Economic case for open access
This morning, JISC released the report by John Houghton and Charles Oppenheim on the economic costs and benefits of three different models of scholarly communication – subscription, ‘gold’ open access and self-archiving with overlay services. The findings suggest that there are both considerable cost savings to be made by the HE sector by moving to open access, and significant benefits to the UK economy to be gained by doing so. Both the potential cost savings and the benefits run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
This is obviously important. It’s also important to stress that the research has been robust (we think it’s the most detailed modelling of scholarly communication), conservative (eg, the figures for cost savings and benefits to the UK economy assume that no subscriptions are cancelled), transparent (assumptions are clearly listed, and there is a simplified online model here where you can enter your own data to see the effect) and balanced (each model runs with a 20% return for those operating it).
[Please note the online model is an exe file, so you need to save it locally and run it as an application. It is does require some time to understand, and the notes are worth reading. Even simplified, the modelling is not simple]
There’s an outline of the report here, with links to the full version. Because it’s a complex piece of work, with potentially large implications, we have resisted the temptation to collapse the findings into a two-page summary at the moment, and instead we hope those interested will take the time at least to read the extended summary.
Scholarly Infomation Practices & Library Services: OCLC report
This new report, Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development, from OCLC Research has already had a lot of publicity, not least via Lorcan Dempsey’s blog. But I thought I’d just mention it here in case others haven’t picked up on it
I have just read it and I really liked it. Not because it told me lots of new things but because it manages to very clearly set out a summary of the salient aspects of the information behaviour of researchers from a range of literature and it draws out the implications for library services. I think it is really well written.
Just the kind of report for someone that finds themself ‘information rich and time poor’! (Leigh term):-).
Palmer, Carole L., Lauren C. Teffeau and Carrie M. Pirmann. 2009. Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development. Report commissioned by OCLC Research. Published online at: http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2009-02.pdf [pdf]
Prepare to get happy
The JISC Developer Happiness Days event is approaching fast.
If you are:
- A developer for software used in higher education
- Someone who uses higher education software and is interested in its development
- Looking to develop your coding skills
- Interested in community collaboration
- Want to make new contacts
Then the Developer Happiness Days event is for you.
We’re bringing together the cream of the crop of educational software developers along with coders from other sectors, users, and technological tinkerers in an exciting new forum.
Share your skills and knowledge with the coding community in a stimulating and fun environment and come away with new skills, fresh contacts – and you might even win a prize.
The top ideas generated at the event will be documented, publicised and made available to the community.
Full details of the event can be found at: http://www.dev8d.org
Further announcements about accommodation and details of the event competitions will be announced via the event blog: http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/
The tag for the event is dev8D.
Information Environment (IE) & Virtual Research Environments (VRE) call for proposals: Briefing Day notes/Q & A
On 15th December a briefing day on the Information Environment and e-Research JISC Circular (12/08) was held. The event was held in order to provide an overview of the circular and to give people the opportunity to ask questions. The circular has £11m of JISC funding against it which is quite substantial. The calls in 12/08 focus on: digital repositories for learning and research, virtual research environments, use of text-mining and automatic meta-data generation and digital preservation. So in short the circular is seeking projects that are mainly about the creation, management and sharing of information that is part of the research and learning process in ways that support researchers, learners, teachers and administrators.
Here are the links to the presentations from the Briefing Day:
Policy and bid submission
Automated Metadata and Text-mining- strand A1
Digital Repositories: Start-up, rapid innovation and enhancement - strands A3- A5
Developing e-infrastructure to support research disciplines and digital preservation exemplars - strands A2 and A6
Virtual Research Environments (VRE) - strands B1-B3
Notes of the discussion and questions and answers from the briefing day:
IE and VRE Circular 12/08 15 December Briefing Day questions and answers
For some notes of the whole event as it went along see Andy Powell’s (Eduserv Foundation) live blog.
A few points of context:
JISC has funded projects and services in all of these areas previously. So what is different this time? I would say there are three general issues that underpin the projects sought in this circular:
* reflecting the maturity of digital repositories and other types of ‘e-infrastructure’ this circular is seeking further and improved alignment of these systems with user requirements. An emphasis in the calls is the need to involve/take into account end-users and a bringing together of these ‘e-infrastructure’ systems with research and learning processes.
* both the IE and the VRE strands of activity are about building on previous investment and lessons - so these are not completely new areas of activity. In the case of repository and digital preservation activity for example we’re seeking more repositories, improved repositories and policies, further integration with other systems and in areas such as digital preservation we’re looking for actual implementation of solutions that have previously been developed. However although this circular is generally about implementing areas where there has already been substantial work the projects are about improvement and so will involve new ideas and development.
* recognition that in many cases cross domain teams and skills are required to create, manage, use and develop digital systems, supporting policies and related practices within institutions.
The decision to publish the IE and VRE call strands together was partly a practical one as both funding areas were due to issue circulars at the same time, but there was more to this decision than that. Publishing them together was, I think, essential in terms of showing that information systems should not be developed independently of the requirements of the research process. I think if we’d published the calls separately there would’ve been a danger of perpetuating this often unhelpful division. In particular the projects sought under A2, Developing e-infrastructure to support research disciplines bridge both areas and seek to bring the research process and scholarly communications requirements together with underlying information systems. This particular strand in the IE calls also represents the fact that developing the Information Environment (or e-infrastructure) is not just about managing and disseminating information it is about supporting and improving research (and of course learning and teaching, although the projects called for under A2 focus on research). I think the connections that are emerging between both the IE and VRE programme areas are a good thing and are inevitable to progress.