As promised in an earlier post, find below my comments regarding the "provisional findings" of a review about the Research Information Network (RIN)- an organization established in 2005 to lead and co-ordinate the provision of research information in the UK. The provisional paper was produced by Alan Brickwood & Associates Ltd, and commissioned by RIN's Funders Group to inform decisions about the future funding and direction of the organization. For some context on RIN and this review, see my earlier post. In the interests of full disclosure I am making these comments public, now that the consultation period has closed. These comments are unedited (typo's and all) and are aligned against the three questions we were asked to respond to:

1. Is there anything we have missed?

As I understand it, RIN was established to help structure the landscape for the provision of research information in the UK. This mission is difficult because "research information" in its broadest sense is extremely heterogeneous and thus practical provision in most cases must (in my view) be a bottom-up affair, driven by need, and led by research communities generating data. Secondly, from a researchers perspective it is impossible to untangle "UK" research information from that generated elsewhere - arbitrary political boundaries like the "UK" are irrelevant to research information needs of the data users. The provisional finding paper makes no reference to these challenges, despite them being an inevitable political consequence of way the organization is funded.

My impression is that many of the respondents have taken a very narrow definition of "research information" (i.e. as essentially traditional research publications) and this may have tainted their replies. You report highlights the fact that a significant minority had not heard of RIN and there were misconceptions about the organization. Given this, it is likely that the responses of recipients may be inaccurate and perhaps some reference to this possibility should be made in the final report.

One thing that is patently clear from the RIN's work is that many of the traditional stakeholders supporting the provision of research information, think they know what researchers want and need in terms or research information, but when the researchers are questioned this frequently turns out not to be the case. My fear is that reports conclusions may be biased by these traditional stakeholders who think they know best for researchers, but are in fact not representative of the real users of research information.

2. Is anything incorrect / needs moderating?

Further to my previous comment, the paper makes repeated references to this being a "crowded field" with RIN struggling to find a niche amongst other organizations. If the RIN were just focused on "traditional” research information output (i.e. publications), I think this criticism would be true. Again, I think this is a result of respondents failing to understand RIN's broader mission, rather than this being an accurate representation of the field. An alternative explanation is that as a researcher I am ignorant of the other organizations that are supposedly doing the same job as the RIN. If this were the case it would be an indictment against those organizations since their constituency (i.e. researcher like me) is unaware of them.

The paper refers to RIN's output as "modest". I would disagree with this, especially in the light of the organizations meagre staffing resources. I am consistently amazed at the volume and scope of RIN's output, and I feel this personally as I have to set aside a considerable amount of time to read RIN's output, prior to attending the consultative group meetings. Arguably RIN's publicity and the dissemination of it output has been less effective - most likely because it has been more focused on generating rather than publicizing or "spinning" it reports, but this is a very different criticism to suggesting that its output has been modest. Several of RIN's reports are very lengthy and provide detailed evidence that to the best of my knowledge is unavailable elsewhere. I have had cause to cite RIN reports when addressing information provision issues in my own organization, in particular when try to refocus our libraries efforts so they are more in tune with the needs of our researchers.
The primary reason why RIN is relatively unknown by researchers is because the size of this constituency is many orders of magnitude larger that of the traditional information provision stakeholders, and because most researchers are far too busy trying to maintain their careers (through traditional publications) to consider the broader research information needs of others. Researchers will only become interested in the RIN if researchers are given some incentive to become interested in the information/data provision issues that RIN have been trying to highlight. This kind of incentive can only come from the major science research funding organizations in the UK, and is partly financial, but more importantly, should be influenced by incorporating non-traditional research information output in the metrics used to measure individual researcher productivity.

In para. 19, you state the the RIN has been "more engaged with operational than with strategic issues". Certainly my experiences of on the Life Sciences Consultative group of RIN don't concur with this statement. Perhaps this comes from stakeholders that by necessity have had to deal with the operational issues, such as those providing the financial and physical support to the organization?

3. What key messages do you detect?

As you outline in your key message section, I get the impression that there is no clear consensus within and amongst the stakeholders. My guess is that the conflicting messages you have received break down more accurately amongst those that do understand RIN's mission and those that don't, rather than amongst any traditional stakeholder. Those that do understand RIN's broader purpose and have no conflict of interest are, I suspect, more likely to be favorable to RIN. Most likely this will be the research community that deal in large volumes of data, the more dynamic members of the library science community, and publishers that are coming under pressure through open access concerns to be more innovative in their approach to information provision. Those less sympathetic to RIN will be researchers in fields already well served by the traditional library sectors and the traditional providers of research information.