The global research community has had no way of linking or storing important information about an identified research project or activity – including at conception, over its lifecycle or once it has closed. Yet researchers and research organisations have been continually dealing with a LOT of research and administrative information that is generated when conducting a project or activity of any type.
All such project information can get easily lost, superseded, misfiled or forgotten in systems that don’t communicate with each other, leading to double data entry and risk of outdatedness as research activities continually change over time. To add to someone’s pain, historical project records may not be kept long term to easily demonstrate where all the project’s contributors, tools and funding came from (inputs), or what a project’s deliverables have been over time (outputs).
Yet all these issues are now a thing of the past! RAiD is here to make things easier for researchers and organisations alike. By adopting RAiD, any research project or activity can have its important metadata information digitally stored on the RAiD system for easy open access and whenever needed.
Just a quick web browser entry will enable a viewer to find a project’s title and its active dates and lots of valuable information, such as how many grants were received, which tools, instruments and datasets were used, what collaborations occurred, what research publications and reports were produced, and what factors need to be noted in future strategic planning.
We call a project or activity's inputs and output as ‘metadata information' or ‘RAiD metadata’. Super-computers can find this metadata and use it to quickly create submissions, reports and applications on behalf of a researcher or their organisation. By accessing this information, researchers and organisations can also derive project outcomes and strategically plan for future research.
Once RAiD has been integrated into an organisation’s data management systems, all RAiD project metadata information can be ‘read’ by computers, and automatically added into research applications and reports for submission.
Researchers and organisations can also access and view RAiD metadata information in a human-readable form. Project inputs and outputs can be tracked, while strategic insights, impact and outcomes can be derived and reported on.