UNE’s strategic plan, Future Fit, is built around four portfolios that will drive its implementation over the next 10 years.
The portfolios are Digital +, Place +, People + and Sustainability +. The first to launch was Digital +, referred to in Pulse, 15 July 2021.
Project leader, Megan Aitken described it as “a roadmap for how UNE is planning to deliver services and products for students in this new, highly digitised future.”
Digital + is made up of eight key programs to be be rolled out across the next decade. An early Digital + inititative, the Research Information Management System (RIMS) will overhaul the University’s research management capability.
About RIMS
UNE’s current research environment is dependent on a number of outdated and widely distributed systems with limited integration. The RIMS project was tasked with sourcing a modern Research Information Management Solution that not only had high functionality but would also integrate with other UNE systems.
To that end the RIMS project team, led by Kathy Gilbert, went to market earlier in the year and have chosen the Elsevier Pure suite as most fit for purpose.
Key criteria that had to be met were that the system will enhance productivity and improve compliance across UNE’s research, academic and research support administration stakeholders by addressing a number of different functions ranging from researcher profiles and reporting of outputs to grants and contract management, HDR management, research ethics and integrity, and data management, including management of IP and institutional reporting.
In addition to meeting the criteria, Pure, which is used by over a dozen Australian universities, offers membership of a powerful Pure User Group. It is quick and easy to implement, with an intuitive interface that users like, and it provides robust reporting tools, data storage, research tracking and search functionality.
Transition to Pure has begun and will continue into the first quarter of 2022. While implementation is ongoing researchers and research support staff may be asked to support transferring data to Pure and to provide information to update research profiles.
Kathy and her team are also on hand to provide support throughout the transition process.
“I’m excited about our progress so far,” Kathy said. “Pure is now a front-facing system for the whole university. We do a lot of reporting out of it and it is an absolute critical system for the university to track research activity.”
“We are currently working with volunteers to provide feedback as we rollout out Pure. We are also looking at a more streamlined way to gather data to save academics and researchers time where we can.”
The RIMS Project team will soon have a webpage available where the university community can keep track with progress and ask questions.
If you would like to join the RIMS Champions team, get in touch with them on rims.project@une.edu.au.