There is growing demand for appropriate film and sound resources within education. Where the typical education consumer would previously have been content with text-based learning, they are now seeking to learn from the gamut of rich multi-media all around them.

For all those involved in education either as funders, producers, or practitioners, the challenge is how to harness this new media literacy, and in particular to help ensure that rich media resources can be systematically embedded in teaching and learning, as well as providing new avenues for research. Teachers are increasingly aware of the need to offer compelling and interesting resources that engage students to facilitate the high quality experience that our universities need to be able to deliver in order to remain competitive. Likewise, researchers want to engage more fully with film, television and radio to exploit the potential of resources that have been hitherto inaccessible.

We are therefore excited about the possibilities that the development of a Research Education Space (RES) will offer to address these needs. During 2013, we will be working on the first phase of creating RES which aims to deliver a sustainable digital content collection for post August 1989 BBC broadcast media assets using the ERA licences and the BUFVC’s Box of Broadcasts (BoB) service. More specifically we aim to:

Provide unique, rich and valuable assets to research and educational users.

The audio-visual archives of the BBC contain a wealth of material gathered since it was founded in 1922 but much remains largely inaccessible, held on film or videotape. RES will start to ‘open up’ one of the most influential archives in the world for use within UK education and research.

Establish Principles for making assets and catalogues available to research and educational users

We are only at the beginning of the process of unlocking archives for academic use, but we see our collaboration with the BBC and the BUFVC as crucial to bringing together expertise in this area and enhancing joint understanding. The project will pay dividends for education and research in the longer term by providing more cost effective ways to provide access to high quality and highly demanded archival content.

Develop a Platform for digitised assets which allows easy access and reliable delivery

For us and our customers, RES will contribute to a balanced Jisc portfolio of investment as not only will it greatly enhance the availability of video/ audio resources (being the only dedicated source of BBC broadcasts for education potentially dating back to August 1989), but also begin to create a sustainable infrastructure through the existing BUFVC’s ‘Box of Broadcasts – BoB’ (an off-air recording and media archive service).

Create Propositions to demonstrate the use of these assets within a range of contexts

BoB’s popularity and user-baser is already impressive – in 2012 alone, it streamed some 320 programmes per hour from 50+ channels, with 35k-40k unique users per month at 45 institutions (8 colleges, 37 universities). However, RES will also help us to learn more about current and potential content usage in education and research through academic engagement and case study development. This will help us present the content better in order to gain maximum exposure and use.

RES has the potential to both enhance and energise the academy’s relationship with one of the dominant media of the 20^th century- film, television and radio- by creating new opportunities for research and teaching and encouraging use across many different disciplines. We have some way to go until the first results of our work to develop RES become available in the autumn of 2013 but we’re looking forward to the journey and keeping you posted.

As we put the team together to create RES and our plans develop, I and colleagues look forward to keeping you up-to-date on our progress. If in the meantime you’d like to know more, please do email me at s.fahmy@jisc.ac.uk

An overview of the BBC’s Digital Public Space vision can be read in the Guardian here.

Find out more about BUFVC’s BoB National: http://bobnational.net

The aim of the workshop was to collaborate with our counterparts in Europe to achieve the vision and recommendations identified in the European Commission Communication on open access and the preservation of scientific information.  As summarised by my colleague Paul Stokes, what the Communication asks is that:

• Research and funding policies which reflect the new open and linked digital world.
• Policies that are defined at a national and sub-national level.
• A robust and interconnected e-infrastructure is required to improve preservation & access to scientific information.
• A suitable new solution which needs to be established to support the transition in publication methods and emerging scientific processes.

The key principles of the Communication are:

All publicly funded research should be made available through open access as early as possible.

• That this should be underpinned by robust preservation.
• Business will benefit from access to research.

It’s imperative for Europe to work together to realise these aims and this was something all delegates seemed dedicated to achieve.  Experts at the meeting tackled open access, open research data and preservation.  A range of issues were raised where further collaboration, and in some cases coordination, is required.  These were naturally from the policy, infrastructure provider and information professional perspective – after all we were discussing implementing the Communication recommendations at a national level and moving the underpinning infrastructure forward to support policy.

The Commission wants to help Europe make progress and recommend a coordinated follow-up to their recommendations through “national points of reference”.   It is early days, a survey of workshop participants asked if they had or intended to appoint a national point of reference.

• 29% indicated that a national point of reference had been appointed already
• Of the 71% who haven’t yet appointed a national point of reference, 54% expressed an intention to appoint one.

However, thinking about the change in the practice of research is also very important.  How can you marry the policy direction with research practice?  Of course many researchers are undertaking open research and are also involved in curation of their outputs.  However, in order to make a more wholesale change the need to address the issue of incentives was raised; how can researchers be incentivised to make their research open access, whether it is the data or the final paper, and how can they fulfil the curation needs required to fulfil the aspirations of the communication?

A critical area of importance that the research data group focused on was the issue of skills, and the fact that digital data management requires a set of skills that are not yet widely developed and practised.  There have been developments in this area (for one example see the  JISC research data programme) but it was believed by the experts that the skills of both information professionals and researchers needs more attention if the aim of open access data is to be realised.  Discussion focused on the need for recognised qualifications for information professionals, training for early career researchers; and librarians and scientists working together on data management.

One of the aims of the workshop was to start to identify areas where collaboration and co-ordination might help member states achieve the goals of the Communication.  Generally there were a lot areas raised where exchange of knowledge would be valuable, but rather than a new forum being required it was felt there are already mechanisms, although in some cases these might need further resource.

For example, in the area of open access for publications discussion indicated that working through existing fora on sharing what works in national transition models and financial arrangements for transition to Open Access should be possible.  However, a gap which no obvious existing body fulfilled was identified; this was the area of specific infrastructure for Open Access.  The discussion concluded there is a requirement for further work on identifying both the needs, and addressing sustainability and governance arrangements for Open Access infrastructure.

The workshop has started to raise the profile of the need to further address European collaboration and coordination, whether it is through mechanisms based on the national points of reference or ensuring existing forums seek to further address the recommendations.  I believe that Europe does need to work on these issues collaboratively to remain competitive and the Communication offers a framework for this.

Knowledge Exchange and the European e-Infranet project hosted the workshop with 60 participants from across a wide range of European member states.

image by Joseph Hart

JISC and Research Councils UK (RCUK) are announcing new coordinated work which will ease the burden on universities of reporting research outcomes.

As UK universities face increasing demands to share information with other sector bodies, it is more important than ever that their research reporting systems talk to one another, to ensure their data is accessible and can be collected and processed without duplication.

During the academic year 2012-13, JISC and RCUK will be working to ensure that systems will interoperate to maximise benefits for universities, researchers and other sector bodies. These systems include: the Research Councils’ Research Outcomes System, ResearchFish (formerly e-Val), and the forthcoming Gateway to Research – a system to be used by members of the public to access information on research funded by the Research Councils; JISC’s RepositoryNet+ and research management shared service projects; and HEFCE’s REF collection system.

One way these systems can work together is by using a single data ‘language’ or standard– such as the Common European Research Information Format, CERIF, an approach that is compatible with systems in many UK universities.

To support universities with this approach, JISC is funding a new CERIF support person to work with them to help ensure they can implement this standard consistently and fully benefit from its interoperability. Both HEFCE and the Research Councils have already been working with this post.

Universities can also share data by using a simpler option designed especially for information about research outputs – such as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) which is used to collect the metadata of the records in the archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives.  Other approaches like SPARQL, a query language for databases able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description Framework (RDF) format, are also being used.

JISC and Research Councils UK, repository representatives and others will make sure that universities can send information from an institutional repository to the research system using this simpler option by 2013 through a new project at UKOLN, based at the University of Bath, which will work out the schema for such an option and software for universities to use.

Astrid Wissenburg, deputy chair of the RCUK Impact Group, said: “The UK higher education and research sector has a unique opportunity to improve the ways in which research management and reporting systems interact with each other. Researchers, universities and funders have a common interest in ensuring that research outputs are visible to demonstrate the impact of UK research, using institutional and subject repositories alongside more sophisticated research information systems. In either case, it is important that these interoperate effectively with the systems operated by research funders and others.”

In my opinion, an improvement of this kind would contribute to sector efficiencies, and to the availability of accurate information to inform planning and research management, as well as to easing the reporting burden on researchers.

A consensus view seems to be emerging that we will need to support all of these approaches to interoperability over the medium term, as they offer people different benefits. However, we anticipate that universities will steadily move towards using the CERIF standard over the longer term – which is why we’re funding the important CERIF support post.

The EC’s position supports OA to research papers encouraging both Green and Gold routes, in line with recent proposals from the UK Research Councils. It seeks to address the sustainability issues relating to increased subscriptions as well as accelerating the benefits of digital distribution on the web.

The Communication nicely expresses some of advantages as helping to:

“accelerate innovation (faster to market = faster growth); foster collaboration and avoid duplication of effort (greater efficiency); build on previous research results (improved quality of results); involve citizens and society (improved transparency of the scientific process).”

Research data is also addressed, as you’d expect.  The EC proposes that they will implement a pilot with regard to research data deposit in a similar vein to their previous OA pilot to publications. It recommends that research data from publicly funded research is publicly accessible and re-usable. These are welcome proposals, and I think JISC can support universities in the UK in response to them.

The other communication – A Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth (pdf) – sees open access to publications and research data as essential and encourages open innovation between what they term the “knowledge triangle”, research, business and education. It’s great to see that the EC have brought together open access to research, alongside the development of research infrastructures (see their roadmap) to support world class research and facilities and collaborations with business, small and medium size enterprises  and wider society. This is a major contribution to achieving a thriving European economy, as well as sustainable research production and use. This reflects the UK department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) policies on Research and Innovation and the Strategic Vision for UK e-Infrastructure (pdfs).

As I say there have been several key policy documents in the last month or so, the Royal Society ‘Science as an Open Enterprise’, the UK Government open data white paper and the Finch report: expanding access to research publications, all of which suggest concerted movement toward a more open research environment.

So what about implementation of these policies for UK universities?

Open access

In terms of OA to articles JISC is working on practical implementation in partnership with other stakeholders:

• for example JISC Collections can support the licensing recommendations in the Finch report and the JISC development of repository services is underway via EDINA working with universities and research funders.

• In the UK transition to OA, maintaining an efficient and competitive scholarly publishing market is important. Key processes, such as peer review and academic publishing, must be sustained and evolve, and incentives will be needed to enable all stakeholders to play their part. Importantly, progress toward open access to UK published research will need to be measured. Methodologies for this purpose are being developed in the UK by the Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG).

• On behalf of OAIG, the Wellcome Trust and JISC are working to specify the role of an intermediary in enhancing the management of ‘gold’ article processing charges (APC’s); this is seen as a key role in the transition. Recently the OAIG report Going for Gold? shows economic modelling of OA adoption: it looks at both Green and Gold and finds that with worldwide Gold OA, all universities would see savings if article processing charges were at the current average levels.

Open data and software

The Royal Society report makes the case for open inquiry being at the centre of scientific enterprise; it calls for data to be “intelligently open” – more on that later.  Open data and software are themes in the EC communications, and in the UK we’re seeing policies from research funders and universities on these issues.

Last week the Software Sustainability Institute hosted a workshop at OR12 in Edinburgh where the early plans for a software repository for NERC research was discussed. In order to replicate and access data for research often the software used for related simulations and analysis have to re-usable too, this issue is now gaining serious attention.

• The EC Riding the Wave report called for a collaborative data infrastructure. The Knowledge Exchange report (pdf) gives a good overview of actions that are underway to realise this in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Demark and the JISC led European project, Sim4RDM, is working with European partners to develop shared policies and practice. Global coordination, from the US, to Europe to Australia is under active discussion with the proposal of an international Data Web Forum where essential interoperability issues will be addressed to help develop a sustainable data infrastructure.

• The JISC Digital Curation Centre and research data management programme are providing practical solutions to the deposit and re-use of research data, for example they support the use of data management plans for universities to implement research council requirements.

The building blocks of a more open research environment are here, but I would say the “intelligently open” phrase from the Royal Society report is important, it’s about the right data being shared in a usable way and accessible to researchers, business and the public.

So yes, stakeholders (universities, researchers, funders, publishers and infrastructure providers) must work together to develop policies, technical tools, infrastructure and capacity to enable the ‘intelligently open’ research that we see promised.

I welcome the EC positions, but what do they mean to you?

“Digitisation breathes new life into material from the past, and turns it into a formidable asset for the individual user and an important building block of the digital economy.”[1]

Still, the way we create content online is still in its infancy, and the path from initial funding to long-term sustainability can be challenging. Despite financial investment, some undesirable outcomes have emerged:

• Project leaders return again and again to funders, because alternative revenue streams have not been developed;
• Completed projects cannot always be updated/ungraded once funded has ended;
• Content created may live in silos, be difficult to find and hosted on a variety of platforms;
• Preservation strategies are often uncertain, both for digitised and born digital content;
• Project leaders often rely heavily on the largesse of a host institution
• Some programmes or projects that cease to secure ongoing funding are obliged to stop work altogether

Add to this the challenging economic environment of the past few years and all of these issues are brought into glaringly sharp relief.

Since 2007, Ithaka S+R and the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance have led the way in examining ways  that the academic and cultural heritage sectors are defining sustainability and helping to make sure that the digital resources will endure and provide value well beyond the term of the grant. In 2012, two years and one economic crisis later, this essential research is more important than ever to answer questions such as:

• What were the key sustainability issues to consider?
• How have project leaders made their resources valuable to users?
• How have project leaders made growth and innovation possible?
• Which sustainability models have been most successful?
• How had budget cuts and other factors affected the projects?

Answers to these questions however are never simple and the process by which projects, both current and previous, consider them are multifaceted and complex. As a first step to traversing the difficult road to sustainability, the following video lecture series has been developed with Nancy Maron (sustainability expert at Ithaka S+R) to consider how universities, museums and libraries can deal with these issues in a challenging economic environment. You may not find all the answers here, but you will certainly find out more about the questions you need to be asking and guidance on how to answer them.

Split into parts or available as full versions, the videos (under a CC-BY-NC-SA licence) allow for individuals or organisations to embed or repurpose the relevant sections for their own specific audiences. As they are in easily digestible ‘bite-size’ chunks with links to the relevant resources referenced, these should help you to think in more depth about the issues raised and to read and research at your own pace. All we ask is that you let us know how you are planning to use them and if/ how these have been useful to you.

Please follow the links below to view the videos most relevant to your sector:

Sustaining Digital Resources for Universities

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sustaining Digital Resource for Museums

Sustaining Digital Resources for Libraries

If we imagine the history of Wales as a long timeline stretching back to St David in the sixth century AD and beyond, we’re confident that JISC has digitised many, many resources that can help us better appreciate that rich culture.  We’ve picked out four highlights below and hope that students and researchers of Welsh culture and history might discover a nugget here to inspire them.

We begin in the 21^st century, where if you’re in the mood to be inspired by contemporary Welsh art you’ll find students’ work online at Galeri Cymru – unusually you can even vote on their work and leave comments, enriching the learning experience for the Coleg Harlech students.   It’s an interesting example of how an interactive website can bring together community groups who might not yet be fully engaged with one another.

Then – a step back to the 20^th century.  When Cardiff University asked people from across Wales to delve into their attics for family memorabilia from the World War One, they uncovered a host of treasures.  Those precious items have now been photographed, recorded and digitised for posterity so that what started out as individual family heirlooms have now become a shared archive describing the Welsh experience of World War One.  Browsing the resulting Welsh Voices collections is incredibly evocative – I can only imagine the mixed emotions of Albert William’s family after the twenty two year old soldier’s discharge certificate sent him home to Swansea after injuring his knee at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  It’s soon to be part of the ambitious Theatre of Memory project (PDF) run by the National Library of Wales.  Following on from this, we’re now working to digitise a more complete picture of the Welsh experience of World War One (Rhyfel Byd 1914-1918 a’r profiad Cymreig) including 190,000 pages of printed text, archival pages, manuscript pages and photographs; 50 hours of audio; and 20 hours of audio visual materials.

If you’d like to delve back even further, Welsh Ballads online can help you access 4,000 digitised ballads, mainly dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, from the collections of the National Library of Wales and Cardiff University Library. Ballads were like newspapers for the poor at this time, sung on street corners for all to hear.  The impressive documents will be of particular interest to anyone interested in folk music, the Welsh language or the history of popular art, but these pamphlets also narrate a more widely appealing social history– for example “Y Negroes”, a ballad supporting the abolition of slavery, dating from approximately 1830.

Linking these periods together is some of the very best in Welsh scholarship on Welsh Journals Online which gives people working in institutions free access to scholarship from Wales on topics ranging across the humanities, social sciences, science and technology.

I hope you find something here to interest you – and if you have a useful digital resource for other Welsh scholars, perhaps you would share it below.  Thank you.

The Welsh experience is part of a wider international drive to share our cultural history.  For a whole world of JISC Content on Wales and other cultural history, why not search the JISC content portal

For St David’s Day this post is also available in Welsh:

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi: Ymchwilio i Gymru neu hanes Cymru?

Yn ôl Amgueddfa Cymru, un o’r gwyrthiau mwyaf bythol a briodolwyd i Dewi Sant oedd iddo godi’r ddaear dan ei draed wrth bregethu, er mwyn i’w gynulleidfa allu ei weld a’i glywed.  Mae gan Gymru draddodiad llafar cryf, llinynnau artistig a llenyddol cyfoethog, cerddoriaeth werin hanesyddol a chyfoes ac rydym yn parhau i ddathlu’r wisg draddodiadol (fel sydd i’w gweld yma ar Casgliad y Werin Cymru). Mae Casgliad y Werin Cymru yn dod â chasgliadau digidol y prif sefydliadau treftadaeth yng Nghymru at ei gilydd, ynghyd â chynnwys o amgueddfeydd, archifdai a llyfrgelloedd llai, ac mae’n le gallwch rannu’ch stori am Gymru.  Un o’r heriau rydym ni yma yn JISC yn ei hwynebu yw: sut gallwn ddefnyddio technoleg orau i helpu pobl i weld a chlywed am drysorau hanes diwylliannol pan fo llawer ohonynt yn bodoli ar ffurf hanesion, caneuon, gwrthrychau neu ddogfennau gwerthfawr, yn hytrach na thestunau unffurf?

Os ydym yn dychmygu hanes Cymru fel llinell amser faith sy’n ymestyn yn ôl i Dewi Sant yn y chweched ganrif OC a’r tu hwnt, rwy’n hyderus bod JISC wedi digido llawer iawn o adnoddau sy’n gallu ein helpu i werthfawrogi’r diwylliant cyfoethog hwnnw’n well.  Rwyf wedi dewis pedwar uchafbwynt isod ac rwy’n gobeithio y bydd y rhai sy’n astudio ac yn ymchwilio i hanes a diwylliant Cymru yn darganfod telpyn gwerthfawr yma i’w hysbrydoli.

Rydym yn dechrau yn yr 21^ain ganrif lle, os oes arnoch awydd cael eich ysbrydoli gan gelfyddyd Gymreig gyfoes, gallwch ddod o hyd i waith myfyrwyr ar-lein yn Galeri Cymru – yn anarferol iawn, gallwch bleidleisio ar eu gwaith a gadael sylwadau hyd yn oed, gan gyfoethogi’r profiad dysgu ar gyfer y myfyrwyr yng Ngholeg Harlech.  Mae’n enghraifft ddiddorol o sut gall gwefan ryngweithiol ddod â grwpiau cymunedol, nad ydynt yn ymgysylltu â’i gilydd yn llawn efallai, at ei gilydd.

Yna – cam yn ôl i’r 20^fed ganrif.  Pan ofynnodd Prifysgol Caerdydd i bobl ledled Cymru chwilota yn eu croglofftydd am bethau cofiadwy eu teuluoedd o’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf, gwnaethant ddadorchuddio trysorau lu.  Erbyn hyn, mae’r eitemau gwerthfawr hynny wedi’u ffotograffio, eu cofnodi a’u digido ar gyfer y dyfodol, felly mae’r hyn a ddechreuodd yn drysorau teuluol wedi dod yn archif ranedig sy’n disgrifio profiad Cymru o’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf.  Mae pori drwy gasgliadau Welsh Voices yn arbennig o atgofus – gallaf ond dychmygu teimladau cymysg teulu Albert Williams wedi i dystysgrif ymadael y milwr dau ddeg dau oed ei anfon adref i Abertawe ar ôl iddo anafu ei ben-glin ym Mrwydr y Somme ym 1916.

Os hoffech ymchwilio ymhellach yn ôl, gall Baledi Cymru ar-lein eich helpu i ddod o hyd i 4,000 o faledi wedi’u digido, yn dyddio o’r 18^fed a’r 19^eg ganrif yn bennaf, o gasgliadau Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru a Llyfrgell Prifysgol Caerdydd.  Roedd baledi fel papurau newydd ar gyfer y tlodion yn yr oes hon, a oedd yn cael eu canu ar gornel y stryd i bawb eu clywed.  Bydd y dogfennau nodedig hyn o ddiddordeb arbennig i unrhyw un sydd â diddordeb mewn cerddoriaeth werin, yr iaith Gymraeg neu hanes celfyddyd gyfoes, ond mae’r pamffledi hyn hefyd yn adrodd hanes cymdeithasol ag apêl ehangach – er enghraifft “Y Negroes”, sef baled sydd o blaid dileu caethwasiaeth, sy’n dyddio o oddeutu 1830.

Yn cysylltu’r cyfnodau hyn at ei gilydd, mae peth o’r ysgolheictod Cymreig gorau erioed ar Cylchgronau Cymru Ar-lein, sy’n rhoi mynediad rhad ac am ddim at ysgolheictod o Gymru ar bynciau sy’n cynnwys y dyniaethau, gwyddorau cymdeithasol, gwyddoniaeth a thechnoleg i bobl sy’n gweithio mewn athrofeydd.

Rwy’n gobeithio y dewch o hyd i rywbeth yma sydd o ddiddordeb i chi – ac os oes gennych adnodd digidol defnyddiol ar gyfer ysgolheigion eraill yng Nghymru, efallai yr hoffech ei rannu isod.  Diolch.

by Paola Marchionni and Nicola Yeeles

If you have any questions about what JISC is doing to digitise Welsh resources, or to find out more about JISC’s investment in econtent, please email Paola at p.marchionni@jisc.ac.uk

Image from The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit © The Imperial War Museum

The legacy of World War One in terms of social, economic and political global change cannot be overstated; it changed the individual’s view of society and their place within it with far-reaching effects into their future and our past. In the words of H.G. Wells: ‘This is the end and the beginning of an age’.

To mark this event in international history is therefore a key priority for custodians of heritage and educators alike.

We’ve already made considerable efforts to preserve online the memories and writings of those active during the First World War.  The popular Great War Poetry Archive was funded by JISC to digitise precious documents relating to the poetry of the Great War – including Wilfred Owen’s original notes for the well known poem Dulce et Decorum Est.

It also includes podcasts with eminent historians and veterans including the writer and broadcaster Ian Hislop talking about his grandfather’s experience in action and why he is so ‘obsessed’ with the First World War.  The Serving Soldier collection might also interest you as a way of finding out about the lives of soldiers from 1899 to 1918, a period which spans the Second Boer War, Younghusband Expedition and World War One.

But now it’s time to commemorate the 2014 anniversary.  Higher and further education has a  unique part to play in the WW1 commemoration because it can offer an academic appraisal and reappraisal of themes, events and perceptions.  To help people in education who are studying the period, we are promoting a joined-up approach across many different organisations that currently hold audiovisual, images, text based works and film relating to the First World War. JISC wants to explore how providing this in a more seamless way could help those working in education and research to access the resources. So as a result we’re planning two activities:

• JISC WW1 Discovery programme- to aggregate digital content such as films from a range of digital collections and find new and innovative ways of presenting this content for the benefit of education and research on WW1.

• JISC WW1 OER project- to create innovative Open Educational Resources around WW1 relevant across disciplines for embedding in teaching and learning using a range of content pertaining to WW1 in the UK and internationally, ready for release in March 2012

JISC’s overriding goal for both activities is to work for researchers, teachers and students to produce digital content and resources that are comprehensive, open and sustainable, but that answer differing, specific needs within higher and further education.  The plans are underpinned by a common strategic ‘direction of travel’ which is outlined most clearly in the JISC Statement of Intent.

I look forward to updating you further as these projects progress.

To find out more about what’s planned visit the blog.

Through the Open Access Implementation Group we have been both gathering evidence of the case for open access, and exploring practically how it can be implemented.  There remains a gap, however, in our evidence of how open access can benefit the estimated 1.8m knowledge workers in the UK, and thereby enable full exploitation of the public science base. Three research studies have been commissioned by the OAIG and funded by JISC to look into this, and will report in the next few months. We are also looking forward to the release this autumn of the findings of the study, co-funded by JISC, RIN and the Publishing Research Consortium, to see where there are gaps in the provision of articles and conference papers. So, while evidence of the need for OA is now strong and widely accepted, it could be stronger still by the end of the year.

However, there are a number of thorny questions to be answered before OA will be widespread, either via repositories and/or journals.

For repositories, these questions include how researchers can get more value from their repositories. Several JISC projects are developing solutions, and the best of these will be rolled out over the next year, and are likely to include improvements to the ways in which repositories work with other systems. JISC is supporting shared repository services, and a new community-driven set of guidance on how this can be achieved.

There are a number of challenges facing OA journals, summarised in Neil Jacobs’ recent blog post, which include the different costs faced by diverse universities under subscription and OA models. JISC funded work to model the costs and benefits of OA to universities in 2010, with similar raw findings to those quoted recently by the THE. However, it is important to remember that, for much journal publishing, the costs of OA can be covered from research grants. The administrative processes for this need improving by universities, funders and publishers. The OAIG has commissioned work that will chart ways forward, and this will report in the next few weeks.

Members of the OAIG have had constructive discussions with representatives of the publishing industry, and look forward to working together on our numerous areas of common interest in implementing OA. Expect more news on this during the autumn.

Some of the casualties of the current system can be smaller journals, outside the “big deals”, and research monographs. Small learned and professional societies are communities of scholars who often publish a journal. Increasingly, they turn to commercial publishing houses to run their journal for them. The OAIG has funded one professional society to use its own experiences to develop guidance for others on how to manage this, and how to consider the role of OA for their journal. Furthermore, responding to a groundswell of interest, JISC has funded a number of small “campus-based publishing” projects, allowing researchers to use new technologies to run their own journals.

Research monographs are widely seen to be in crisis, with library budgets for them being squeezed by the rising costs of STM journals.

This is important, as there are many disciplines where a 7000 word article is simply inadequate to develop a nuanced and detailed argument, especially in the humanities and social sciences. JISC is among several organisations (including the publisher Bloomsbury Academic) investigating whether OA monographs might be a route forward.

In summary, there is now a consensus that OA is both viable and here to stay. The discussions now are practical, about how to make it work for the research community, with its interests in dissemination, quality, and cost-effectiveness, and for the UK economy and society more broadly.

How universities and researchers manage the issues around research data varies massively – and of course will depend on the type of data they hold – whether sound recordings of bird songs, text mining results from Shakespeare’s plays, thousands of measurements provided by space probes, hours of rare film recordings, DNA sequences or qualitative data from psychological research interviews.

JISC is live streaming its conference next Tuesday 13 September around research integrity – specifically on the importance of good research data management.  Our aim is to bring together the current thinking on effective practice and give senior staff and researchers an opportunity to debate the thornier issues, like whose responsibility this is and how to manage freedom of information requests.

We welcome your input: submit your questions via twitter by using #jiscres11 and we’ll put them to our panel.  You can also watch the keynote speakers live on Tuesday, who alongside me include:

• Professor David Baker, deputy chair of JISC
• Professor Dave De Roure, professor of e-research, Oxford University e-Research Centre and national strategic director of Digital Social Research
• Professor Sir Tim O’Shea, principal and vice chancellor of University of Edinburgh and chair of JISC
• Professor Kevin Schürer, pro vice chancellor (Research and Enterprise), University of Leicester

During the conference you will:

• Learn why research data management matters and who should be responsible for research data management in your organisation
• Read recommended reports and resources as they are referred to by the speakers
• Understand from case studies what success might look like
• Watch key experts describe the routes to successful data management
• Participate on Twitter and ask questions of the speakers using #jiscres11

It’s the kind of discussion we think could be helpful to professionals in the UK and internationally so if you know people who you think would be interested I’d really value you sending this information on.

There’s no need to register – simply add a date in your diary for 10am on 13 September 2011 and join us online here.

Watch a video about how JISC can support your research reputation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Visit JISC’s Youtube channel to watch similar videos on research efficiency and collaboration

Prompted by a recent JISC mobile infrastructure for libraries funding call, I wanted to outline some of the challenges for institutions, and in particular academic libraries, in coming to terms with ‘mobile’:

Re-conceptualisation of services

Hardly a day passes where we’re not confronted by yet another paradigm breaking technology or event.  Yet, mobile offers organisations, and academic libraries in particular, an opportunity to re-conceptualise services,. Not just taking existing services and relationships to make them accessible on mobile devices but how new services can be built specifically with the mobile device in mind.

Mobile helps to refocus the potential inherent in the physical space, services, systems and collections of the library, and to transform relationships away from purely service delivery to a more social context.  The librarian and library become facilitator and enabler: providing personalised information at the right time and in the right place.

Changing our relationship to space

Mobile services and devices force a reconsideration of concepts like ‘library’ and more interestingly ‘digital library’.  There is an obvious impact on the physical nature of the library, but one that has yet to be fully thought through: the re-prioritisation of space, with a move away from the physical and static (books, desktops, desks) to the mobile, interactive and social.  A library in your pocket.

For a long time the ‘library’ has transgressed beyond the physical boundaries of the buildings within an institution.  But the digital library hasn’t, in general, had a fundamental impact on the design, focus or existence of those buildings.  Mobile, it might be argued, will necessitate the re-examination of physical space.

Similarly, the digital space of the library will need re-examining.  There is no longer a separation between the physical and the digital; rather the two bleed into each other and the boundaries between the two are constantly exceeded.  What does the inherent functionality of the device bring to the discoverability and accessibility of content and services? Augmented reality (where a view of the physical environment is modified by a computer) and near field communication (transactions at a touch: such as barcodes and QR codes) are just two examples of how mobile is challenging the user’s relationship to information and services.

Changing institutional support strategy
The implications for institutions supporting hardware and software that is not owned or managed by the university or its library has huge implications.  Mobile devices are owned by and managed by the user.  How do institutions manage the support expectations of users who have a problem with their personal device?  What role will libraries or departments play in the loaning of devices to ensure equality of access?

This change requires a radically different support policy; the intensely personal and one-to-one nature of most mobile devices has significant ramifications.

Legal implications
The implications of confidentiality and privacy lurk in the background of any discussion around the institutional management of mobile hardware and software.  A major challenge for institutions is the confidentiality and privacy of the user.  The implications of data breaches and privacy make institutionally owned and managed devices less attractive; it is difficult to loan such hyper-personalised hardware and software.

Recent policy briefings from organisations such as Educause in the US on Data Privacy Legislation and the EU’s exploration of data breach rules highlight the significance of these challenges.

Not waving, but drowning
In a field as rapidly evolving as mobile, not having a clear focus and direction is likely to result in mobile provision being caught in a maelstrom of new developments and competing devices.  To realise the potential and ensure sustainability it is essential that institutional investment is ‘built upon a commonly-understood foundation and within the scope of a wider digital strategy’ (Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review).

The implementation of mobile services currently suffer from a fractured and ad hoc roll-out  within many academic institutions.  While there will undoubtedly be pockets of excellence across universities and within departments, there is rarely a coherent institutional strategy when it comes to mobile.

New opportunities…
The potential of mobile devices to transform and enhance the student experience has been demonstrated by innovative projects such as Bristol’s Mobile Campus Assistant and Edinburgh’s Walking through Time.

But I think it is now time to fully realise the opportunities that mobile offers to institutions, and ensure that these innovations are embedded in institutional strategies and services.  The mobile infrastructure for libraries funding call is an occasion to realise those opportunities and to put ideas into action.

There now are a range of projects that have been developing  and delivering shared infrastructure services to support people managing these repositories – such as Sherpa Romeo, Open Access Repository Junction and PIRUS2.  But to help further this, with particular focus on research papers, JISC has recently awarded EDINA funding to deliver key shared infrastructure services that meet shared needs, such as usage statistics, copyright management, search, preservation and deposit facilities.

The aim of this work is to make our repositories more coherent by bringing together key services and providing  them at a national level.  Neil Jacobs, Programme Director, Digital Infrastructure, comments that, “this work will build on the successful and widely used innovative shared infrastructure projects.”

What does this mean for universities? It means institutions and research organisations will be able to run their systems and processes more efficiently and effectively to better manage their textual research outputs.  This will support university requirements, such as reporting around the Research Excellence Framework and make the related outputs more accessible and reusable.  Rachel Bruce, Innovation Director, Digital Infrastructure says that, “this work is an opportunity to further enhance JISC Services to meet sector needs.”

In order to deliver a successful service environment for repositories, we’ll need to address sustainability issues and this is particularly challenging in our current shifting financial environment. I am aware we also need wide engagement with the university sector and other stakeholders such as the Research Councils and funders in the UK, and where appropriate with international initiatives. The benefit of working internationally is that there are some aspects of the service infrastructure that are also relevant to others outside of the UK; after all research is global.

I know that this latest investment in services will provide an opportunity for stakeholders to work together to meet common goals such as better research management and increased access to research findings. This phase of funded work will complete by March 2013 and more information will be available soon on the JISC website.

See resources and tool-kits on how JISC can help you with your research excellence.

The committee’s report, now available online, describes access to data as ‘fundamental’ for researchers to reproduce, verify and build on each other’s results.  It highlights that reproducibility should be the gold standard that all peer reviewers and editors aim for when assessing a manuscript. This spirit of openness is something JISC supports, through its work with the UK Research Councils.But researchers will also be aware of the challenges of making their data sets available to reviewers.  In the longer term, there are technical and economic challenges associated with making data available, especially as different types of data require different treatment. A lot of social data that is created through longitudinal studies makes sense only if the entire length of the study is available. Other data, such as environmental data, must be kept permanently available – you can’t repeat an earthquake.

Keeping data like this available in perpetuity is expensive and could end up as a cost that universities across the world simply cannot afford.  JISC is funding Dryad-UK which mirrors a US initiative to help researchers control who sees their data and when.  Researchers can deposit their data in a secure environment and then give privileged access to reviewers, for example, and then make the data available more widely once the article is published.

However, in some areas of science the data is produced by computers and programs and is correspondingly huge. Storing indefinitely the mass of outputs of Large Hadron Collider experiments is unfeasible. So we have to make it possible for people to re-run the programme, something that requires you know quite a lot about the machine and the environment it is running on in order to understand the data.  As long as the researcher defines the input conditions, and what the program is designed to do, you should be able to trust the outputs. And if we ensure that authors make clear the nature of the program they are running and the algorithms then people in the future should be able to re-run the program to retrieve the data.  I’m hinting of course that beyond the software or statistical test is something much more fundamental – the accuracy of the data itself.

As part of the report’s consultation process I was asked to comment on whether, in some cases, peer review might encourage a tendency towards conservative judgements among reviewers. But peer review in one form or another has been an underpinning aspect of research arguably since before journals as we know existed. As the report highlights, journal editors are well-placed to find the right experts to review unusual research, so the process itself cuts against the conservatism. Online publication affords us a great deal more flexibility in how the peer review process works.  In the past, two different forms of assessment have happened as part of a single process.  Both the technical assessment and the impact assessment have happened after publication of a research paper.  But separating the two processes is important because of the longer time scale over which you get your answer – so it’s encouraging that the committee’s report recommends a pre-publication technical assessment.

Another criticism sometimes levelled at peer review is that it is a burden on academics who have to do this in their own time.  But few researchers feel they have a nine-to-five existence anyway. In my experience reviewing manuscripts outside of a regular working day is part of the mentality in the research community. The situation would only become worrying if researchers had to spend more time on peer review proportionate to their own research. Greater transparency in the process might also help garner more recognition for peer reviewers, by ensuring that an individual reviewer’s work is known to their peers.  The committee report rightly highlights that we need to encourage researchers to deposit their data, rather than enforce it. Researchers deserve credit and recognition for working in an open way. It’s a complex situation, so a blanket mandate on open data might not be feasible but we need to create the right conditions so it is easier for researchers to make their data openly available.

This blog post first appeared in Research Information.

Why all this interest now? One reason might be the overwhelming evidence that open access is a desirable destination for all kinds of reasons.  A joint report was released last month from JISC, RIN, Publishing Research Consortium, RLUK and the Wellcome Trust, which showed clearly that moves toward open access were supported by an analysis of the costs, benefits and risks in scholarly communication.  A recent Danish study of SMEs showed that most of them struggle to access findings from publicly funded research, which surely inhibits innovation.  JISC, on behalf of the UK Open Access Implementation Group, is commissioning three further studies to discover how open access can support the work of the private, public and third sectors, and these studies will report over the next six months or so.

But there are other reasons why open access is gaining a lot of attention from governments.  We have known for some time that the knowledge economy depends on the application of codified, technical knowledge.  As David Cameron and Barack Obama pointed out this week  “science and higher education are the foundation stones of their two nations’ 21st century economies”.

Most readers will know that JISC has been an advocate of open access for some time but that does not mean we have taken an uncritical stance.  Now that the direction of travel is established and widely accepted, there are some tricky practical challenges to overcome.  For example:

• Open access is likely to look different, and emerge at different speeds in different disciplines.  In some disciplines such as the life sciences, there are major, innovative publishers such as the Public Library of Science, and repositories such as UK PubMedCentral supported by research funders.  In other disciplines, such as chemistry, open access is not yet growing fast.
• The transition to open access will need to be co-ordinated to ensure the continuity and rigour of the peer review system.  Again, the Public Library of Science is leading the way here, exploiting the opportunities of digital technologies while preserving academic rigour.  JISC’s new programme in campus-based publishing is exploring an alternative approach that has had success in other countries already.
• The institutional repository infrastructure, while mature and reasonably comprehensive, is not yet as joined-up as it needs to be.  JISC will be commissioning work in this area during 2011-12, and will be working with international initiatives such as the European OpenAIRE project.

Open access publishing faces a number of specific challenges, which could be summarised under the following six headings:

a)      Funding outputs from research that is not grant-supported.  This is a real challenge, and one that is likely to fall mainly to universities, who might want to act collectively to address it, as in the COPE scheme in the US.  Some publishers offer waivers, which is helpful.

b)      Funding outputs produced after the end of the grant.  This can be addressed by changing the ways in which grants are administered, for example by making it clearer and more straightforward for indirect costs to be used in this way.

c)      Complexity of funding arrangements from an author’s perspective.  Here, I think funders, universities and publishers do simply need a way to sit down together and develop a better set of arrangements.  There may be lessons from the approach taken by the Wellcome Trust, especially if research grant funding becomes more concentrated.

d)      Need for transparency in costing, especially for hybrid journals.  There seems to be no consensus that these are a way to transition to open access.

e)      Absolute cost.  Recent research shows that the average article processing charge needs to be under £2000 for the cost-benefits to work for the UK.  It seems likely that the PLoS-One publishing model, now widely emulated, must be a large part of the answer.  In the medium term, this needs to be combined with agreements on the wider sharing of usage statistics and citation data , and review services such as the Faculty of 1000, to open up a market in services to help readers navigate the literature.

f)       Distribution of costs / benefits among the sector.  Will research intensive universities have to pay more?  This is not necessarily the case, if arrangements are in place to ensure that research papers from grant-funded research are supported via those grants.  However, this will require close monitoring and perhaps collective action, and JISC Collections may well have a role in seeing a way through this.

We are working towards making open access in the UK both good for the research community and good for UK plc.

JISC Podcast:
How you can build a business case for open access policy

Photograph (C) Andrew Hewson http://t.co/6g3ENKP

The higher and further education sectors in the UK are fortunate to employ talented and dedicated software developers. Without them, many kinds of technical innovation would be significantly more difficult, more expensive or even impossible. While the patterns of employment of ‘local’ (locally employed) developers varies considerably between higher/further education institutions, it is rare for such institutions to invest strategically in their local development capacity.
Recognising this, the JISC-funded DevCSI project (managed by UKOLN) was introduced to work with local developers, to understand better their potential as an under-utilised resource and to create opportunities for them to network together, sharing resources, ideas, code and solutions. With the network that DevCSI has successfully pioneered, an institution which employs a handful of developers locally gains the benefit of a sector-wide network of peers bringing different perspectives and experiences to bear in a shared context. Beyond the immediate sector, DevCSI has worked with open-source and commercial suppliers who recognise the value in the networked pool of development talent and expertise.

JISC has been consistent in maintaining that the sector needs to continue to innovate if it is to be able to meet the long-term challenges of a radically changing environment. Institutions must be careful to maintain the capacity for technical innovation – indeed a recession is the right time to invest in change and innovation in order to emerge ready to exploit the opportunities of better economic times. In the difficult period ahead, one predictable response will be to outsource some software services, seeking the cost-savings and efficiencies promised by service-delivery paradigms such as Software as a Service. But there are risks associated with outsourcing services entirely, such as the associated reduction in local understanding and expertise, and the loss of capability to adapt to meet particular local requirements.

In the DevCSI project, we are working to establish an understanding of the changing role of the local developer in this likely new landscape with its greater dependency on remote, shared services. While recognising that they have some common requirements, we should not forget that our institutions have their individual ‘flavours’ too (this is surely part of what makes higher education in the UK so attractive internationally). For shared, remote services to be truly effective in a local context, they must be tailored to the needs of the users in that context.

DevCSI is steadily gaining traction in the UK – we have worked with related organisations such as OSSWatch and The Software Sustainability Institute and have organised events at many higher and further education institutions. Our work is even being recognised internationally, and we have been recently invited to help establish a similar initiative in Australia.

Where next for DevCSI? We’ve established a nascent community of developers in the UK and can already point to evidence of the value of this, some of which (such as peer-peer training) is even measurable in pounds, shillings and pence! While maintaining and growing this, we are now considering where best to focus our resources at a sector-wide level. One issue we have identified in the sector is the lack of career options for successful developers – other than to move into less technical management roles. Many of our best developers simply move out of the sector entirely in order to progress in their careers. An idea we are starting to explore is the possible development of a new role in the sector – the Strategic Developer – a developer who has both technical and domain experience, and who can contribute to strategic planning and decision making. Establishing such a role may take time but, as technology is undoubtedly going to play an increasingly important role in the future of further and higher education, so must we ensure that the people who understand the technology stick around long enough to be able to contribute at this level.

For more information, go to the DevCSI blog. Please do email me (p.walk@ukoln.ac.uk) if you have questions about this work. My UKOLN colleague, Mahendra Mahey and I also presented on this work at the JISC Conference, 2011 (slides).

Photograph (C) Andrew Hewson http://t.co/6g3ENKP

I believe rewards for better research information management are significant. By taking the friction out of reporting, universities can make genuine efficiency savings both of cash and time. Businesses and other potential partners can find out more about current research and can seek and find the researcher with the expertise they need. Researchers spend less time duplicating information in different systems, freeing them to get on with their real business: research.

In order to make the exchange and management of research information easier and more efficient, JISC has joined with the research councils, HEFCE, HESA, ARMA, UCISA and a number of universities, projects and companies to form the Research Information Management Group (RIMG).

The group has played a successful role in helping the sector to respond to a rapidly evolving environment. It has made the technical and business case for the adoption of a common research information standard, pointed the way to greater harmonisation of systems across the sector and created an opportunity for all the members of the group to come together behind a strategic vision.

JISC has taken forward a suite of projects which build on this vision. They have addressed many of the practical issues of improving research information management, from supporting researchers in their daily work to sharing large volumes of information between research partners and REF reporting. JISC infoNet has added its own research and case studies to the experience of these projects, built on the work of the RIMG and created a Research Information Management infoKit.

The infoKit is designed to provide senior managers with the key information they need to build better policies. It provides those tasked with procuring and evaluating systems with solid advice and gives staff who wish to implement better management and technical systems the benefit of a lot of hands-on experience.

But for me what is enjoyable about this work is that is it constantly evolving. The infoKit will be updated and adapted as the RIMG develops its vision and JISC projects create new tools and resources. It is already a valuable resource, but it will repay a fresh look now and again, as it grows and more value is added. Improved research information management strengthens all the partners in the world of research and JISC, by partnering with the RIMG and developing the infoKit is helping the UK to realise those benefits.

If you’re interested in our work in research information management find out more.

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It is very pleasing to see that HEFCE’s review of JISC considers us to be a valuable organisation and one that makes an essential contribution. The review makes a number of constructive recommendations designed to help us continue to add value to the education and research sector through the next, difficult, five to ten years.

We are going to be here in the future, but we are going to be different and what is crucial is that we do everything that we can to get this right for those who work for us and the sector.

Some of the recommendations in the review will need much more investigation and consultation before they can be acted upon. We will consult and talk with the sector to ensure we put their needs at the centre of how JISC will deliver in the future.

We are continuing to look at ways of increasing our effectiveness in engaging with colleges and universities to help embed new technologies; clearly this is an important area for us. We are also doing more about providing horizon scanning advice.

I believe JISC has an ongoing and vital role to play. It will be challenging to achieve but I know we have the expertise and knowledge to make JISC a stronger organisation.

JISC’s press release on HEFCE’s review

HEFCE’s review of JISC

Some of the keynote speakers reflect on the issues of the day in our just-released video ‘Research in a climate of cuts’. For Professor Martin Hall, speaker on efficiency and effectiveness and vice chancellor of the University of Salford, it’s essential to ‘continue to make the change towards a networked world where we can do things differently’. Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, speaker on reputation and vice chancellor of the University of Kent reflects that digital technologies ‘are embedded in everything we [researchers] do and are absolutely essential’. For Professor Rick Trainor, vice chancellor of King’s College London who introduced the programme, JISC has a central role to play in the ‘efficient mobilisation of information’ which is key to research.

You can see Professor David Baker’s summing up of the day on the conference microsite. His points include:

1. Collaboration is needed between institutions, as well as research groups: UK institutions need to pay particular attention to their counterparts in the rapidly emerging economies. Competition can spur collaboration, or be its enemy, so a useful question to ask when contemplating a new partnership is ‘what’s in it for me?’ A pilot project can help establish whether the collaboration is likely to be fruitful.
2. Institutions can help researchers increase their efficiency and effectiveness by providing them with the IT services and support they need. Many institutions are now employing research facilitators to support researchers and interpret their requirements for centralised IT services. Commodity services should be centralised, but some IT should be left to researchers themselves to support. Institutions also need to pay increasing attention to good research data management which enables research data to be shared and reused: Freedom of Information requests for research data are easier to process when the data are well managed.
3. Open Access to research results can help increase efficiency and effectiveness, but researchers still have concerns about changing well-established methods. Institutions and JISC should address these concerns. Digital technologies can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of arts and humanities research just as much as in the sciences and technology. IT can substantially increase the search element of research leaving researchers more time for analysis.

Research in a Climate of Cuts (4:30)

Alternative Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_yZqW9ltM

Yet this is far from the truth. Opinions vary, but it is probably fair to say that more than 95% of the world books, magazines, newspapers, videos, films, documents still lay hidden in archives and libraries, inaccessible in digital form.

And there are numerous benefits to continue with the work of digitising all this content – it’s more than making it convenient for the learner to access something from the comfort of their own home or office.

So, for example, research is radically changed by the availability of millions of new documents, as shown by resources like the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, which is changing the face of the study of history of London.

Equally, costs of publishing and travel can be significantly reduced by open access journals, such as the 2m pages of text provided by the Wellcome Trust’s Medical Journal Backfiles digitisation.

The University of Oxford’s Great War Archive not only gathered and digitised the general public’s material evidence from World War One but enabled new communities and expertise to be developed outside the campus walls.

And projects such as Freeze Frame collection of polar photographs, or the Old Weather resource for transcribing weather reports in Naval logbooks, not only provide new data for educators and learners around the world, but also allow for a greater appreciation of the nation’s ‘prize jewels’ within its cultural and educational collections.

Much of the argument is laid out in a new JISC report written by Simon Tanner of King’s College London. Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship is available as a pdf document from the JISC website.