Repositories Support Project (RSP) Workshop
I attended a very useful workshop last week which was run by the Repositories Support Project (RSP). About 50 people were there representing around 30 organisations and there were presentations on the following initiatives:
JULIET
RoMEO
OpenDOAR
ROAR
The Depot
JORUM
EThOS
OAISter and BASE
Intute Repository Search
There was also time for some discussion and this highlighted a few issues that might be worth flagging up.
Bill Hubbard (RSP) commented on the lack of success in the U.S. of the Open Access Mandate at the National Institutes of Health. (see Open Access news article for background: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/12/oa-mandate-at-nih-now-law.html). There appears to be only a 5% compliance rate at the moment so that obviously hasn’t worked! Bill made the point that this clearly reinforces the notion that the most important factor in improving repository deposit rates is not telling people ‘they must’, but to ensure that deposit is an integral part of the scholarly workflow.
(Obviously it’s not all about quantity, the material in these repositories has to be high quality and JISC is commissioning some work that will investigate techniques to help determine the quality of that deposited material).
Another point Bill made … It’s worth remembering that the amount of research that should be going into repositories is very substanstial. 6 out of 7 UK Research Councils have an archiving policy, and 36 out 38 Russell Group/1994 universities (which account for more than 80% of HE sector research done in the UK) have repositories.
It was good to see some of the repository stats reporting tools that are available in ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories - http://roar.eprints.org/)
One of repository manager participants at the event said that she recently had a conversation with an academic who was much more impressed with the information about repositories that he could see in OpenDOAR and ROAR than he was with the idea that his own institution had a fully operational and well stocked DSpace repository. We talked about the quality of advocacy materials that were available for repository managers to ’sell’ their systems and wondered if more could be done.
Some Other issues/comments from participants …
* JULIET & RoMEO were very useful resources. More should be done to develop API’s for both of these so that information could be embedded into institutional repository (IR) interfaces.
* The diversity of information and resources for HE IR managers was confusing. There should be a ‘one stop shop’.
* SWORD looks really interesting. Multiple deposit could improve the versioning problem where 4 different authors of a single paper are all putting separate (and potentially different) copies into their IRs.
* Is Intute more important for librarians than academics?
* The focus on colour-coded Open Access types is confusing and unhelpful. Green/white/Gold etc.
* Perhaps when talking about copyright issues, there should be more information about what IS possible rather than what isn’t. Copyright is not an issue that a lot of people want to engage with and some clear enabling advice would be good.
* IR managers on the whole had not started to grapple with preservation issues in a methodical way
These are just some of the notes I jotted down and the RSP will be reporting on the workshop in detail. But a very useful session - highly recommended for anyone in the repository field - particularly those who are fairly new to the area.
forthcoming events - http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/
Is this an effective development community?
The information environment, and repositories in particular, were highlighted by Sir Ron Cooke (JISC chair), in his opening keynote at the JISC conference. (See the online conference proceedings.)
He described the vision of a national e-infrastructure supporting the “body of knowledge” at the centre. He told delegates that “[his] nightmare is the challenge of the super-abundance of digital data” and stressed the importance of positioning our repositories very carefully in this landscape of abundant information. From a seemingly different perspective, the closing keynote by Angela Beesley described the work of the Wikimedia foundation, which includes Wikipedia but also other interesting projects I had not heard of before. Their vision is of open access, of making as much knowledge as possible available to the world. Their solution is less about infrastructure and more about mass, scaleable workflows. Her answer to “can you trust user-generated content?” was a refreshingly firm “no. but you can trust the process”.
So how do we develop a layer of scholarly information (for research, learning and teaching) where individuals can find, use and share trusted information, supported by an agile infrastructure provided by institutions, publicly funded shared services, commercial services and wikipedia? It’s a heady mix. I took heed from Ron’s warning that “it’s often easier to have the vision than to have the stamina to battle against institutional inertia or even resistance”.
I think that’s the key challenge for us now, in the world of digital libraries and e-infrastructure. How do we ensure that we’re building firm foundations instead of castles in the sky? How do we avoid going down routes that are technically interesting but offer no tangible benefits to staff and students in institutions?
An important part of the answer is in how we, as a development community, work together to make sure we’re doing the right sorts of things in the right way in the right order. This was the focus of the Rapid Community Building session I went to in the afternoon . The Users and Innovation Development Model marries up the requirements analysis process with the development process to encourage constant sense-checking and quality assurance. We need this on a grand scale if we’re to continue developing in the right direction. The Emerge project is about sharing ideas to support this virtuous cycle and the overall impression I had was of creative chaos! Not everyone wants to work in the web2.0 way. But perhaps if every cluster of developers has an enthusiastic communicator then the community will get more of the benefits sooner.
I’ll finish with a quote and a question.
Quote, with thanks to George Roberts in the community building session:
“Much of what works is already there” Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987)
Question … Is it true? How do we review what works? How do we address the gaps? The IE team really wants to hear from projects how we can improve the development cycle, from identifying useful projects through to embedding outputs. What sorts of things can we all do to make this process work better?
Research data and the JISC IE
We’re hoping to present some themed web pages on the innovation work being funded under the JISC Information Environment area, including one on research data. I thought I’d use this blog to offer preview / pilot that page. I’m not sure if that’s an acceptable use of a blog, but I’m sure I’ll find out.
The aim of the JISC IE work on data is to promote and enable new ways of finding, using and sharing research data. Because there are huge variations in what ‘data’ is, and in disciplinary cultures and practices around it, there is likely to be a ‘mixed economy’ of infrastructure and services to support its management.
There has been a large number of reports on data recently, some of which are helpfully listed in a recent presentation by Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network. Three key documents are the report from the then Office of Science and Innovation on ‘e-infrastructure’, which set out a high-level vision, a set of principles for data stewardship developed by the Research Information Network, and the ‘Dealing with Data‘ report from JISC/UKOLN, which made practical recommendations.
In terms of current practice, two projects promise to paint a clear picture from different perspectives. A study of ‘data publication’ practice among researchers has been funded by JISC, the Research Information Network and the Natural Environment Research Council. A different project, SCARP, is exploring disciplinary attitudes and approaches to data deposit, sharing and re-use, curation and preservation.
JISC and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council have jointly funded the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), which is a centre both of innovation and of guidance. Members of the DCC are developing a Data Audit Framework, which will enable universities to assess what data is being held on their computer systems, and who is responsible for it. The Data Audit Framework will be piloted in a number of universities in 2008.
There is a suspicion that the sector lacks sufficient skilled people to manage research data effectively. A report is due shortly that will review the position and make recommendations on how this might be addressed. The DCC will run a summer school this year to begin to address this issue. Of course, investment will only follow if a business case can be made, and a part of making that case is assessing the costs of preserving data. A methodology is being developed that will enable estimates to be made, though of course without assessing the benefits of keeping data, it is only half the story.
The UK is fortunate to have both the UK Data Archive (co-funded by JISC and the Economic and Social Research Council) and the data centres supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. These services offer expert advice and infrastructure for data management. A feasibility study is underway into the possibility of a UK Research Data Service as a collaboration between some UK universities, to fill in some of the gaps between such data centres. In addition, the DISC-UK Datashare project is looking at how UK higher education can increase its capacity to curate and share research data.
Finally, it is worth noting that JISC also funds work under the heading of ‘e-Research’, which is also focused on research data, including grid and semantic enabling of datasets.
Training for JISC project staff starting up and enhancing repositories
The Repositories and Preservation Programme contains a strand called start up and enhancement. This is our straight talking strand in that all the projects are either starting up a new repository or enhancing an established one.
One of the interesting things about this strand is that all the funding for projects was provided on a matched basis, i.e. JISC funded a maximum of 50% of the project costs. The idea behind this was that if the institution invested in the project then there was a greater chance of them continuing to invest in the resulting repository once the JISC funding had ceased, therefore leading to more sustainable outputs. However sustainability is not just about pumping money into technology, it is also about the people involved and their skills. The 44 projects in this strand contain a lot of project staff and the skills they develop during their projects will be invaluable in developing the repository infrastructure in the UK over the coming years. Therefore it is important that JISC do all they can to support project staff in developing their skills. One way we are addressing this issue is to fund a programme of training for the start up and enhancement project staff.
The project to provide this training is called SUETR (Start Up and Enhancement TRaining) and will be run by Maureen Pennock at UKOLN over the next year. The project will start with a training requirements gathering exercise which will assess what training is required and what is the most appropriate delivery method for that training. The SUETR project will work very closely with the Repositories Support Project and any online training materials such as podcasts, slides and notes will be distributed to the wider community via the Repositories Support Project website.
While this training programme is provided for project staff in the start up and enhancement strand, it is possible that there will be spare places at some of the training sessions. When this happens the spare places will be offered to the wider community so keep your eye on this blog and the JISC-repositories mailing list for announcement of any training opportunities.
If you want to know more about this training, please feel free to contact me.
Posted by: Andy McGregor