17 June 2022

UK universities have been encouraged to adopt a more collaborative mindset in the past decade or so. Sometimes, past alliances or geographical proximity have provided fertile ground on which natural consortia can be nurtured. And occasionally institutions have been pushed to experiment with unexpected and untested partnerships. In research-intensive institutions this shift has been driven in large part by the consolidation of funding opportunities and the preponderance of funding competitions run by UKRI/Research England and other funders in which clubbing together with another institution unlocks access to larger chests of research funding treasure.

Potentially lucrative as they are, inter-institutional collaborations present many challenges. One of these is technological. Students, researchers and staff engaged in joint projects are often expected to navigate resources and opportunities contained in utterly different systems across organisations, with separate credentials and diverse approaches to user interfaces. The experience for end users can be disjointed at best and, at worst, jarringly highlight the disparities between collaborating institutions.