RI activities have multidimensional impact on regional and international actions tackling the important challenges of the day, with consequent impact on measures of global socioeconomic health and wealth. Starting in the three regions identified in the workplan, RI-VIS demonstrated methods for fostering interactions that are translatable to many international communities and applicable to diverse global issues.
The approach, with the tools and resources developed in RI-VIS, established a paradigm for engagement that was broadly acceptance by many regional networks, including stand-alone institutions and other EU projects. The impact rippled to further communities by collateral engagement via CatRIS, Life Science Research Infrastructure Cluster (LS RI) and other RI third parties.
In a specific example, the ARIA Sitebuilder developed within RI-VIS was piloted by a pioneering effort of UK universities to provide COVID-19 protein reagents to the UK research community to expedite research efforts during the pandemic. The application portal used the new ARIA content management system which provides a simple user interface to select and apply for reagents. Databases of reagents themselves, and the relevant application forms, were sent and received by APIs. This work therefore has an indirect contribution to research efforts to better understand the viral structure, pathology, and to develop treatments and provides a model for translation into new applications.
The overall success of the RI-VIS was tested and measured through Kick-Start projects of 6 months duration between European RIs and international collaborators, aiming to increase international visibility and use of European RI resources. From these 4 Kick-Start projects and other activities to establish partnerships within the RI-VIS project, outcomes included i) establishing 3 Memoranda of Understanding with new partners (one further still in process), ii) Material Transfer Agreements between European and international RIs, iii) standardisation and interoperability in work practices between RIs, all of which are tangible benefits of the strategic outreach programme developed by RI-VIS.
The RI-VIS project, through its outreach programme connected with more than 1000 people directly and possibly several fold more by indirect channels. We expect that this will continue to build, and we will continue to monitor interest in the toolkit and other resources as an indicator. It is too early to measure the endpoint impact of RI-VIS in augmenting collaborative actions across RIs. The societal impact will be relatively distant and difficult to identify amongst many other initiatives to do the same, but the potential is large. We are proud of the proof-of-concept methodology to improve RI visibility that RI-VIS pioneered.
