Abstract:
Universities are playing a vital role in the research and development of the country. Rapidly growing scholarly
communities are connected electronically to their peers, colleagues, academic administrators, funding agencies
and policymakers. In this situation, research information management has become important for the
universities to organize, manage, preserve, evaluate, assess and disseminate their scholarly work. Research
information includes researcher profile and affiliation, grants, projects, funding, publications, patents, awards
and scholarly impact. This study aims to observe how Sri Lankan universities manage their research
information through their websites. Seventeen universities' websites were analyzed for its research information
management, such as data on people, research facilities, research projects, and research output. The result of
this study reveals that ten universities have a separate menu for "Research", three universities have staff
profiles through a single link, eight universities have displayed their research facilities, and fifteen universities
have maintained their research repository to showcase their research output. Further, research information
displayed through the university websites was discussed and scattered under different web pages and systems.
In this conjunction, research performance and its progress could not reach its target audience and did not satisfy
the stakeholders' expectations. Finally, it was recommended to develop a single system to manage research
information using suitable applications available in the market.
