(NU/1885) Supply of Current Research Information System

The procurement contact named on the official notice.

Newcastle University requires a Current Research Information System (CRIS) capable of meeting the following high-level requirements.

1.

Compliance – External Support compliance with external requirements including Open Access, funder requirements, and UKRI technical standards.

2.

Compliance – Internal Support compliance with relevant internal standards and policies on research, publication, and IT security and compliance.

3.

Integration Support a variety of integrations with internal systems (such as HR integration) and external systems, via standard technologies such as web services/APIs.

This may include: integration with external IDs such as ORCID for researchers, and Digital Object Identifier for publications; and integration with publication platforms such as ResearchFish, Scopus, and Web of Science.

4.

Public profiles Ability to publish researcher profiles, populated with key information including publication history and affiliations with research groups, academic units, etc.

5.

Publication process Ability to simplify and where possible automate the process of submitting, checking, and appending relevant metadata to articles for publication within the repository 6.

Submission and management of research assessment Ability to produce submissions to research assessment or other awarding bodies, including the ability to simulate and analyse submission responses.

7.

Research impact Ability to analyse and evidence the impact of research.

8.

Reporting Ability to report on all data stored within the CRIS, using either on-the-fly context reporting or by extracting and presenting data within a modern reporting toolset such as Microsoft Power BI.

9.

Repository Provide a fully integrated repository as part of solution or provide the ability to integrate to third party repository.

Newcastle University has in the region of 6000 researchers (including academics, post graduate researchers, guest and emeritus researchers) who may use the CRIS as administrators and/or end users.

The University’s ambition is to provide a unified platform for research management to: • maintain and improve the University’s research capability, impact, visibility and reputation; • manage the University’s research portfolio and output to future research assessment cycles; • maintain sector compliance; • attract high quality researchers and external partners through a strong 'store front' of research activity and experts.

This PIN is designed to alert the market to our future intent to tender for this requirement and to give prospective bidders the opportunity to indicate if they have an existing off-the shelf solution that is scalable to (I) handle the volume of employee users noted above as a minimum; (ii) has either been successfully implemented within another UK research-intensive Higher Education Institution or an educational establishment of equivalent size and scale.

The CRIS/repository will be used across 3 campuses (Newcastle, Malaysia and Singapore) and we expect one solution to be provided to cater for all users.

Suppliers that demonstrate they are capable of meeting our requirements may be invited to present virtually or in person at the University in March 2023.

Test accounts for independent investigation / testing of system functionality may also be requested.

The contract reference is NU/1885 The deadline for expressing an interest is 27th March 2023 at 2pm BST.

To do so, please email Dave Anderson at Dave.Anderson@newcastle.ac.uk