Supporting research teams with the technology infrastructure they need

Research is increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure; on network capacity, storage, compute power, coupled with cyber security and access governance to store, manage, analyse, preserve and make accessible, ever-growing volumes of complex data.

Through our existing capabilities: the Janet Network, our cyber security, identity and access management solutions, the OCRE cloud framework, and our software licence agreements and partnership arrangements, Jisc will bring together flexible, trusted components to support research.

Championing research to be as open as possible and secure as necessary

In our research and innovation sector strategy, we committed to supporting the long-term operation and development of sustainable data, digital and technology infrastructure for research.

Technology advances at pace. More and more technology options are available to research teams. Technologies previously not available to many research collaborations will increasingly become more accessible, for example, high performance computing. Further into the future investments in quantum information systems will offer capabilities for researchers.

We are closing the gap between network, cyber security, access management, and open research outputs. We are doing this by bringing together trusted components for research, across the research lifecycle, from hypothesis definition and team configuration to research-phase and on to preservation. 

Supporting members and the wider research community

The research community is presented with many options for digital research tools. It can be resource intensive to assess and implement the right technology at the right time. Jisc is technology agnostic, we are of the sector and can help our members navigate the space. We will expand our provision of brokerage and negotiation of agreements for these applications and tools.

Placing emphasis on governance and standards, we will offer a coordinated approach to help research teams bring together the research environment they need.

We can help the research sector:

• Save money 
• Reduce technical and environmental debt
• Mitigate security
• Reproducibility risk

Much research output is not managed through a lifecycle approach - preserved, archived, accessible and available for reuse. With this model, we can design in FAIR across the research lifecycle.

What can you expect?

We will explore:

• An expansion of framework, and our software licence agreements and partnership arrangements
• Coherent presentation both internal and external of our research related data, digital and technology tools
• A gateway where currently there is none
• Consultancy services to help members and the wider research community identify the right technology approach for them
• Potential to test and iterate technical configurations in partnership with members and the wider research community
• Creation of open frameworks for commercial research tools and services