Research Enablement Services
Research IT enablement services help researchers build the skills, practices, and approaches needed to make effective use of digital research infrastructure. This includes guidance, training, and hands‑on support for research software development, specialist tools, and sustainable ways of working with data and compute, helping projects be well-designed from the start.
People use Research IT enablement services when they want to work more effectively, reduce technical risk, or avoid reinventing the wheel. By supporting good practice, shared solutions, and capability‑building within research teams, enablement services help projects scale, remain supportable over time, and deliver impact beyond a single grant or piece of work.
Our Services
Select the tabs below to learn more about the services we can support you with.
Description and Features
Research IT can support the development of bespoke software applications for research purposes, working with groups whose projects involve user-facing or student-facing digital tools that go beyond standard off-the-shelf solutions.
The service covers:
- Support for the application development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, system design, implementation, testing, validation, and evaluation.
- Access to development infrastructure, including code hosting, CI/CD pipelines, and testing environments.
- Integration with external services, data sources, and University systems as required.
- Acting as a coordination point, bringing together the right internal and external resources (including RSE capacity) to deliver bespoke solutions.
Research IT is particularly well-placed to support projects that combine bespoke application development with underlying compute or data infrastructure requirements.
Support and availability
Please contact Research IT via the Service Desk at an early stage to discuss application development requirements and to explore how costs can be appropriately factored into funding applications.
Description and Features
Research IT can guide and facilitate the development of web-based digital outputs for research projects, from simple project websites to complex data portals and web applications.
The service includes support for:
- Research project websites and public-facing information portals.
- Data and workflow catalogues — providing structured, searchable access to research outputs and datasets.
- User interfaces to data products and service outputs, enabling non-technical users to interact with research data.
- Integrations with workflow management systems and data pipelines.
- Multi-tenancy platforms aggregating data and compute facilities from multiple sources.
Research IT can coordinate with specialist partners for branding, design, and in-browser application functionality, ensuring a professional and accessible final product. This service can be combined with Research IT's infrastructure hosting capabilities for a fully managed web presence.
Support and availability
Please contact Research IT via the Service Desk to discuss web development requirements. Early engagement is recommended to allow for appropriate planning and costing in grant applications.
Requesting the service
This needs to be costed into research grants as it is supported by invdividuals working on an hourly rate.
Description and Features
Maintaining digital research infrastructure sustainably over time requires disciplined processes for managing changes, deployments, and configurations. Research IT can advise on and support the adoption of modern continuous integration (CI) and configuration management practices for research-oriented software and infrastructure.
The service covers:
- Advice on CI/CD pipeline design and tooling (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) to automate testing and deployment of research software.
- Configuration management approaches to ensure reproducible and auditable infrastructure deployments.
- Guidance on version control strategies for both code and infrastructure-as-code.
- Support for designing resilient architectures that can accommodate long-term maintenance, transient deployments, and remote or distributed research environments.
Adopting these practices reduces technical debt, improves reproducibility, and makes it easier to hand over or sustain digital research infrastructure beyond the life of a single project.
Support and availability
Please contact Research IT via the Service Desk to discuss CI/CD and configuration management support for your research software or infrastructure project.
Description and Features
Not every research challenge requires bespoke software development — and knowing when to build versus when to adopt an existing solution is a valuable form of expertise in itself. Research IT offers specialist software consultancy to help research groups define their software requirements clearly and identify the most appropriate path to meeting them.
The service includes:
- Review and analysis of research software requirements to identify where existing open-source or commercial tools can meet project needs without custom development.
- Advice on how to scope and specify any bespoke development that is genuinely required.
- Consultancy on software architecture, technology selection, and integration approaches.
- Guidance on how to factor software development costs and risks into funding applications.
Early engagement with this service can help avoid over-engineering, reduce costs, and ensure that research software is fit for purpose and maintainable over the long term.
Support and availability
Please contact Research IT via the Service Desk to arrange a software consultancy discussion.
Description and Features
The University of Exeter provides access to LabArchives, a cloud-based Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) platform designed to support reproducible, collaborative, and well-documented research practice.
LabArchives enables researchers to:
- Record experimental protocols, observations, and results in a structured, searchable digital format — replacing paper lab notebooks.
- Collaborate with project team members and share notebooks with appropriate access controls.
- Attach files, images, data, and links directly to notebook entries for a complete and auditable research record.
- Support research integrity and reproducibility by maintaining a timestamped, version-controlled record of research activities.
- Meet funder and institutional expectations for good research data management practice.
The University's Digital Hub provides a range of guides and resources to help researchers get the most from LabArchives. The platform is particularly well-suited to laboratory-based and experimental research disciplines.
Support and availability
- Access LabArchives via the University's ELN service at uk-auth-service.labarchives.com.
- Support guides and resources are available on The Digital Hub.
- For access and further information, please raise a ticket with the Service Desk.