Medecins sans frontieres adopt Open Repository

Press release from 15 May:

"Today, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) adopts 'Open Repository' - the service from BioMed Central, which allows institutes to build, launch, host, and maintain their own repositories.
Through the implementation of the Open Repository system, MSF is now able to provide a personalized in-house repository that maximises the distribution of their research at a fraction of the cost of other commercial systems.
[...]
Médecins Sans Frontières is just one of 15 organizations who have adopted the Open Repository solution since its inception.
[...]
Open Repository is built upon the latest version of DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly works. Customers of Open Repository benefit from updated system features not only from DSpace themselves, but also from BioMed Central's team who are continually working to enhance their repository service. "

Stirling Uni mandates open access

From a press release earlier this week...

STIRLING RESEARCH GOES GLOBAL

The University of Stirling has become the first academic institution in the UK to oblige staff to make all their published research available online.

Stirling is leading the way in open access to its research work, after the University’s Academic Council issued an institutional mandate which requires self-archiving of all theses and journal articles.

Professor Ian Simpson, Deputy Principal (Research and Knowledge Transfer) said: “We believe that the outcomes of all publicly funded research should be made available as widely as possible. By ensuring free online access to all our research output, we will maximise the visibility and impact of the University’s work to researchers worldwide.”

The four year project to create STORRE (Stirling Online Research Repository) has been brought to fruition by information technology specialists Clare Allan and Michael White.

Clare Allan said: “The University now requires all published journal articles to be deposited by authors, as soon as possible after they are accepted for publication, and in compliance with the publishers' copyright agreements.

“It is an important landmark in our archival development and marks the conclusion of a process that started in 2004 when Stirling was one of 20 academic institutions which signed up to the OATS (Open Access Team for Scotland) declaration. The repository project initially focused on electronic theses and in session 2006/07 we became one of the first universities to require these to be submitted electronically.

“The next stage was a pilot scheme for self-archiving of journal articles by some researchers, and this has now become mandatory. We are also building up a retrospective archive.”

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)

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

New JISC briefing papers

Two new briefing papers:

• Research in the social sciences: an overview of JISC activities
  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/socialsciencesresearchv1.aspx
• Research in the biomedical sciences: an overview of JISC activities
  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/bioscienceresearchv1.aspx

This adds to the collection of briefing papers aimed at researchers:

• Research in the physical sciences: an overview of JISC activities http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/physicalsciencesresearchv1.aspx
• Research in the arts and humanities: an overview of JISC activities http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/artshumanitiesresearchv1.aspx

News from RIN

News from RIN this month includes:

• "RIN responds to data sharing review" : http://www.rin.ac.uk/whats-new-data-sharing
• "RIN issues guidance on acknowledgement of research funding" http://www.rin.ac.uk/whats-new-funding-acknowledge

Open chemistry

I picked this up a few weeks ago but what with all that's been going on so far this year, it's taken me till now to take a look:
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/January/29010803.asp
"Most chemical information on the web is published in closed journals and databases which guarantee high quality but also require a subscription to view. Pre-print servers, collaborative documents, open databases, video sites, online lab notebooks and blogs provide other ways of communicating research. Combining the lot offers the enticing prospect of a vast, free-to-access repository. This could transform the sharing of scientific research if the disparate data sources were machine-readable, so that a search engine could automatically gather data about a particular molecule from a crystal structure, a movie, an online lab book, and an archived article, for example. "

The project will be using standards developed by the Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange Project (OAI-ORE) - model protocols are expected to launch next month.

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

Open access: various news

European Research Council Guidelines for Open Access, Dec 07:
http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/ScC_Guidelines_Open_Access_revised_Dec07_FINAL.pdf

Science Commons announces the Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7917

Information World Review, Dec 07: "Bush bombs open access plans in war on spending" covers Bush vetoing the bill to require research funded by NIH to be available on open access sites within 12 months of the first publication. Work is now underway to override the veto and if that doesn't work, it's thought some of the bill will still go through.

Information World Review, Jan 08: "BioMed adds DSpace internet distribution to Open Repository" covers the new open source features added to Open Repository to "make it easier for customers to browse and submit material to the hosted repository solution online".

Mandate for access to NIH research

In Research Information (Dec 07/Jan 08), the story "US Senate approves mandate for access to NIH Research". It will allow NIH to require, rather than request, researchers to make their NIH-funded research outputs publicly available via PubMed Central. Currently, less than 5% is deposited voluntarily.
http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=154

Data sharing

Useful links:
OECD Principles (2007): http://www.oecd.org/document/55/0,3343,en_2649_37417_38500791_1_1_1_37417,00.html

RIN's Stewardship of Digital Research Data (2007): http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-principles

MRC's Guidelines on data sharing: http://www.mrc.ac.uk/PolicyGuidance/EthicsAndGovernance/DataSharing/PolicyonDataSharingandPreservation/index.htm

BBSRC's Guidelines on data sharing: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/support/guidelines/datasharing/context.html

Plus some interesting outputs from JISC-funded projects:

• Liz Lyon's Dealing with Data report: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital_repositories/project_dealing_with_data.aspx. A very comprehensive overview with a list of recommendations which is now being reviewed by JISC.


• GRADE project : http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/Grade_reportRSSv2.pdf. Found that researchers most commonly use USB stick and email to share small datasets. Also noted that as well as enabling sharing/preservation, a national repository would enable UK to contribute to European and other international intiatives.


• DISC-UK Datashare : http://www.disc-uk.org/docs/state-of-the-art-review.pdf. One interesting finding reported is from Australian colleagues who found that a single repository wasn't proving effective and they subsequently moved towards two distinct repositories: one to enable collaboration on work-in-progress and one for published outputs/datasets.

There's a lot in these links about the wider context; how things look now; barriers to data sharing (e.g. trust, IPR, time); discussion on possible solutions (e.g. social software models, reward/recognition, mandates).

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/

Latest Ariadne : NaCTeM, repositories and KIDDM

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue53/

Good to see NaCTeM :-) A good overview of the current services and a run-through their roadmap:
"NaCTeM's text mining tools and services offer numerous benefits to a wide range of users. These range from considerable reductions in time and effort for finding and linking pertinent information from large scale textual resources, to customised solutions in semantic data analysis and knowledge management. Enhancing metadata is one of the important benefits of deploying text mining services. TM is being used for subject classification, creation of taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, ontology building and Semantic Web activities. As NaCTeM enters into its second phase we are aiming for improved levels of collaboration with Semantic Grid and Digital Library initiatives and contributions to bridging the gap between the library world and the e-Science world through an improved facility for constructing metadata descriptions from textual descriptions via TM."

Other interesting snippets:

• SURFshare programme covering the research lifecycle http://www.surffoundation.nl/smartsite.dws?ch=ENG&id=5463


• a discussion on the use of Google as a repository : "Repositories, libraries and Google complement each other in helping to provide a broad range of services to information seekers. This union begins with an effective advocacy campaign to boost repository content; here it is described, stored and managed; search engines, like Google, can then locate and present items in response to a search request. Relying on Google to provide search and discovery of this hidden material misses out a valuable step, that of making it available in the first instance. That is why university libraries need Google and Google needs university libraries."


• feedback from ECDL conference, including a workshop on a european repository ecology, featuring a neat diagram showing how presentations are disseminated after a conference using a mix of web2.0, repositories and journals http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue53/ecdl-2007-rpt/#10

Rethinking the publication process

Interesting post from Peter Murray-Rust's blog:
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=650
Considers preprints, Creative Commons license, using non-copyrighted images, managing citations.

The Future of Scholarly Communication : workshop report

Report of a joint NSF/JISC workshop:
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~repwkshop/NSF-JISC-report.pdf

Some highlights:

• Access to research : "Success stories, such as TREC for information retrieval research [Voorhees] or the Human Genome Project [HGP], have devoted substantial expertise to creating the necessary infrastructure and managing the datasets with a very clear understanding of how they fit the research practices in their fields."
• Access to research : "Cyberscholarship needs superdata centers, which combine the storage and organization of vast amounts of data with substantial computing power to analyze it. Building such centers requires investment and long-term commitment on the part of an organization or discipline. While equipment can be purchased, expertise takes longer to establish. Superdata centers and the researchers who use them will need several years before they become truly effective."
• Value-added services : "As our systems grow more sophisticated, we will see applications that support not just links between authors and papers but relationships between users, data and information repositories, and communities. What is required is a mechanism to support these relationships that leads to information exchange, adaptation and recombination – which, in itself, will constitute a new type of data repository."
• Also a reference to the need for summarisation on p 10 referencing humanities research in particular.

The CyberScholarship roadmap includes automated metadata generation; provenance establishment; source validation; annotation tools; and contextual semantics.

Mashups

Interesting sites:

Mashup Dashboard http://www.programmableweb.com/mashups

Repositories Mashup http://maps.repository66.org/

Simile Timeline http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/

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

Use cases for repositories

Links from http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/CRIG_Teleconference_2007-03-29, the Common Repository Interfaces Group