JISC

e-Research: 
eInfrastructure

Federated Tools and Services

e-Research: 
eInfrastructure

HE in FE

Projects to implement and pilot e-learning technologies within one or more HE courses delivered in one or more FE colleges. The aim of these projects will be to enhance the experience of HE in FE learners through implementing with students an e-learning technology in the areas of a personalised learning experience, e-portfolios and personal development planning, e-assessment and the administration of teaching and learning.

e-Research: 
eInfrastructure

Barriers to Take-Up of e-Infrastructure Services: The broader take up and effective use of the e-Infrastructure will depend on an understanding of the benefits to be gained and confidence in its use. As a means of achieving this, the proposed activity is a phased approach to identify barriers to take-up of a selection of 'e-infrastructure services' and to address these through research, user engagement, training and awareness-raising, and assessment. The work will be underpinned by a user requirements exercise focusing on ‘early adopters’ of these services and the resources (e.g. ‘e-science’ tools, datasets, documentation) that these services may provide. Through this process, a baseline will be established in order to address issues of take-up.  The effectiveness of the process will be assessed and fed into the project activity and to service delivery where applicable.

Support for Research: Tools & Standards: This strand of activity aims to extend ICT support of the research community in the provision of advice about and consolidation of existing and burgeoning technical standards and e-infrastructure tools (e.g. middleware, standard APIs, and web service protocols) that are in development and used by the research community. Resources made available as part of the activity will promote awareness of the range of standards and tools, and include the provision of unbiased recommendations for both open and adopted tools and standards. The work builds upon a range of core activity within the UK, as well as international developments. Additionally, the work is intended to inform and contribute to the JISC e-Framework for Education and Research.

Use Cases and Service Usage Models: The aim of this strand is to better understand how the research community of users actually engage with e-infrastructure tools and technologies to solve or address specific research problems or processes.  One of the ways of achieving this is to collect use cases and to engage in some form of evaluative and comparative work. For example, disciplinary comparisons of certain e-infrastructure component use, and evaluation of new use cases showing how these advance usability. The intended outcome is a more accurate overview of the current and new landscape of working methodologies and use and to progress toward a consensus on best practice and cross-working opportunities. The work will be undertaken in close collaboration with the JISC e-Framework initiative in the establishment of Service Usage Models (SUMS) and service expressions drawn from the use cases.

e-Research: 
eInfrastructure

Sematically Co-ordinating Resources and Services Across Registries: The intention of the call is to build on existing activity within the UK and internationally to develop demonstrators for semantic models for automating research.  Bidders will need to choose one of the following areas with the option of choosing from a range of supporting threads, which are:

• (A) Build upon the existing JISC e-Infrastructure and Information Environment, and demonstrate the integration of resources and services from existing JISC services, such as the IE Registry Services, data and information services (such as datasets at MIMAS, EDINA, e-Print archives, etc), e-infrastructure and grid services (e.g. National Grid Service ), and advisory services (e.g. Digital Curation Centre , OMII-UK).
  
• (B) Look at data issues crossing the traditional library and e-Science domains to bridge the gap between metadata for services, data, and published literature, both with respect to content and with respect to security, custodianship, long-term preservation and rights of use. In particular, involve partnership of grid/e-Science technology experts with domain researchers and experts from the information environment and digital library communities.

Up to 8 projects that look at developing tools (software or model practices) that can enhance the use of repositories or digital information systems. These tools and technologies can be innovative and new. Areas are:

• knowledge organization systems
• semi-automatic indexing and classification
• metadata generation
• validation
• usage metrics for impacts/trends
• assessment of use requirements
• linking, integration and re-use of diverse but related resources
• tools to support added value services including learned society publishers

5 projects are sought:

• 1 project for digital preservation assessment across the lifecycle
• 2 projects on models and implementation of preservation services
• 2 projects to develop preservation tools

A number of projects are sought in two areas:

• to establish repositories
• enhance already established repositories

Institutional commitment is a requirement to receive this project funding.

e-Research: 
eInfrastructure