JISC Digest Issue 3
JISC Digest is a regular quarterly bulletin designed to provide an update on the latest JISC activities, news and policy developments. In this issue, news about the JISC Strategy, information about the government's review of the impact of the FOI act, third stream progress and the JISC Value for Money report.
Contents
- Updates
- News
- Reports
- International
- Briefing papers
- Forthcoming
- Downloads
1. Updates
1.1. Major call currently issued
The second major call under JISC's capital programme was issued at the end of September. Institutions are being invited to bid for funding in the following areas: e-infrastructure; virtual research environments; e-learning; repositories and preservation; and users and innovation. A town meeting was held in Birmingham in October and the deadline for proposals is 12.00 noon on Thursday 23 November.
An announcement about successful bids under the earlier call in April was made recently. Representing funding of nearly £5.5m, 27 projects will be funded under the e-learning, e-infrastructure and repositories and preservation strands of the programme. Further details are as follows:
Repositories
Among the 11 funded projects in the repositories and preservation strand of the programme is the national Repository Support Project to be managed by SHERPA at the University of Nottingham and supported by the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, the University of Southampton, UKOLN and the Digitial Curation Centre (DCC).
e-Infrastructure
Among central objectives of the overarching programme is the enhancement of the national e-infrastructure, and two funded projects in the e-infrastructure strand will build on work already being undertaken by JISC in the area of access management. Led by the University of Manchester and Cardiff University (in partnership with the London School of Economics), the projects will focus on security and identity management.
e-Learning
Among the 13 projects funded in the e-learning strand will be those linking with HEFCE's Lifelong Learning Networks which are providing regional progression pathways between further education colleges and higher education institutions as a means of widening participation. With a key focus of the e-learning strand being the exploration of technology's potential to enhance learning and teaching, another focus for a number of the funded projects will be how ICT can enhance practicebased learning, particularly in health, nursing and medicine.
1.2. JISC Strategy
Responses were received from HE and FE institutions, partners and other organisations and associations to JISC's draft strategy 2007-2009 which was issued in July for formal consultation. The strategy sets out JISC's broad vision for ICT in education and research and the activities JISC will deliver in partnership to help meet that vision. It also presents a number of key deliverables against which JISC's progress can be assessed. The responses are being analysed and fed into the final version of the strategy due for publication in January 2007.
1.3. e-infrastructure
In support of the ten-year Science and Innovation Investment Framework: 2004-2014, published in 2004, the Office of Science and Innovation established six working groups to investigate future requirements in key areas of the national e-infrastructure. Those working groups have reported and a combined report is now being prepared. The report will establish a high-level 'road map' of the current provision of the UK's e-infrastructure to support research, and in doing so help to define the development of this infrastructure.
2. News
2.1. Freedom of Information
The Government released a major review of the impact of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act on public sector organisations on October 16th. In its response to the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee report, the Government welcomed the assessment of the Committee that the FOI Act has been a 'significant success'.
The response makes repeated reference to the importance of effective records management as a fundamental prerequisite for compliance with the legislation. This demonstrates the higher education sector's preparedness for the Act through effective electronic record-keeping and preservation activities as well as JISC's significant and ongoing contribution in this area.
The Select Committee report earlier highlighted the success of higher education institutions in their responses to FOI requests for information. Requests to HEIs in the first year of the Act amounted to around 2,000 at a total cost to the sector of just over £240k, the report revealed. These figures were taken from a joint survey undertaken by JISC, Universities UK and GuildHE which earlier this year showed that the higher education sector had responded both positively and successfully to the implementation of the Act.
JISC is currently planning a repeat of the survey for 2006 to take place in January 2007 which will further add to the body of knowledge being gathered and used by a range of stakeholders in the education sector and beyond.
Government's response
Select Committee's report
JISC/UUK/SCOP survey
2.2. SuperJANET5
SuperJANET5, the upgrade to JANET, the academic network serving UK education and research, was launched at an event in London on the 26th October. A dedicated fibre network with nationwide coverage, SuperJANET5 will provide channels of 10Gbit/s, eventually rising to 40Gbit/s.
Following a review of requirements amongst JANET's diverse user base, the newly enhanced network will serve all research institutes, universities and further education and, in addition, will also for the first time meet the needs of the UK's primary and secondary schools.
2.3 Research Assessment Exercise
JISC has submitted a response to the DfES consultation process for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). In its response JISC has encouraged an independent and robust assessment of the research on metrics-based approaches, an assessment of each discipline's needs and the need for more emphasis on output measures.
Any solution based on the collection of metrics will, according to the response, require standards and systems (infrastructure). JISC is also working with the RAE team to produce guidelines on how repositories can support the RAE process.
2.4. LSC funding
JISC announced an agreement with the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in September on the LSC's contribution to the JISC budget. The agreement means that the following will be available to the English FE sector for the next three years:
- JANET connections
- support from the Regional Support Centres (RSCs)
- membership of the UK Access Management Federation
- all JISC's advisory services
- delivery services at national data centres (EDINA and MIMAS)
- access to all current content under existing licensing agreements
- membership of the new JISC Collections content company
Communications were sent to all English colleges outlining these arrangements in September.
2.5. Third Stream
At the end of 2005, HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) asked JISC to consider whether and how it could support the funding council's Third Stream activities. 'Third Stream' refers to the third stream of funding available to HE institutions alongside those available to them for learning and teaching and research, and to the funding opportunities that the Council has made available to universities to support closer engagement with their local communities.
The Council has funded 23 regionally-focused Knowledge Exchange Centres to promote knowledge transfer between universities and industry, including the development of close links with commercial organisations and the creation of spin-offs to exploit research. Third Stream work also includes many community-focused activities, especially in the arts, and much work-based learning and continuing professional development. Similar initiatives are also underway in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
JISC commissioned a scoping study in early 2006 to identify where its existing activities could support the Third Stream, followed by a think-tank of JISC and Third Stream specialists that identified priority areas for JISC to work in. It was felt that many aspects of JISC's work were of great relevance but would require the reworking of existing material and resources to appeal to a Third Stream audience. New work in examining how modern communications tools and customer relationship management could enhance the working relationships between universities and their communities was also a priority.
HEFCE, SFC (Scottish Funding Council) and HEFCW (Higher Education Funding Council for Wales) have now provided JISC with around £550,000 up to July 2007 to begin this work. In addition, in order to rework much of JISC's material, extra resources will be given to some of JISC's advisory services to provide new material specifically for Third Stream activities. This will include the development of guidance for the exploitation by institutions of IPR and services that have been publicly funded.
A series of further studies, including a more detailed user needs analysis, a review of the issues surrounding customer relationship management software and some pilots that use new communications technologies, will be used to plan a more extensive programme of activities for JISC from 2007 onwards.
2.6. Open access conference
JISC hosted a major conference on open access at Oxford in September to bring together leading representatives of key stakeholder groups in the field of scholarly communications, to learn about developments from their perspectives, and to help inform future strategy.
Senior figures from the publishing, funding, library and author communities were represented at the event. Keynote speakers included Dr Robert Aymar, Director General of CERN, John Houghton of the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies (CSES), Victoria University, Melbourne, and Johannes Fournier of German research body DFG.
A report of the event is being compiled and will be made public shortly.
2.7. Digitisation
The second resource to emerge from the JISC Digitisation programme has been launched. Developed in partnership between JISC and the British Library, Archival Sound Recordings contains some 12,000 items totalling 3,900 hours from the British Library's Sound Archive. The new resource, freely available to further and higher education and users of the British Library's reading rooms, contains 11 specialist collections, including major holdings of classical music, jazz, popular music, unique musical and cultural recordings from Africa, interviews with some of the leading lights of post-war British art, architecture and design, the history of recording technology, and more.
Launch of this resource follows launch of the Medical Journals Backfile project, a partnership between JISC, the Wellcome Trust, the US National Library of Medicine and participating publishers in May this year. The next resource to be launched from the programme will be Online Historical Population Reports which will include 200,000 pages of all published reports created by the Registrar-General's Offices and its predecessors for 1801-1920, census reports 1801-1933, and ancillary reports from the National Archives. The resource is being developed by AHDS History and is due to be launched in January 2007.
A consultation process on shortlisted bids for the second phase of the Digitisation programme was held over the summer, and the successful bids will be announced in due course.
Digitisation programme
3. Reports
3.1. JISC Value for Money report
A Value for Money report commissioned by JISC has revealed that for every £1 of JISC funding, and not including JISC's development programmes, the community receives at least £4.86 of demonstrable value. The survey looks at calculations of economy, efficiency and effectiveness using techniques of benchmarking, cost comparisons, calculation of time and effort, and other mechanisms.
Among the other findings of the survey are:
- for every £1 JISC spent on e-resources the saving to the community was at least £26.58
- for every £1 spent on e-resource provision the community saved time to the value of at least £20
- as an example of network support services made available through JISC funding, it was found that if JANET CERT, the network security service available free at the point of use to institutions, did not exist, similar services would cost the community at least three times more than the current cost of the CERT
- as an example of the advisory services JISC funds, an analysis of the tools and services that TechDis provides shows that for every pound of funding received, TechDis saved the community at least £2.82 pounds
Such figures are replicated across a wide range of JISC services.
3.2. Open source
More than three quarters of all UK colleges and universities consider open source options when engaging in IT procurement exercises, says a report published in August. The report, undertaken by the JISC-funded OSS Watch service, also found that use of Moodle, the open source course management system or virtual learning environment (VLE), has grown to 56% in less than three years. With the Open University's decision to adopt Moodle as its future VLE, open source penetration in this highprofile deployment area marks a substantial advance.
While 77% of colleges and universities report that they regularly explore open source options in procurement exercises, only 25% of institutions, however, report mention of 'open source' in their institutional policies, suggesting an important discrepancy between policy and practice in this area.
Other findings of the report include:
- 100% of institutions provide Internet Explorer on their Windows desktop PCs, yet 68% now also provide Mozilla Firefox
- there is no clear leader amongst Content Management Systems (CMS) with more than 29 different solutions being used by respondents
- cost continues to be the principal driver in reasons for considering OSS
The report was undertaken as a way of establishing the levels of use of open source software in further and higher education and its place in policy and decisionmaking processes. With the Government placing the issue of open source software at the heart of public sector IT provision, OSS Watch is building on this profile to advise FE and HE institutions on the importance of incorporating considerations of open source software into their IT strategies. This report therefore provides vital information to the post-16 sector as a whole on its deployment and use.
OSS Watch
4. International
4.1. International model agreement for authors
JISC and SURF - its counterpart organisation in the Netherlands - have published a model agreement that will help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of an article. This "Licence to Publish" is the result of several years of international consultation and aims to establish a balance of rights and interests in the emerging scholarly communications environment.
SURF and JISC have pressed for some years for carefully thought-out arrangements to be made regarding copyright, with the interests of all parties being maximised. The main features of the Licence to Publish are that copyright in the published work remains with the author while the author grants the publisher a licence to publish the work. Once published, the author can make the article publicly accessible in a repository, although if the publisher so requests, the start of such public accessibility can be delayed for a maximum of six months.
Available in both Dutch and English, the Licence to Publish can be used for publications involving more than one author and is supported by the Wellcome Trust.
License to publish
5. Briefing papers
5.1. National Grid Service
A briefing paper outlining the National Grid Service (NGS) and its importance to the research community was published in October. The National Grid Service is funded by JISC, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) and provides researchers with access to a computing grid by linking the computing resources held at different sites.
In October, the NGS entered the second phase of its development. As well as an increase in data storage and compute capacity, the NGS will launch a major new initiative with the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute UK (OMII UK) to ensure that the middleware OMII UK develops to meet the needs of NGS users.
In addition, a roadmap is under preparation to determine when new services will be introduced, such as visualisation, access to facilities and data repositories. Ultimately, the National Grid Service will provide integrated, coherent access to the full range of the UK's computation and database research facilities, together with a range of sophisticated services to support novel collaborative and cross- resource activities.
6. Forthcoming
6.1 JISC Conference
The JISC Conference will be held on March 13 2007 at the International Conference Centre, Birmingham.
The items included in this digest are selective.
A more comprehensive view of JISC's activities is available from other regular JISC publications, including the monthly JISC Headlines.
For further information please contact Philip Pothen