Srinagar, Feb 24:(KNS)   Vice-Chancellor of University of Kashmir Prof Talat Ahmad on Wednesday launched the Online Research Management System (ORMS) that aims to bring about greater efficiency in the varsity’s research operations and monitoring.
The RSMP—developed and designed by the Directorate of Information Technology and Support Systems—is an integrated portal providing an academic database of research scholars right from their admission up to the award of their PhD degree.
Addressing deans of various faculties on the occasion, Prof Talat said the university is attuning its research endeavours to address “local problems” pertaining to environment and society, including pollution, climate change impacts, Dal lake conservation, heritage conservation, mental health and drug abuse.
The university has already constituted several committees and working groups to feed its research outcomes into policy-making to develop solutions to help address these problems, he said.
The Vice-Chancellor reiterated that the National Education Policy-2020 lays emphasis on interdisciplinary research and the university has geared up to meet the challenges and is poised for greater collaborations with top-notch academic and research institutions across the country and abroad.
“On the basis of our credentials, we have been ranked 48th in the NIRF ranking. This doesn’t mean we will become complacent. It is important that our focus will be more and more on quality education and cutting-edge research where we continue to get good support from various funding agencies,” he said.
Prof Talat said that alongside science, the university is placing equal focus and attention on research in areas of social science, humanities and arts so that the research outcome shall help us to address various social issues across the J&K UT.
“I urge academics in the faculties of social sciences, humanities and arts to work harder to get more research projects,” he said, asserting that the university is also focussing on innovation and incubation and trying to create high-end facilities and infrastructure for interdisciplinary and collaborative research under one-roof.
Dean for Research, Prof Shakil A Romshoo said the ORMS, comprising various modules, would bring efficiency into the academic research (PhD) in the university and automate all the manual processes right from admissions up to the award of PhD degree. He said the ORMS would ease out many of the hitherto cumbersome processes like maintenance of DRC records, grant of extensions in PhD registration, academic clearance, issuance of MSP certificate, award notification etc.
Further, the system would serve as an up-to-date database of PhD and related information often required for submission to NAAC, NIRF and other university ranking and evaluation platforms, he said.
He said the online system would be accessible to students, Heads of the Departments, Deans of various schools, Controller of Examination and Dean Research for data entry, update, decision-making and certificate issuance.
Dean of Academic Affairs Prof Shabir A Bhat said the ORMS will simplify the university’s research processes.
“This system will gradually evolve into a one-point database system for students after its integration with other academic and management systems being launched in the university in the interest of the students and the faculty,” he said.

In-charge Director IT&SS Dr Maroof Naeem Qadri provided a demo of the ORMS, presenting the contents of each of its five modules and their utility.(KNS)