Abstract

Doing ‘better research in less time’ by following modern collaboration, open, and planning practices.

Science, while generating cutting-edge knowledge, lags behind most industry settings when it comes to practical, operational aspects. For instance, while much of research done now relies heavily on software and computational work, funding agencies rarely fund software and data engineering projects, nor do many research groups hire these highly skilled technical personnel. So, the aim of Work Package 1 is to establish these skills and needs as a core component of this project and to help do “better research in less time”.

Our basic strategies will be to establish working groups, including a group dedicated to “research operations” to fulfil this core aim, as well as developing and implementing common practices and tools that maximise collaboration and that follow some guiding principles. All groups will include a “tech lead” who has technical knowledge and skills and who will also be part of the research operations group, to help coordinate WP groups with these practices. We aim to onboard and train the tech leads in these practices by embedding them in some work done at SDCA, where these practices have been developing and refining over the last several years. The most relevant practices and skills that this WP1 aims to provide are in software and data engineering, iterative project management, collaborative workflows and tools,

Pertinent to these practices is understanding and assessing risk and challenges. The two biggest challenges we face with this WP1 are:

  1. The need for highly technical personnel who have sufficient fundamental expertise to understand and apply these practices, which we hope to minimise through the training and onboarding of the tech leads.
  2. the IT systems across centers that often don’t work well together, which we hope to reduce the impact of by having a dedicated research operations group.

While this WP1 forms the foundation to all other WPs and in many ways aims to support their success, the activities of WP1 are an increasingly needed aspect of research globally. In this regard, we aim to produce tangible and usable deliverables that are independent and valuable on their own.