Digital Research Services Update – February 2019

Intended audience: IDS staff

Inspire

Inspire is Australia’s first ‘digital doctorate’, the one place where Higher Degree Research (HDR) students, supervisors, and other HDR stakeholders can see what is happening and what needs to be done to ensure HDR student success.

Digital Research Services (DRS) have continued their close collaboration with the Office of Graduate Research (OGR) to incrementally deliver capabilities to ensure HDR student success. Previous releases have enabled students to analyse and build core research skills and apply for variations to their candidature.

In December, DRS released a series of forms that enable HDR students, supervisors and College delegates to assess how a HDR student is progressing in their candidature through critical milestones.

In January, Inspire 3.1 was released, which now supports all HDR milestone forms, including interim and post-final. Release 3.1 therefore completes the transition of all HDR student milestones forms from RHD Research Excellence (REX), the previous system, into Inspire, as communicated in late 2018. Now all milestones are submitted using Inspire. NB: REX is still available for thesis examination submissions.

The next priority is the Inspire Examinations module, which will completely replace REX thesis examination submissions. This is scheduled for the first half of 2019. For more information visit our webpage.

 

eRSA closure and HPC

In 2018, DRS issued a tender to procure an high performance computing (HPC) solution for Flinders researchers. After assessing responses, the tender was awarded to Dell. A project team consisting of DRS, Digital Platform Operations (DPO) and Dell representatives has been formed and are currently working through the technical implementation of delivering the selected HPC solution.

In late 2018, eResearch SA (eRSA) announced that they would no longer be operating and have since announced a closure date by the end of February 2019. Information and Digital Services (IDS) and DRS have arranged with the other eRSA partners, the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, to keep eRSA HPC, virtual machine (VM) and data storage services operational until later in 2019. We will use this breathing space to establish a new local HPC and data storage solution and transition uses.

The HPC project team’s current focus is ensuring continuity of service for Flinders researchers impacted by eRSA shutdown. Future project works include assessing and defining a new HPC service model for Flinders researchers and promoting these services. For more information visit our webpage.

 

REDCap

Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), a secure online system designed mainly for the capture of research data for clinical projects, was released for production use by the research community. REDCap combines features of a database and online survey tool.

REDCap for researchers is currently intended as a self-service tool. DRS does however provide technical support for the REDCap service, such as application upgrades. For more information visit our webpage.

 

Research Management Project – “ResearchNow”

DRS has been working with Research Development and Support (RDS) to implement the new research management solution. The solution has received approval from the Office of Communication Marketing and Engagement (OCME) to be branded as part of the ResearchNow Program.

Elsevier’s Pure application for research management will be branded as ‘ResearchNow’ and Infonetica’s ERM tool for ethics application and approval management will be branded as ‘ResearchNow Ethics’. The project team is busy testing migration of data into ResearchNow, so that data mapping rules and solution configuration can be explored. The development of the first ethics form and workflow process, for Animal Ethics, is well under way.

In conjunction with RDS, DRS will be assisting with preparations for a ResearchNow Roadshow in early April to demonstrate the benefits of both ResearchNow and ResearchNow Ethics to the Flinders research community. For more information visit our webpage.

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