ReStore: promoting sustainable research methods resources
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: School of Geography
Abstract
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Organisations
| Description | The award continued to maintain and develop an online repository of research methods training resources from related ESRC initiatives. Promotion activities were undertaken to help other ESRC award-holders design and build more sustainable online resources through publicity, practical guidance and an annual training workshop. This included working directly with the ESRC Communications team. The ReStore repository itself was enhanced, and increasingly integrated with the website of the National Centre for Research Methods. Strategic guidance was provided to the ESRC Methods and Infrastructure Committee. |
| Exploitation Route | The entire ReStore repository has been taken on by the new phase of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods and it will continue to be maintained and developed. Use of the training materials has grown to over 300,000 pageviews during each of 2015 and 2016 by users wanting to learn about social science specific research methods. The materials (which have been authored by many different people and funded under many different ESRC awards) are aimed at the social science research community, broadly defined and are not demarcated for use by particular sectors. In 2018 ESRC explicitly specified that the ReStore respository should be maintained and taken forward in the call specification for a new Research Methods Training Centre. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | http://www.restore.ac.uk/ |
| Description | The ReStore online repository at the core of this award has continued to be available as a wholly open online resource (http://www.restore.ac.uk/) for the social science research community, not limited by the sector of the researcher. It contains the outputs from multiple ESRC awards, each of which was directed at different audiences, hence the ongoing impact of ReStore reflects this diversity. Maintenance was supported by ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) from 1 April-30 September 2014 and the repository was then rebranded and incorporated into the new Phase of NCRM on 1 October 2014. This narrative therefore describes impact in the year following the end of the award and all impacts from 2016 onwards should be considered as deriving from the NCRM award, which is reported separately. The open nature of the repository means that no user registration is required and it is not therefore possible to obtain user profiles based on sector. This is an inherent challenge faced by ESRC investments which deliver wholly open online data and resources. In the post-award period we have continued to monitor web usage through Google Analytics, from which some user profile information can be derived. Without user registration, it is not possible to establish the personal and business uses to which the content has been put, but during the award we had already established that the primary non-academic impact is through capacity-building as the repository specifically targeted completed ESRC awards designed to develop researchers' social science methods skills. There was continued increase from 111,000 web sessions in the year following the end of the award to 145,000 in calendar year 2015 suggesting that the repository continued to be highly attractive to researchers. 17.5% of use was from returning visitors. The user base is strikingly international, with 21% of sessions each from the US and UK (followed by India 20.5%, India 5.5%, Australia 3.6%, Canada 3.5%). During 2015 Google Analytics data suggests 26.5% of users as being aged 18-24, implying mostly students, and 40.0% aged 25-34, implying early career researchers, who were indeed the modal target group of the many award brought together by ReStore. Google Analytics' in-market segment analysis identifies the largest user groups as: education/post-secondary education, employment, financial services/insurance, travel and real estate (no single category accounting for more than 5% of classified users). These categories do not distinguish between, for example, private and public sector usage or students who were also interested in employment, but they do provide tools to profile the user base of the repository, which clearly has substantial international and cross-sectoral reach. The user surveys conducted during project funding showed between 5.5% and 7.5% of users from outside academia and the web analytics suggest that this has certainly been maintained. There continues to be wide variation between resources, with the most popular "Using Statistical Regression Models", "Geo-Referencing for Social Scientists" and "Managing Research Projects" resources, each growing to account for more than 26,000 sessions in 2015. There is also a specific element of instrumental impact in that the ReStore experience and guidance tools have continued to shape the ESRC community's own practice and delivery of online training infrastructure, with multiple ReStore pages being linked from ESRC's own impact toolkit. An instance from February 2014 was the closing down of the original website for ESRC's Researcher Development Initiative (RDI), which is now redirected to a legacy page hosted by NCRM with all the relevant ReStore content highlighted (see http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/research/rdi/). The lessons learned from ReStore have directly informed the design of the next generation of online research methods training materials to be commissioned NCRM which itself has an increased international and non-academic remit. ReStore continues to be promoted to the academic and non-academic target audiences of NCRM, which has a far greater communications reach than the original ReStore award, and there will be future impact evaluation of the Centre's combined online resources. The selection of sectors for impact reporting reflects those sectors (e.g. local government, education) which were previously established as interested users of the repository content based on earlier feedback and analysis not repeated here. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2011 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Government, Democracy and Justice,Transport |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |
| Description | Building sustainable resources : lessons from the ReStore project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on sustainability of online resources addressed to new awardholders of the ESRC/British Academy Teaching Quantitative Methods awards Follow-up advice and guidance provided to individual participants. Ongoing support relationship established between QM initiative and NCRM. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | NCRM and ReStore |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Invited presentation at launch workshop for ESRC International Social Research Methods award. Resulted in additional ESRC-funded materials being deposited with NCRM ReStore repository and made openly available. More general advice to participants regarding best practice in online resource creation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | Update : sustaining RDI resources |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of ReStore project and support available to Researcher Development Initiative award holders at RDI Researchers' Workshop 2011 Some specific award holders subsequently deposited ESRC-funded online materials in the NCRM ReStore repository |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |