Research Support

The 3 high-level requirements we hear continually from the research community are (1) very large future storage requirements to accommodate very large genomics- and patient-related data sets; (2) very high-bandwidth connectivity, particularly to colleagues at other universities, to share those data sets with colleagues elsewhere (some may also use that bandwidth to access off-site computational resources as well); and (3) tools for communication and collaboration.  "Very high-bandwidth" is the same as "very fast"; that is, the ability to move large quanta of data quickly.

Strategic directions

1. Meet the very high data storage requirements of researchers.
2. Meet the high bandwidth data transmission expectations of researchers.
3. Enable collaboration among researchers at KUMC; at KUMC and KU; and among members of the national and international research communities.
4. Support specialized microprocessor-based systems used by individual (or small groups of) researchers, often involving non-standard hardware and operating software and limited-distribution applications.
5. Build a digital repository with easy off-site access for retention and organization (including meta-data creation) and publication of research data and research articles as well as other digital resources.
6. Increase faculty awareness of issues related to publishing including alternative publication modalities, copyright, intellectual property protection, and the TEACH act.
7. Promote understanding of public access initiatives, intellectual property, and NIH submissions for scientific scholarly publication and data sharing, and encourage the University to provide financial support in order to increase faculty submissions to public access publishers.
8. Promote understanding of open data initiatives as manifested with such initiatives as Scientific Commons which would encourage researchers to collaborate at KUMC, with KU and among members of the national and international research communities.
9. Use the Research IT Advisory Group (Brooks, Cheney, Smith, Tash) as a sounding board for IT issues affecting the KUMC Research Community.

Major objectives (an objective is ongoing if no target deadline is included)

• RS-5: Design, implement, and manage digital repositories using tools such as D-Space, Luna, and DocLinx for long-term retention and dissemination of digital resources including research data and findings, research publications, preprints, etc. (KC, JW)
• RS-19:  Phase II:  Refresh all faculty profiles and publications at least 2 times per year.  Keep current new hires and separations.