January 11, 2019, by Alison Clarke

Digital Research Vision at Nottingham

Research excellence at Nottingham is underpinned by a broad range of digital facilities and services and the Digital Research Strategy underpins the overall Research Vision. Over the past two years we have been focused on delivering new capability while also exploiting new opportunities through digital initiatives.

New services have been developed to enable effective management of research data, and to collaborate and share data in real time. A new compute service provides an accessible research facility to support academic researchers. This enhanced facility will enable them to realise the potential of their data and software and improve research quality. We have implemented a new Digital Research Service that provides specialists Research Data Analysts/Scientists and Research Software Engineers. Although the services are still in their infancy, indicators are impressive and new research is already supported.

This year, we are focused on communicating and embedding the new services, working with researchers to explore new opportunities, and engaging with our research community to listen to feedback. We are also planning for the future. Working with our research community we have further developed our Digital Research Vision:

Our vision is to create a digital research environment with enhanced and digitally enabled discovery at every aspect of the research lifecycle to empower our researchers to discover new Data, Insights and People.

We have identified three clear areas for investment that will have a significant impact on our researchers by enabling them to achieve a step change in research quality. The investments will build on the foundations delivered this year, and enhance the relevance, accessibility and innovations of all digital research services.

To achieve our vision, we are proposing to invest in people, process improvement, and tools to optimise researcher’s experience and improve efficiency. We will focus on improving digital skills whilst providing experts to help researchers navigate the digital opportunities and make the greatest impact on their research. We recognise that multiple approaches and different tools may be needed to support the ambitions of our different research disciplines. We are currently developing a three year strategic plan, defining projects, and identifying the resources needed to achieve our vision.

We continue to work with our research community to undertake innovative and experimental projects with the aim of supporting researchers in new ways of working and/or exploring the new digital tools and services. If you would be interested in being part of our digital research strategy community, have an idea for a digital initiative to support our aims, or would like to explore new digital tools and services please contact The Digital Research Team

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