As Programme Sponsor I would like to start this update by thanking everyone involved in the remote development and testing of RIS in Faculties and Professional Services over the past few months. The RIS project has been gradually introducing new functionality over the last year and I’d like to update the University community on recent improvements.

Outputs data harvesting has been successfully switched on from the CrossRef and Scopus external databases and following the receipt of the final arrangements for REF submissions from Research England in February 2020, our system supplier (Worktribe) updated the RIS REF module to enable our REF data to be submitted through the national portal.

The REF module developments also required additional data to be transferred from our HR system into RIS. As a result, RIS was upgraded to the latest Worktribe software version on Wednesday 24 June and the updated link to our HR system has now been completed. Testing is continuing to take place on the transfer of all REF data held in RIS to the Research England portal – with mechanisms being put in place to address any identified issues.

The RIS Outputs module is linked to our online repository where open access outputs can be downloaded. All staff with a “discoverable” (rather than private) setting on their RIS profile have a page on the online repository where their email information, job titles, any details that may have manually been added to their RIS profile, as well as their publications processed through the open access procedures by Libraries can be publicly viewed.

On Wednesday 2 September we will be making all academic staff profiles in RIS “discoverable.” This will automatically generate a new page for each academic in our online RIS repository that will directly link to their staff profile page on the University website to enable their existing publications list to be supplemented with the latest open access output information in RIS.

In preparation for the “public switch-on” of academic staff profiles in RIS we will be temporarily re-setting all staff profiles back to “private” to enable any manually added content to be reviewed over the next few weeks. In the meantime if you have any questions about this proposal, would like your RIS profile to remain private after Wednesday 2 September, or if you are aware that you are not correctly linked as an author to any outputs in RIS then please email ris.enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk to ensure that the data on the university’s website is as accurate and as up to date as possible.

The final part of the RIS UK programme involves completing the work that has already started to manage grant awards through RIS. This includes the automated set up of project codes and the transfer of budget and actual spend data between RIS and our Finance system. It is anticipated that phase 1 of this work will be completed within the next six months and I therefore expect to be in a position to provide a final RIS programme update in early 2021.

Professor Kevin Shakesheff
PVC Faculty of Science