Using data to safeguard research
Partnerships among higher education institutions are essential for driving progress and innovation globally. However, research communities need to strike a balance between openness and protection while enabling collaboration and trust. A Times Higher Education webinar, held in partnership with Digital Science, featured experts from higher education institutions in Australia, who shared strategies and insights for advancing research security.
Research should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary, the panellists said. “Most partnerships in research have transparent intentions. However, there may be actors out there in the research community that don’t have the same level of security and integrity,” said Elizabeth Smee, regional solutions manager for APAC at Digital Science. “This has become a complex and dynamic environment.”
Attacks on universities are happening at an increased rate, said Brendan Walker-Monro, senior lecturer of law at Southern Cross University. These threats include espionage, foreign interference, intellectual property theft and academic collaborations that have been subverted or influenced by foreign governments.
One of the main challenges in addressing this is getting clarity in an unclear and constantly changing research environment, said Allison Jackson, executive manager for research stewardship at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Additionally, some team members may think that security risks are not relevant to them. “There’s a widening gap between professional staff who are embedded in this and academics who are quite removed from those kinds of discussions,” she said.
UTS has introduced several initiatives to safeguard research. The university has revised its research risk framework, which now enables the team members to categorise all their research activities into risk categories. “Having it laid out very clearly has helped to increase the transparency of decision-making,” said Jackson. “Through this, we have increased our ability to triage risk, identify it and manage it.”
Smee noted that data is key in helping institutions identify potential risks and respond to them. “Providing a tool that research institutions and others across the sector can use is something we have been developing since 2019,” she said.
Digital Science’s Dimensions research database includes features that assist institutions in managing research security and integrity. For example, it gives institutions a holistic view of a researcher’s activities, including grants, publications, clinical trials and patents.
Institutions need to determine their level of risk tolerance. “There is no standard across the sector,” said Jackson. “Everybody’s doing it differently. Everyone has different risk appetites.”
Security doesn’t mean refusing to work with individuals and institutions from other countries, the panellists said. “There are always questions you have to ask yourself about how to do this research safely,” said Walker-Monro. No country or organisation has fully solved the problems around research security. “But there’s quite a lot that can be learned by looking at the way everybody else does it,” said Walker-Monro.
The panel:
- Allison Jackson, executive manager for research stewardship, University of Technology Sydney
- Elizabeth Smee, regional solutions manager for APAC, Digital Science
- Stefanie Tan, research executive for consultancy services, Times Higher Education (chair)
- Brendan Walker-Munro, senior lecturer of law, Southern Cross University
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