More bits and pieces of news and stuff

• Government web sites - Government unsure how many, how expensive and who using http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/29/government_websites_uncontrolled/
• Wired story on data deluge and impact on science http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory
• some interesting thoughts on community building from Stan Garfield http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/garfield/archive/2008/06/18/building-people-to-people-networks.aspx
• from Computing 10 July, Gartner predict a move from 1% to 20% of corporate mailboxes using a "cloud-computing provisioned model" for email by 2012
• MoSCoW tool for requirements gathering - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_Method
• Information Commissioner's Office calls for review of 10-year old Data Protection Act
• Do you speak Geek? from BCS :-) http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20051
• interesting post on one of the BCS blogs about use of the internet (notably web2.0) in healthcare and the issue of quality/integrity of information posted and found both by patients and professionals - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConBlogEntry.480
• from JISC IPR newsletter, The European Commission has adopted a Recommendation on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities by universities and other public research organisations - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/ipr/iprconsultancy/newsletter30.aspx
• New report from RIN on information handling by researchers. From the press release, "Although developing the personal, professional and career management skills of researchers is currently high on the agenda in the UK’s higher education sector, training on information seeking and information management is uncoordinated and generally not based on any systematic assessment of needs, according to a new report from the Research Information Network (RIN). A greater effort is required to ensure that training provision is more effectively coordinated and managed by agents with an interest in this agenda: libraries and other information training providers, institutional and faculty research committees within universities, central training units and research funders." Mind the Skills Gap: information-handling training for researchers (www.rin.ac.uk/training-researchinfo).
• Article by David Lewis on what libraries should be doing in the current climate to curate content - http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2008/may08/librarybudgetsscholcomm.cfm

JISC preservation of web resources project

http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/

Dangers of the cloud

Yep, still reading back through Bloglines (having a bit of a spring clean!) and came across a piece from Bill Thompson on the dangers of the cloud - funnily enough, had a similiar conversation at a meeting last week...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7421099.stm

Govt websites ... cont

And another useful link from National Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webcontinuity/

Govt web sites

Interesting article in Computing about the plethora of Government web sites which doesn't really help anyone find the information they need when they need it:
http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2215735/mps-call-intervention-number-3978850

I also came across the National Archives' Web Rationalisation project recently:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/preservation/webarchive/web-rationalisation.htm

Projects addressing issues around research data

Yesterday, we had a meeting here at JISC to bring together current projects working in the field of research data. There's a lot happening and it's going to be really interesting to see what comes out of these studies:

• UK Research Data Service feasibility study which is funded by HEFCE to explore options for creating a shared service for managing research data


• Data Audit Framework project to enable institutions to find out what data they hold, where it's located, who's responsible for it and how to share with other institutions


• A number of case studies to test the Data Audit Framework


• A study exploring the skills, role and career development of "data scientists" and curators


• A study exploring the costs to institutions of preserving research data, to report within next few weeks


• A summer school to be organised by the DCC on curation skills


• The DISC-UK DataShare project building on a support network to promote sharing


• The forthcoming study funded by RIN/JISC/NERC on publication


• DCC's work, notably the Research Data Management Forum; the Lifecycle Model; SCARP; Store

I already mentioned (http://ali-stuff.blogspot.com/2008/02/jisc-and-research-data.html) an article earlier this year in Inform. Of course, much of the work stems from Liz Lyon's report from last year Dealing with Data (see earlier post at http://ali-stuff.blogspot.com/2007/11/data-sharing.html)

DCC Curation Lifecycle Model

This recently went to consultation - not sure when the results of the consultation come out and how much the model will change as a result. But in meantime, want to keep track of the links:

model : http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2007/posters/DCC_Curation_Lifecycle_Model.pdf
background info : http://www.ijdc.net/ijdc/article/view/45/52

UKDA-Store

"The UK Data Archive (UKDA) is launching UKDA-store, a new research output management tool, later this year. Used to submit data deposits into the UK Data Archive, UKDA-store is to be initially released to the social science research community with the intention of extending the system to other researchers. UKDA-store will enable researchers to submit a range of digital outputs to the self-archiving repository with the right to set permissions for individual and group access, so that data can remain private (on embargo) although metadata continues to be searchable. Furthermore, data that is judged to meet the UKDA’s acquisition criteria can be formally lodged for long-term central system preservation within the UK Data Archive. [...]
UKDA-store will be formally launched at the National Centre for Research Methods Festival on 30 June 2008 in Oxford."
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/02/ukdastore.aspx

JISC and research data

Research data gets a mention in latest JISC Inform:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/inform20.aspx#Turningthetide

A brief summary of recently commissioned work - hopefully to be followed up in more detail when the various studies start reporting...

Harvard goes open access

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14arts-HARVARDRESEA_BRF.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

RIN issues stewardship principles

RIN has issued the Principles on Research Data Stewardship following the consultation which took place last year
http://www.rin.ac.uk/new-data-stewardship.

The principles address 5 areas:

• roles and responsibilities
• standards and quality assurance
• access, usage and credit
• benefits and cost-effectiveness
• preservation and sustainability

Reaction to NIH mandate

Feb's Internet Resources Newsletter reports on the NIH open access mandate and some of the fallout:

• US law makes public access of NIH funded research mandatory : http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=5317&pickUpBatch=804#5317
• New NIH research publication policy undermines intellectual property rights essential to science publishing, say Publishershttp://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=5351&pickUpBatch=810#5351
• The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has expressed disappointment with the recent passage of legislation in the US. http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=5359&pickUpBatch=811#5359

Draft DCC Curation Lifecycle Model - request to comment

http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2007/posters/DCC_Curation_Lifecycle_Model.pdf
http://www.ijdc.net/ijdc/article/view/45/52

CNI task force meeting

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) task force meeting is going on this week. Several projects dealing with data are being discussed: http://www.cni.org/tfms/2007b.fall/project.html. One which is particularly relevant to work of eResearch team is Data-Cyberinfrastructure Collaboration at the University of California, San Diego:

"At the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the University Libraries are [...] working collaboratively with the San Diego Supercomputer Center to build an intersect of personnel, expertise, and services to provide long-term preservation of and access to research data that enables domain scientists and researchers to carry-out longitudinal complex data analysis to support interdisciplinary research. This critical partnership is providing new opportunities to the UCSD community and when linked with opportunities being developed for a University of California (UC) system-wide grid service platform, it will truly transform the way discovery and access intersect at UCSD and within the UC system."

LIFE - digital lifecycle cost study

LIFE, a collaboration of British Library and University College London funded by JISC, started its second phase this year. The first phase "examined the life cycles of key digital collections at UCL and the British Library and established the individual stages in the cycle. These stages were then costed to show the full financial commitment of collecting digital materials over the long term". The second phase, which will end next August, "aims to refine the LIFE methodology adding four new exemplar case studies to further build upon LIFE1"
http://www.life.ac.uk/

LIFE Project: model for lifecycle costing of digital objects

Recently posted to JISC-REPOSITORIES:
"The LIFE Project has recently published a revised model for lifecycle costing of digital objects." The project team is looking for comments via the project blog.
More info at:
http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/archive/00004831/

Liz Lyon presentation on data curation

Slides from recent presentation by Liz Lyon to a NERC data management workshop
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/e.j.lyon/presentations.html#2007-10-nerc

NSF calls

Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503141&org=OCI&from=home

Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503163&org=OCI&from=home

Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access

"JISC is supporting an international initiative, led by US-based organisations the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to address the issue of economic sustainability in digital preservation.
A Task Force to be co-chaired by Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California and a pioneer in data ‘cyberinfrastructure’, and Brian Lavoie, an economist and research scientist with OCLC, will receive support from the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration and the Council on Library and Information Resources, along with JISC.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access is expected to meet over the next two years to gather testimony from experts in preparation for the Task Force's Final Report. Though significant progress has been made to overcome the technical challenges of achieving persistent access to digital resources, the economic challenges remain."
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2007/09/pres

eBank report

Thanks to the UKOLN newsfeed for pointing out a new report from the eBank project - A Study of Curation and Preservation issues in the eCrystals Data Repository and proposed federation. Now in its 3rd phase, eBank is exploring preservation, curation and sustainability issues, with a view to progressing a federation of repositories in crystallography, thus ensuring data remains usable (and reusable by others).

Some of the specific issues considered in the report are:

• Audit and certification: including a brief overview of recent work and current instruments. The recommendation is to use the lightweight version of the DRAMBORA toolkit due this month, as part of an annual self-audit cycle. It is acknowledged that short-term staff contracts and funding cycles have a detrimental effect on the organisational aspects which need to be in place to ensure sustainability. A further recommendation is to explore LOCKSS or CLOCKSS "to engage the crystallography community in the preservation of its valuable data"
• Open Archival Information System (OAIS) standard: the report recommends eBank develop a formal deposit, ingest, validation and dissemination policy and that work on Representation Information looks wider than just the eCrystals repository but looks at the whole crystallography domain
• Metadata: The report recommends further exploration of provenance information as currently versioning is the only type of information stored; and also how preservation metadata can be generated, extracted and maintained automatically