DACORIS RIMS
A complete institutional research management and intelligence environment built around the real lifecycle of research.
DACORIS RIMS is an integrated Current Research Information System and Research Information Management System designed to help universities, research institutions, teaching hospitals and research-focused organisations manage the full research lifecycle in one connected environment. It brings together the people, processes, evidence, approvals, data, outputs and partnerships that collectively define an institution's research enterprise.
Unlike systems that only catalogue publications after research has been completed, DACORIS RIMS begins at the point where research is conceived. It connects funding opportunities to researcher expertise; supports proposal development and institutional approvals; manages ethics and award records; tracks projects, milestones and data; captures publications and other outputs; supports postgraduate research progression; and converts the resulting evidence into dashboards for operational and strategic decision-making.
The institutional problem DACORIS RIMS solves
Research information is often fragmented across spreadsheets, emails, finance systems, ethics offices, graduate schools, departmental files, repositories and individual researcher profiles. This fragmentation makes it difficult to answer basic institutional questions accurately and in real time: Which grants are active? Which proposals are awaiting approval? Which projects are delayed? Which students are at risk of missing progression milestones? Which research themes are growing? What outputs arose from a specific grant? Which partnerships and Memoranda of Understanding are active, expiring or underutilised?
DACORIS RIMS resolves this fragmentation by establishing a governed, role-based and auditable institutional research record. Each authorised stakeholder sees the information and actions relevant to their role, while leadership gains a consolidated view of performance, compliance, risk, capacity and impact.
What DACORIS RIMS manages
Capability
What it enables
Researcher profiles & expertise
Structured researcher records, affiliations, areas of expertise, skills, identifiers, collaborations, research interests and portfolio evidence.
Funding discovery
Funding opportunities matched to researcher profiles and institutional priorities, with filters, alerts, saved opportunities and application readiness tracking.
Proposal development
Structured proposal workspaces, section-by-section drafting, team formation, internal review, attachments, deadlines and approval routing.
Grant & award management
Pipeline visibility from prospect to award; award records, budgets, funders, reporting dates, milestones, deliverables and close-out obligations.
Ethics and regulatory workflows
Ethics applications, certificates, review status, expiry dates, amendments and configurable links to institutional and national research-governance requirements.
Project management
Project status, work plans, milestones, risks, deliverables, teams, funder obligations, outputs and progress reporting.
Research data stewardship
Data-import workflows, dataset registers, data-management plans, data-lake stages, metadata, access controls, versioning and publication readiness.
Publications & research outputs
Search and import from external sources and reference managers; institutional records for articles, books, datasets, software, policy outputs and other scholarly products.
Manuscript workspace
Collaborative manuscript preparation, version control and links between manuscripts, projects, grants, datasets and resulting publications.
Postgraduate research management
Programme requirements, coursework and proposal gates, supervisor assignments, progress logs, feedback, ethics milestones, defence and graduation-readiness checks.
Partnerships and MoUs
Lifecycle tracking for institutional partnerships, MoUs, objectives, responsible units, activities, deliverables, expiry dates and renewal decisions.
Training and capacity building
Training programmes, needs assessments, skills inventories, attendance, certifications and development pathways.
Analytics and reporting
Role-based dashboards, departmental and institutional reports, grant pipeline analytics, research portfolio mix, output trends and executive decision support.
A connected research lifecycle
DISCOVER
DEVELOP
REVIEW
APPROVE
DELIVER
PUBLISH
DEMONSTRATE IMPACT
The platform preserves the relationship between each stage. A funding opportunity can be linked to the proposal it generated; the proposal to its approvals and award; the award to a project and budget; the project to its ethics record, data, milestones and team; and the completed work to publications, datasets, policy products, postgraduate outcomes and wider institutional impact. This traceability enables stronger accountability and more credible reporting.
Value for institutional leadership
Obtain a real-time, institution-wide view of grants, proposals, projects, outputs, partnerships and postgraduate research performance.
Use reliable evidence for strategy, performance contracting, staff appraisal, promotion, resource allocation and investment decisions.
Identify research strengths, emerging themes, funding gaps, delayed projects, compliance risks and underutilised partnerships.
Reduce dependence on manual data calls and spreadsheet consolidation when preparing reports for councils, regulators, funders, ranking exercises and accreditation processes.
Connect research activity to institutional priorities, Sustainable Development Goals, national agendas and measurable outcomes.
Deployment and interoperability
DACORIS RIMS is designed for institutional configuration. Subject to the agreed implementation scope, it may be deployed in cloud, private-cloud, on-premises or hybrid environments and integrated with existing enterprise systems through secure interfaces. Potential integration points include identity and access management, human resources, finance, enterprise resource planning, learning-management systems, repositories, library systems, ethics platforms, student information systems, reference managers, persistent identifiers and external scholarly databases.
Implementation principle
DACORIS RIMS does not require an institution to discard every existing system. Its role is to connect fragmented research processes, preserve institutional ownership of data and create a reliable research intelligence layer around existing infrastructure.
WHO WE SERVE
Purpose-built for the institutions and professionals responsible for producing, governing, supporting and using research.
Universities and university colleges
Research institutes and centres
Teaching and research hospitals
Government agencies and public research bodies
Funders, consortia and programme secretariats
Libraries and scholarly communication offices
Research, grants and innovation offices
Graduate schools and postgraduate directorates
Executive leadership and governing bodies
Researchers, supervisors and postgraduate students
Role-based experiences
Researcher
Opportunities, proposals, projects, ethics, publications, datasets, manuscripts, awards and profile evidence in one workspace.
Research Manager
Workflows, approvals, portfolios, deadlines, compliance records, reporting and institution-wide operational control.
Leadership
Executive dashboards, research performance, funding trends, portfolio risk, partnerships, postgraduate progress and impact evidence.
Supervisor
Assigned students, milestones, progress logs, feedback, risk flags, proposal and defence readiness.
Library
Research-output discovery, import, metadata quality, researcher identity, repository alignment and publication reporting.
ICT & Data Teams
Controlled integration, hosting choices, access governance, auditability, data stewardship and system administration.
Why African institutions need an institution-owned research record
Many institutions can retrieve fragments of their research evidence from external publisher indexes, researcher-profile services or departmental records, but they do not always control a complete account of how research was funded, approved, delivered, supervised, governed and translated into outcomes. DACORIS RIMS is intended to place that institutional record under the organisation's own governance, while remaining interoperable with global scholarly infrastructure.
End-to-End Research Lifecycle Workflow
