Q1 2026 Gap Resolution Plan
Created: 2026-03-06 Status: Active
This sprint addresses the blind spots identified in the March 2026 audit. Work is organised into five tracks, ordered by institutional risk and researcher impact.
Tracks and priorities
| # | Track | Urgency | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Governance data (GDPR, data-training, accessibility) | Critical | Medium |
| 2 | Research Data Management tool notes | High | High |
| 3 | Coding & Development tool notes | High | Low |
| 4 | Arts & Humanities / underserved faculties | Medium | Medium |
| 5 | Ring semantics review (assess/hold promotion) | Low | Low |
Track 1 — Governance data
Problem: 71% of tools have data-training-policy: unknown; 83% have accessibility-statement: unknown. This blocks any responsible institutional rollout recommendation.
Actions:
- Run deep research prompt
DR-01-governance-gdpr.mdfor each tool with unknown governance fields. - Update tool frontmatter fields:
data-training-policy,gdpr-compliant,data-residency,accessibility-statement. - Flag any tool where data-training-policy is
public-training— these need a bias-risk note.
Priority tools to resolve first (all in active use or institutional procurement consideration):
- Grammarly, Writefull, Elicit, Consensus, Scite, Dimensions AI, Perplexity Academic, Julius AI, SciSpace, Zendy ZAIA
Track 2 — Research Data Management
Problem: Only 2 tool notes exist; the intelligence report discusses 35+ platforms. This is the largest single cataloguing gap.
Sub-areas to cover:
| Sub-area | Key platforms to assess |
|---|---|
| Research Information Systems (CRIS) | Pure (Elsevier), Symplectic Elements, Converis |
| Institutional repositories | DSpace, EPrints, Figshare, Zenodo |
| Electronic Lab Notebooks | RSpace, eLabFTW, Labfolder, LabArchives, SciNote |
| Data Management Planning | DMPonline, Argos |
| Research data repositories | UK Data Service, Figshare, OSF |
| Persistent identifiers | ORCID, DataCite |
| Open infrastructure | OpenAlex, FAIRsharing |
Actions:
- Run deep research prompt
DR-02-research-data-management.mdto gather tool profiles. - Create tool notes for highest-priority platforms first: DMPonline, Figshare, RSpace, Pure, eLabFTW.
- Add
research-data-managementto capability-areas for any tools that span multiple areas.
Track 3 — Coding & Development
Problem: Only MATLAB Copilot is catalogued. GitHub Copilot, Google Colab, and Jupyter are all mentioned in the intelligence report but absent from /tools/.
Platforms to add:
| Tool | Likely status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | adopt | Free for verified students/educators; AI coding across 80+ languages |
| Google Colab | adopt | Free GPU access; zero-setup notebooks |
| Jupyter / JupyterHub | trial | Open-source; Sheffield may self-host |
| Cursor | trial | AI-native code editor |
| Replit AI | assess | Browser-based; less relevant for HPC research |
Actions:
- Run deep research prompt
DR-03-coding-development.md. - Prioritise GitHub Copilot and Google Colab — both qualify for
adoptand are zero-cost.
Track 4 — Arts & Humanities coverage
Problem: Only MAXQDA, NVivo, and Obsidian explicitly serve Arts & Humanities. No tools for textual analysis, digital humanities, or archival/corpus research.
Areas to investigate:
- Corpus and text analysis (Voyant Tools, AntConc, NLTK with AI wrappers)
- Digital humanities platforms (Recogito, Transkribus, FromThePage)
- Archival AI (handwritten text recognition, document classification)
- Qualitative discourse analysis (beyond NVivo/MAXQDA)
Actions:
- Run deep research prompt
DR-04-arts-humanities-tools.md. - Add
faculty-relevance: Arts & Humanitiesto any existing tools that qualify. - Create at least 3 new tool notes for this faculty grouping.
Track 5 — Ring semantics review
Problem: No tools are in assess or hold rings. Several tools listed as trial are arguably experimental or watch-list only.
Candidates to move to assess:
- Google Co-Scientist — experimental; viable-from 2027
- Kosmos — early-stage; limited production deployments
- Crow — emerging; unclear vendor stability
- Opentrons OT-2 — hardware dependency; narrow applicability
Candidates to move to hold:
- Review after Track 1 is complete — any tool with
public-trainingandgdpr-compliant: nofor sensitive research data
Actions:
- After Track 1 governance data is resolved, conduct a ring review session.
- Update
catalogue-status,ring-movement, andlast-ring-changefor promoted/demoted tools.
Deep research prompts
The following prompt files are in this directory:
| File | Covers |
|---|---|
DR-01-governance-gdpr.md | Data training policies, GDPR compliance, accessibility statements |
DR-02-research-data-management.md | RDM platforms: CRIS, ELNs, repositories, DMPs |
DR-03-coding-development.md | AI coding tools for computational researchers |
DR-04-arts-humanities-tools.md | Digital humanities and textual analysis tools |
DR-05-hypothesis-generation.md | Emerging AI for scientific hypothesis generation |
DR-06-image-media-analysis.md | AI tools for image, microscopy, and media analysis |
Completion checklist
- Track 1: Governance fields resolved for top-10 priority tools
- Track 1: All remaining tools reviewed for data-training-policy
- Track 2: 5 RDM tool notes created (DMPonline, Figshare, RSpace, Pure, eLabFTW)
- Track 2: Capability area note for
research-data-managementupdated with Dataview query - Track 3: GitHub Copilot tool note created (adopt)
- Track 3: Google Colab tool note created (adopt)
- Track 4: Minimum 3 Arts & Humanities tool notes created
- Track 4: Existing tools audited for missing
Arts & Humanitiesfaculty-relevance - Track 5: Ring review completed; assess/hold rings populated
- Validation passing:
uv run python _scripts/validate-schema.py