UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is developing a research and innovation infrastructure roadmap. This is a challenging task as the UK has never undertaken a road mapping exercise of this breadth and scale. This initiative will create a strategic plan that sets out an overall vision for research and innovation infrastructures and the major steps needed to achieve it. It will offer enormous benefit in increasing our understanding of the UK’s current capability and in planning for the future. UKRI has been asked to undertake this project by the Universities and Science Minister and it will contribute to the Government’s ambition of 2.4% UK GDP investment in R&D by 2027. In addition the roadmap will:
- identify future research and innovation capability priorities
- identify opportunities for increasing inter-connectivity
- support development of UKRI’s overall long-term investment plan
- promote the UK as a global leader in research and innovation
- set out the major steps needed to reach the long term vision.
Input from AIRTO member organisations is invited, in order to help capture information on research and innovation infrastructures of strategic importance to the UK. The roadmap is aiming to capture facilities, resources and services that are used by the research and innovation communities to conduct research and foster innovation in their fields. They include:
- major research equipment (or sets of instruments)
- knowledge-based resources such as collections, archives and data
- e-infrastructures such as data and computing systems and communication networks
- any other tools that are essential to achieve excellence in research and innovation.
If you believe infrastructure in your organisation meets the criteria outlined above, and you have not already been directly contacted directly by UKRI, please respond to their survey by 19 March 2018.
If you have any questions about completing the survey please email infrastructure@ukri.org