Empowering CUHK Researchers: The Enhancements of the New Institutional Research Information System (IRIS)

⏲ 2024/12/4

The CUHK’s new IRIS will be ready for soft launch in January 2025, replacing the research output module of the Academic Information Management System (AIMS). AIMS will then focus solely on research grants management. Briefly, the major differences between the two systems are as follows.

As IRIS supports a broader range of content types than AIMS, it can better capture and manage information arising from different dimensions of the research lifecycle in a single platform. In addition to research outputs, IRIS will support knowledge transfer activities, prizes, and media coverage/contributions. As for research grants, IRIS will be integrated with AIMS. Researchers can view their project records in IRIS and access a quick link to the corresponding AIMS record for editing. Moreover, researchers can create links between different content types in IRIS and create a holistic picture of their research impact activities.

The new IRIS will also enhance the CUHK’s capacity to curate institutional research outputs. IRIS has better functionality than AIMS in integrating with external databases to retrieve and store research metrics and rich publication metadata, including open access indicators and author affiliations. A much-needed auto-harvesting function will be available to alleviate researchers’ data submission burden.

The new public research portal is designed to be more user-friendly, making it easier for everyone to navigate. With author affiliations stored in the IRIS backend, research network maps can be automatically generated to visualise international collaborations. Sustainable Development Goals and research keywords are automatically discerned and tagged to records, ensuring that researchers’ expertise can be readily discovered by the public. The new IRIS will thus enhance the global visibility of CUHK’s research excellence and achievements.

Important updates will be posted through announcements on various channels. Stay tuned!