RIN plans strategic leadership. Establishment of Research Information Network to pave way for common standards, finds Bobby Pickering.

A new organisation has been established to give strategic leadership in developing a national framework for research information provision. The Research Information Network (RIN), headed by Dr Michael Jubb, is being funded for an initial three-year period to "lead and co-ordinate new developments in the provision of research information for the benefit of researchers in the UK".

Based at offices in the British Library at St Pancras, the RIN has 15 sponsors: the UK's four higher education funding councils, the three national libraries, and the eight research councils.

The RIN was established in early 2005 in response to a central recommendation in the Final Report of the Research Support Libraries Group. It was given a formal launch at the University of London last month.

Jubb told IWR that the RIN had some very important differences from JISC, which supports ICT provision in the FHE sector.

"We will have a specific focus on research, and we will cover a wider remit than the digital world," he said. "We will have a specific co-ordinating function, looking at not only FHEs, universities and colleges, ...