) submission in February 2021.
The team managed nearly 30,000 research outputs, directly facilitating open access for 15,000 of those outputs.
We also provided associated data on citation, and policy and patent mentions for those records to help with the selection process.
We supported Unit of Assessment Research Environment Statements by identifying:
- 7,651 papers representing research collaborations with the top 20 institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings
- 6,118 postgraduate research students who published at least one article during the REF period
We also supported 94% (2,227) of submitted researchers to create and connect their ORCID IDs to their Pure accounts.
Research Data Management
The Research Data Management (RDM) Team’s core service is the guidance and review process for Data Management Plans (DMPs).
In the 2020/21 academic year 1,867 DMP outline plans were processed, and a further 439 DMPs received full review by a Research Services Librarian.
The RDM service also focused on support for researchers, advocacy, advice and delivering a range of training sessions in partnership with My Research Essentials.
Alongside this, projects are in progress to support the five-year RDM Strategy as part of the University’s Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP).
Supporting the University's Research Lifecycle Project
May 2021 saw the launch of the University’s Figshare for Institutions research data repository, providing a powerful, secure and flexible platform for our researchers to manage and publish data resources that underpin their projects and publications.
We began implementation of Elsevier’s Data Monitor tool which will hugely improve discovery and access to the circa 14,000 research data resources published by University of Manchester researchers in external repositories.
Collaborative work with colleagues in Research IT and Faculty teams continued to identify and implement new processes and platforms for long term preservation of research data.
At an international level we are working with partners in the Research Data Alliance (RDA) to investigate the broader context of how research data management takes place institutionally. This supports efforts to introduce Data Stewardship at the University, with the aim to foster links between the communities of data specialists that already exist across the University and help to share good practice.
Office for Open Research
Open research is the practice of applying principles of transparency and rigour to as many stages as possible of the research lifecycle, leading to greater collaboration, reuse, and reproducibility of research findings.
The Library's Open Research Programme has created a three-year strategic action plan (2021-23) to embed open research practices into the culture of the University, and to contribute to the intensifying global development of the open research agenda. This ambitious body of work will be delivered under a new Office for Open Research which will be led by the Library with strategic partners across Professional Services and the research community. The Office for Open Research will officially launch in April 2022.
ePADD and Palladium
In 2020/21 the Library became involved in two major email archiving/preservation projects. The first, known as ePADD+, is a joint project with Harvard University funded by the Andrew W Mellon foundation working on building email preservation functionality into Stanford University’s open source email archiving tool ePADD. The project, which is due to complete in July 2022, will deliver a next generation email appraisal, discovery and preservation platform that will have universal significance for practitioners working in the field of email preservation. The Library is contributing project management and software development expertise. The project is simultaneously looking to build an international community of users and developers who can take the support and development of the platform forward beyond the project phase.
The second project, Palladium (the preservation of large literary archives in a digital medium) is funded by Arts Council England (ACE) and explores the Library’s end to end management of email preservation workflows as well as developing new software to assist archivists working with large email archives and it provides guidance and documentation for others working on similar collections.
The two projects are closely linked due to the common usage of ePADD as a tool for supporting archivists working with email. Whilst ePADD+ is focusing on the addition of preservation functionality, developments related to Palladium have included enhancing ePADD’s ability to work with very large archives through improvements to the ingest process and the experimental development of message-level redaction functionality to assist with the appraisal process.
These projects reflect and demonstrate both the Library’s successful history of innovative developments in supporting email archives as well as its ongoing commitment to working with the international community to ensure the benefits of these and future developments are available to as many people as possible.
CapCo Funding
In February 2021 we were successful in our bid to the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Capability for Collections (CapCo) fund and were awarded £780,000 to upgrade and improve digital access to our collections. Purchases included:
- state of the art Phase One digitisation systems for Manchester Museum, the Whitworth and the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre
- upgrades of 3 Phase One digitisation systems at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library (Rylands)
- Phase One Rainbow Multispectral Imaging System and XRF equipment
- oral history kit bags for the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre
- digital teaching wall and georeferencer software to enable better access to special collections maps
- visualiser equipment to upgrade and improve our Virtual Reading Room to improve our online offer for Special Collections users
The kit has significantly improved digital access to collections for teaching and research, and has already enabled several research projects, funding bids and very successful teaching sessions.
It is in use at the Rylands to support an AHRC/DFG funded international collaboration research project investigating Early Print, and the visualiser equipment supported the digital teaching offer which won a University Teaching Excellence award for the Covid-19 Teaching Environment.
John Rylands Research Institute and Library
In March 2021 we renamed The John Rylands Library as the John Rylands Research Institute and Library (Rylands for short). The new name signals a much closer partnership between the Library and the John Rylands Research Institute which was founded in 2013. It also marks a radical repurposing of the Rylands as a world-leading centre for humanities and science research using special collections, and for public engagement with research. We want visitors to the Rylands to understand and engage with the research and other work that takes place around our world-leading collections.
This development has grown out of the close collaboration between the Institute and the Library and provides the University with the type of interdisciplinary research institute to rival those of elite institutions in North America and which is unique within the UK Higher Education sector. It also provides a unified research focus for library and academic staff working on the special collections. This mirrors the increasing attention at the national level on the role of research libraries as active participants in research, rather than as service providers and repositories of research resources for others to exploit.
There were two tangible manifestations of the renaming. Firstly, we launched a new website for the Rylands, showcasing our remarkable collections and our support for research and public engagement with research. This project was expertly led by the Library’s Digital Development Team during the winter of 2020-21. Further work is currently underway to improve the Guide to Special Collections and the discoverability of the collections online.
Secondly, an attractive new welcome sign was installed at the main entrance to the Rylands, replacing the tired and faded grey monolith that had stood there for fifteen years. The new signage proclaims the new name, and outlines to visitors the history of the Rylands and the special collections.
Built with Shorthand