The Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI), a community-driven membership organisation founded in Canada, has invited the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to be its first UK member. The two organisations will work together to advance a standard data dictionary for research and to advance a common global approach to research interoperability. With this, universities and researchers in Canada and the UK can reportedly improve the efficiencies of their research and remove obstacles in their collaborations.
CASRAI’s vision is for all research teams around the world to have a single authoritative and reusable 'file' on themselves and their projects and be able to quickly produce and exchange any information needed, without retyping.
In both Canada and the UK research has shown much time is spent administrating rather than conducting research. This was confirmed by an American survey in 2009 that found an average of 42 percent of research time was spent on administration.
The first areas of focus for this partnership will be research impact and research datasets. CASRAI is already an active participant in the JISC-funded DESCRIBE project on research impacts and the partnership will build on that collaboration. For datasets, JISC and CASRAI will work together to form a joint UK/Canada committee (with associated review circle) to explore how we can incorporate the discovery and accessibility of scientific datasets into the standard dictionary.
