Teams across universities and others that support research in the UK are being offered the opportunity to submit their ideas to a collaborative funding initiative being launched by Jisc.
Called research data spring, the project aims to engage all individuals and groups with an interest in research data and get them to work together to create new solutions to common research problems. This includes finding and developing new technical tools, software or services to streamline researchers' workflows, and to improve the use and management of data.
The initiative is being run via Ideascale, an online platform that allows people to submit their ideas, vote and comment on others, and join up with teams on a shared idea.
To have your idea considered, the solutions need to fit into one of the five priority areas: Research data deposit and sharing tools; Data creation and re-use by discipline; Research data systems integration and interoperability; Research data analytics; and Shared services for research.
The deadline is January 12, 2015. Jisc will then invite up to 30 project ideas to a two day sandpit workshop in February, where they will develop a plan and pitch to a panel of experts. The judges will award the best teams between £5,000 and £20,000 to develop their ideas. There will be two further rounds of funding, with individual projects able to receive up to £120,000 through the lifecycle of the initiative.
Research data spring is part of research at risk, a project that is designed to address research data management for UK universities. It follows a similar successful approach for crowdsourced solutions first developed for the Summer of Student Innovation, a co-design competition that invited students to submit their ideas for how novel uses of technology could improve their experiences, and gave them a prime role in its development.
