2021eResearchReport - Flipbook - Page 6
ICT support for
research enterprise
ICTS provides the technological
foundation underlying many of UCT’s
research support systems and services.
This technological platform allows
our researchers to remain globally
competitive. To achieve this, we
work closely with the staff of other
departments such as UCT Libraries
and the Research Office, whose work
in support of the research enterprise is
coordinated through UCT eResearch.
Our technical specialists provide
support to researchers via services such
as the UCT High Performance Computing
(HPC) centre, and bespoke development.
The HPC spread in this report beautifully
demonstrates the wide array of research
supported by our excellent HPC facilities,
from humanities to science. We applaud
Andrew Lewis and Timothy Carr for the
excellent service they provide to our
researchers.
ICTS has a number of major projects
underway which will contribute, either
directly or indirectly, to greater support
for individual researchers and research
units at UCT. Some of these projects are
being led by ICTS and we are contributing
significantly for others.
One of these is the renewal of the
UCT network, which will see increased
network speeds across the UCT
community and will greatly benefit the
research enterprise. Other infrastructure
projects include the storage architecture
and the main data centre as well as
administrative system implementations
and enhancements to support research
administration for academics and
postgraduate research students. In
addition to this we are very involved
in work on data governance and data
management.
We also work as part of the Advanced
Computing Committee (ACC) to assess
requests for specialised ICT equipment by
researchers. The goal of this committee
is to ensure that a balance is maintained
between supporting particular projects’
needs and making pooled resources
available to the broader research
community where possible.
We at ICTS look forward to the annual
publication of this report as a moment
to pause, take stock and appreciate
the value our work brings in the bigger
picture of supporting research excellence
and sustainability at UCT. Recognising
that we too play our part in unleashing
knowledge in and from Afrika, as per
Vision 2030.
Richard van Huysteen
Executive Director, Information and
Communication Technology
Services (ICTS)
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UCT Libraries
and eResearch
UCT Libraries continues to work
collaboratively with eResearch to engage
with and incorporate changing research
trends and researcher needs and the
use of resources and infrastructure to
facilitate research visibility and research
data management.
Through its well-established
bibliometrics service, the Libraries are
positioned to support the UCT Guidelines
to Faculties on broadening the Assessment
of Research Impact. These Guidelines
were precipitated by significant shifts
in the open access landscape, namely
the Declaration of Research Assessment
(DORA) Statement and the Wellcome
Trust’s alignment to the international
Open Access (OA) publishing business
model of Plan S, which created principles
to implement making full and immediate
open access a reality; its grant holders to
publish open access, with a CC-BY licence
from 1 January 2021 and for Wellcomefunded organisations to demonstrate
public support for the DORA Statement by
having it visible on their website by the
same date.
The bibliometrics service focuses on
using metrics responsibly, which entails
using a basket of metrics and not merely
looking at the impact of the journal or
publisher. As metrics centre around
the visibility and impact of individual
research, the bibliometrics team uses
the array of author metrics, article level
metrics, as well as the journal metrics,
to demonstrate fundamental merits of
the content of the scholarly work. Thus
the bibliometrics service is in sync with
DORA principles. Supporting DORA
drives transformation of the publishing
landscape as researchers are no longer
encouraged to publish in subscription
journals that are inaccessible to much
of the world, but rather to publish
their research that is accessible and
discoverable by everyone. The opening
of the research landscape encourages
scholarly content that is relevant
and contributes to its society and
consequently to global knowledge.
Ujala Satgoor
Executive Director,
UCT Libraries
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