- Program Definition and Objectives
Data is widely regarded as the new engine that is driving advances in medical diagnostics and drug discovery, increased food productivity, all aspects of national and information security, programme evaluation for educational planning, socio-economic studies pertaining to gender equality and youth empowerment, and overall improvement in public service delivery. However, most of the available data tend to favor certain demographics, particularly the global West (i.e., North America and Europe), including their cultures, and languages. Consequently, data from the developing world is inadequate while some poor and vulnerable communities are completely excluded. Where data do exist, they are often outdated, missing key information, or are not representative of underserved populations, leading to biases and decreased accuracy. Meanwhile, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have provided impetus for new and advanced technologies that help in understanding, transforming, and using data. These sophisticated computing paradigms also rely on the creation of high-quality labelled datasets to train models.
The goal of the Kharj Research Repository Project (KRRP) is conceived to support the creation, augmentation, or aggregation of datasets that are representative of the people, culture, language, and demography of Kharj province, the Central Region (i.e., Riyadh) and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, and the Arab world aimed at reducing biases in terms of related advances and technologies. For example, in healthcare it is widely known that lack of diversity in terms of sexuality, age, ability, geographic location, and even type of care setting (e.g., community health system vs. a large academic medical system, inpatient vs. outpatient), can make a dataset less representative and lead to unfair outcomes for subsets of a population. Therefore, the project will focus on an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach by including data for multiple underserved groups, or to explain why a certain type of diversity is important to ensure equitable outcomes for a specific use case.
The KRRP will also deepen our understanding of how to fund and support the development and maintenance of equitably labelled public interest datasets primarily in the areas of healthcare, agriculture, language, social welfare, and education.
Furthermore, considering the potential of AI to help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) whose goals are closely aligned with the kingdom’s Vision 2030 programme, the KRRP will provide a repository of data to support understanding of the peculiarities of the region and its people with the aim of improving healthcare, quality of life, advanced technologies, and socio-economic prosperity of its people.
- Selection Criteria
While emphasis is on the dataset in language, healthcare, and agriculture (LHA) areas, the KRRP encourages the creation of innovative datasets in all areas. Therefore, in all proposals, applicants must make a clear case of need for such datasets.
A proposal in the form of a review of relevant datasets and the scope that the proposed dataset will cover (this will be assessed externally) is required as the core application for KRRP funding. The application should specifically highlight:
- Quality: both in terms of proposed method(s) and qualifications of team members
- Impact: potential transformational benefits of the dataset
- Novelty: accounting for how proposed dataset transcends existing ones and methods
- Equity: dimension of proposed use cases
- Feasibility: in relation to budget, timeline, and scope proposed
- Accessibility: database must be open source (with limited exceptions)
- Ethics: safeguard standards, privacy, and best practices
- Localisation: how dataset will be locally developed and owned
- Sustainability: outline plan for future utilisation of the dataset
- Project terms
In addition to the criteria highlighted earlier, each proposal for KRRP funding must:
- Clearly identify gaps in existing datasets and how the kingdom and/or region are at a disadvantage because of the lack of or disparity in such data, i.e., need for the dataset, and advances such data will support.
- Show how applicants’ (especially the Principal Investigator) prior research activity (based on Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus data) is related to the or affected by the proposed dataset.
- Distinguished researchers from outside the university may participate, provided that the research leadership is given to a faculty member from within the university.
- Demonstrate the team’s qualifications and knowledge of data quality and standards needed for the targeted use case.
- Justify funding in one of three categories: Category A (80,000 to 100,000 SAR) for small to medium projects, B (120,000 to 150,000 SAR) for large projects or C (up to 500,000 SAR) for potentially transformative projects.
- Be feasible for completion within a period of 12 months (maximum of 18 months)
- Expected Outcomes
- The core outcome(s) of each project is the creation of a database addressing the need(s) identified in the project proposal. Moreover, the quality and scope of database will be evaluated externally to ensure that the need highlighted in the initial proposal and standards enumerated earlier are satisfied.
- The project team is expected to publish at least one review article addressing the gap in available datasets and how the database realised from the project addresses this gap.
- Alternatively, two publications in proceedings of top-tier conferences could be accepted in lieu of the review paper. However, either outcome must be in journals or conference proceedings that are indexed on the Web of Science repository and future citations to the produced database must be linked to these publications.
- The Principal Investigator (PI) of the project must participate in all published outcomes emanating from the project.
- All scientific outcomes emanating from the project must be published in scientific periodicals and journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) repository for projects from the scientific, health and engineering disciplines, and in Scopus and WoS for projects from the humanities.
- Each publication must include a statement acknowledging funding for the project as follows:
“This study was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University under the research project #......”
- If the research project produces any intellectual property in the form of patents, inventions, discoveries, or products, it shall belong to the University and members of the research team of from Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University.
As mentioned earlier, applications in the form of a review highlighting the need and gap the proposed dataset will ameliorate will form the core of the application document. Furthermore, other DSR requirements enumerated in the project submission portal in the link below must be satisfied.
https://services.psau.edu.sa/research/research