The Government’s recently published R&D People and Culture Strategy sets out a vision for ensuring the research system is made up of talented and diverse people with the right skills, working in an environment that nurtures and gets the best out of everyone. To support this, Research England allocated £30 million to HE providers to develop and initiate activities. Kent was fortunate to receive approx. £330k of this funding pool.
Information Services has already been exploring innovative tools and technologies to support research culture within the University and is delighted to use a portion of this funding to pilot new tools. These tools focus on knowledge discovery and information access to immediately support students and the research community.
Through the pilot of these tools we aim to enhance research culture and contribute to building a positive university community by:
- making it easier for everyone to find quality Open Access material online. The value of free and easy access to online research was demonstrated during the pandemic
- helping staff and students build up a research question and a search strategy. This presents opportunities for students who may not have previously considered research and may improve participation in research for people from currently underrepresented groups
- facilitating inter-disciplinary research through the resource discovery of previously unseen connections across disciplinary boundaries
- furthering open research practices, which in turn will help improve research conduct and reproducibility
Lean Library
Lean Library will have a positive impact on study activities by allowing knowledge discovery across interdisciplinary fields and quick and seamless access to the significant amount of e-resources that are available under University subscriptions and beyond. See our LeanLibrary guide to get started
Kent Data Management Plans Online
Grant applications will be aided by the introduction of Kent’s Data Management Plan Online instance. Data Management Plans (DMP’s) are now mandatory for funded grant application submissions. Our Kent DMP Online will offer a cloud based collaborative platform with significant available guidance and templates designed to make the process of generating a DMP a straightforward and intuitive process. Our researchers will be able to:
• view Data Management Plans created by other researchers at Kent,
• use templates that are specific to a funder and to the University of Kent
• request and receive feedback on a plan within the system
Kent Open Science Framework
Kent is also becoming a member of the Open Science Foundation (OSF) which will provide enhanced functionality of our existing OSF institutional page. The OSF platform provides a free, open platform to assist researchers and enable collaboration supporting all stages of the research project lifecycle. OSF is an enabler of Open Research.
CORE Repository
Rounding off this suite of tools is Kent’s subscription to CORE Repository Edition, this service seeks to increase discovery of our wealth of institutional repository content, add functional enhancements such as a Research Excellence Framework (REF) article level compliance checker and open access reporting, all of which will contribute to future REF successes.
Look out for our demos
These tools will be incorporated into Library Search, into our digital resources directory, our subject guides and web guides. We will be demonstrating and showcasing these new technologies over 2022-2023.