Partners and Nodes

IRIS Data Partners

IRIS partners are trusted organizations that receive IRIS data to support the development of new products and data enhancements that advance our mission and strengthen the value we deliver to our members and the research community. Partners are selected and approved by the IRIS Board of Directors and operate under formal data transfer agreements with the University of Michigan, IRIS’s home institution.

Current IRIS Data Partners are:

• National Center for Science & Engineering Statistics (NCSES): IRIS recently completed a pilot project linking data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) information submitted by universities to IRIS, enabling more comprehensive research on graduate outcomes in STEM. Through the partnership with NCSES, the resulting linked data, along with a mirror of the UMETRICS de-identified research release, will be available for research use via NCSES’s restricted data access process. This will allow researchers to combine these datasets with restricted-access SED files within an NCSES-approved secure environment.
• Steppingblocks: IRIS partners with Steppingblocks to enhance the UMETRICS dataset via integration of information about the career trajectories of research grant employees derived from online profile data such as LinkedIn.  IRIS uses the results to produce products for members, including the Employee Profile Report. Steppingblocks maintains a comprehensive data resource on education and workforce outcomes across the United States. Their data and analytic tools enrich IRIS’s ability to trace the career trajectories and economic contributions of research-trained individuals.
• U.S. Census Bureau: IRIS has a long-standing partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau that enables Census Bureau personnel to create hashed, privacy-preserving linkages between university-submitted IRIS data and restricted administrative data maintained by the Bureau. This enables researchers approved through Census Bureau processes to access and use a mirror of the UMETRICS de-identified research release housed within the Federal Research Data Center (FSRDC) System, a national network of secure data enclaves managed by the Census Bureau. This arrangement allows researchers to combine IRIS data with restricted federal data resources in a highly secure environment.

IRIS Nodes

IRIS Nodes are trusted collaborators that provide support or specialized capability to IRIS and improve our core dataset by working with restricted-access data in our secure virtual data enclave. Nodes are formally selected and approved by a vote of the IRIS Board of Directors and enter into a binding Node Agreement with the University of Michigan, IRIS’s home institution. All Node activities are governed by strict privacy, security, and confidentiality standards established in IRIS agreements and are overseen by institutional IRBs. IRIS does not have any nodes at this time.