Bit of a rush off the train to find myself now listening to Jackie Wickham impersonating Bill Hubbard who can’t be here due to the birth of his daughter (congratulations Bill!)
Bill (via Jackie) emphasising high level of repository coverage across UKHE. Effectively if research is conducted at an institution in the UK it has a repository to house it.
How did we do this?
Single most influential factor is JISC funding. UK very fortunate to have JISC both as funding body and strategic guidance. A sense of community has also been vital and this function is now fulfilled by UKCoRR!
Programme Manager Balviar Notay now takes the floor to give an overview of JISC Digital Infrastructure programme emphasising scalability and synergies (e.g OA / research management). Since 2002 Jisc have overseen growth of repo infrastructure for 0 to over 200. During the same period the Open Access climate has also changed dramatically.
Early programme was FAIR – http://www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_fair.html – to explore/exploit institutional/museum assets using OAI-PMH. Comprised 14 projects looking at all types of content before a sustained funding drive to build IRs across HE institutions before enhancement projects in 2009 – 2011. More recently came a lightweight Rapid Innovation programme funding 41 projects – http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/jiscri.aspx.
Coming right up to date Jisc have reported on “the Value and Benefits of Text Mining” and funded 6 Take-Up and Embedding projects http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2012/value-and-benefits-of-text-mining.aspx
In total there has been in the region of £20M (approx) in infrastructure to support OA in alignment with UK policy initiatives (eg. The Houghton Report 2009, FINCH report 2012).
Ongoing emphasis: Efficient and effective repository and curation infrastructure with key services – ensuring scholarly outputs are managed , shared and reused; work towards open scholarship; align policies and shared infrastructure with Research Councils, Research Funders etc.
Important processes include setting up a production environment (with the Innovation Zone) – UK RepositoryNet+ project (EDINA). Crowd-sourced Rapid Innovation through the JISC Elevator.
SHERPA RoMEO, JULIET, IRUS, RJB, ORI, OA Repo Registry
RIO project
RIO Extension
Knowledge Exchange (JISC, SURF, DEFF, DFG – sustainability)
ResearcherID
SWORD
UK Open Access Implementation Group
Challenges:
- Complicated landscape
- Financial
- Business models not easy to factor
- New JISC?
- Tight timelines – finish by March 2013
Next Jackie, still impersonating Bill, talking about SHERPA (2003 – 2006). Initially 7 partners focussing on building up experience; advice; advocacy. Very valuable work building up knowledge / experience around advocacy (e.g. challenging misconceptions around OA). SHERPA RoMEO database a crucial tool for IR managers in both the UK and internationally interpreting and clarifying publisher OA policies.
66% of the publishers listed in RoMEO allow self-archiving (in some form).
RoMEO JULIET – funder requirements around OA.
The Centre for Research Communications founded in April 2009 at Nottingham – houses all SHERPA services.
Jackie now finally back to herself, talking about the Repositories Support Project began in September 2006 as a partnership with Nottingham as lead focussing on More repositories, More content, use / reuse of content. Primarily but not exclusively, research. Full text rather than just metadata is still a major challenge for UK repositories. Other types of content are increasingly important (particularly research data) . Reporting on compliance with researcher requirements is also challenge.
RSP offers support via email / telephone helpline, advocacy advice and material, support visits to institutions, buddy programme, high profile events, residential schools, webinars. Other events include skills training, conferences, technical workshops.
Embedding Repositories self -assessment: RSP’s practical guide to embedding research repositories into institutional processes, systems and culture. Repositories in higher education need to demonstrate value to their institutions and researchers. The guide has collated the experience of previous projects and activity in the UK. It includes interviews with key people and a self assessment tool which will provide an “embedded score”
Summary data from the RSP State of the Nation survey available at – http://www.rsp.ac.uk/pmwiki/index.php?n=Institutions.Summary
Next up is Marie Cairney talking about Enlighten – the repository at the University of Glasgow. First project under Jisc FAIR, Daedalus (2002-2003), EPrints selected for both published peer-reviewed material and e-theses. Glasgow EPrintsservice launched in 2004 contemporaneous with the Scottish Open Access Declaration. Rebranded as Enlighten in 2006 – integral part of Library sevice. Initiatives to drive increased deposit – senior backing.
Engagement with Enlighten was still voluntary in 2008 (RAE) but with broad support across the University. Different deposit models supported (self/proxy). Publications policy introduced in 2008 requires staff to deposit the bibliographic info, ideally full-text.
Enrich and Enquire projects (2009 – 2010) to integrate Enlighten with the data vault for staff data. All data feeds back to staff profile pages.
Mini REF Pilot 2010 submitted data on over 1200 staff and more than 22000 publications across 27 UoAs. Learned that existing system inadequate to deal woth queries! Exercise really engaged academics with Enlighten.
10 years on Enlighten is a University-wide repository/central publications database. Clear deposit policy for users. Great stats!
And before the break is our very own @llordllama, incumbent chair, talking about UKCoRR which was an off-shoot of the SHERPA Plus programme in 2006. Crucial aspect of UK-CoRR is independence; elected committee. In 2011 we won the UKeIG Jason Farradane Award!
UKCoRR is evolving. Independence is crucial. Membership is individual not institutional. Closed email list to enable frank discussion – members are lightly vetted before joining (i.e do they work in repositories?) Independence from funding assures no conflict of interest but limits what we can achieve (not an alternative to the RSP).
Great stuff Nick! Huge thanks for liveblogging the workshop! 🙂
Harder than it looks this live blogging lark!