Welcome to UKOLN

New Ariadne Available

Ariadne Issue 68 has recently been made available on the World Wide Web and its readers will immediately notice it has a completely new look-and-feel, not only to the latest issue but the entire site. Its appearance represents the sum of several months' work on modernising the publication. It has been redesigned in order to make it more responsive to the needs of not just the busy practitioner but also readers with a mind to delve more deeply into the Magazine’s content which dates back to the beginnings of digital library and resources development when it was first published alongside its print companion issue in January 1996.

Brian Kelly has written, 'I am pleased to announce developments to Ariadne which not only enhance the user interface but also, perhaps more importantly, provide much richer access to the large number of articles which have been published during its lifetime.

Ariadne was launched at a time when mailing lists provided the main communications channel with Web sites acting primarily for publishing information. In today's environment there is a much greater diversity of communications and publication channels including blogs, wikis, Twitter and social networks. Ariadne continues to have a valuable role to play in this space and we hope the developments which have been launched in this issue will appeal to both existing readers and those who may not have come across Ariadne previously. In light of the changing landscape we have reduced Ariadne's publication frequency from four to three times per year. We feel Ariadne provides a valuable publishing channel which is positioned between the many blogs which describe digital library developments and peer-reviewed journals. We hope you enjoy the new-look Ariadne and welcome your feedback.'

 

 

 

 

The development of the new platform for the publication has been driven by the thoughts and suggestions of respondents to surveys conducted prior to the onset of development and which we have worked hard to address. We are not by any means closed to further feedback and the Magazine carries a new system of contacting us in order to give your further thoughts and suggestions. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the many readers and authors of Ariadne for their time and contributions and look forward to future feedback.

This feature is not intended to go into great detail about the improvements the new site offers since the simplest thing is for readers to visit Ariadne themselves. Nonetheless, you will, we hope, appreciate that much has been undertaken to address the requirements identified prior to development. The considerable advancement made in screen resolutions has meant that we have adopted a narrower band of article text to make articles far more readable and provide at the same time considerably more complementary information about the articles in the right-hand column at article level.

The use of tags has meant that the publication now enjoys a radically higher degree of connectivity in all respects and offers readers a wide range of new data, of particular use to readers seeking information on particular themes or on authors’ interest and expertise. Newcomers to information science benefit from an easier path to information about concepts and developments thanks to the corpus of keywords now offered by Ariadne while the inclusion of data analysis features also provide readers with the opportunity to test such concepts in terms of their recency and level of usage.

Whatever the platform and mode of delivery, the core of a publication like Ariadne is its body of content, now considerably more searchable and usable than before. A great deal of effort has been invested in ensuring that none was lost in the migration process and we would be very keen to hear from authors at any time, but in particular if something of theirs has failed to appear! We have gone to great lengths to make that content more readily summarised, whether through tags, tables of sub-headings and the analysis features mentioned above. While the perspective of publication’s editor will ever remain forward-looking, seeking the material that will be of use and interest to readers as it emerges, there can be no denying, as some respondents have wisely pointed out, that Ariadne represents one of the few remaining long-term witnesses of developments from the mid-1990s to the present day. It is our contention that this migration to a Drupal-based platform has also provided readers many more tools with which to investigate that history should they so wish.

JISC Observatory Report Launched: Delivering Web to Mobile

The JISC Observatory team is pleased to announce the launch of a TechWatch report entitled Delivering Web to Mobile. As described in the introduction:

This report is intended to help staff of UK education institutions, involved in the development of content, gain an understanding of the emerging approaches to delivering services and content for mobile devices using the Web.

This report looks at the growth of mobile and the state of the Web while giving an overview of approaches to delivering content and services optimised for the mobile environment. This includes approaches to Web design for responsive sites, leveraging access to device functions and capabilities, as well as the use of Web technologies to build mobile applications. The following sections are included in the report: State of the Mobile Web (including UK HEI findings); Mobile Web Browsers; Responsive Web Design; Mobile First; Progressive Enhancement; Server-side Device Detection; Dedicated Mobile Sites; Mobile Web Apps; HTML5; Device APIs; HTML5 Frameworks and Hybrid Apps.

The report, which was written by Mark Power, JISC CETIS, is the latest output provided by the JISC Observatory, a JISC-funded initiative provided by the Innovation Support Centre at UKOLN and CETIS. As described on the JISC Observatory Web site, the Observatory aims "to systematise the way in which the JISC anticipates and responds to projected future trends and scenarios in the context of the use of technology in Higher & Further Education in the UK".

Last year the JISC Observatory published a TechWatch report entitled Augmented Reality for Smartphones. Two further TechWatch reports, on ebooks and data-driven infrastructure issues are currently in preparation. Also note that a JISC Observatory workshop session on Identifying and Responding to Emerging Technologies will be given at UKOLN's Institutional Web Management Workshop, IWMW 2012, which takes place at the University of Edinburgh over 18-20 June.

Adoption of CERIF in Higher Education Institutions in the UK:
A Landscape Study

Adoption of CERIF in Higher Education Institutions in the UK: A Landscape Study by Rosemary Russell of UKOLN ISC has just been published and is available in PDF and Word formats. CERIF, the Common European Research Information Format provides a standardised way of managing and exchanging information about research. It offers a range of potential efficiency benefits for Higher Education institutions and related research organisations.

The study documents the extent of adoption and engagement with CERIF in UK Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in late 2011/early 2012. In the course of the study 20 institutions were consulted. A total of 51 institutions in the UK are using CERIF Current Research Information Systems (CRIS), indicating a 30.7% adoption of CERIF. All institutions are using commercial CERIF CRIS with one exception - the University of Huddersfield which is developing an in-house CERIF-compliant system. Since 2010, UK institutions procuring CRIS have demonstrated a clear trend to purchase Pure from Atira (based in Denmark), which now has 19 UK installations. Other systems being used are CONVERIS and Symplectic Elements. The number of CRIS procurements increased particularly rapidly during 2011, with 10 institutions acquiring Pure between May and October.

Many HEI departments are involved in research information management (RIM) with the result that the CRIS implementation process can be politically challenging; project managers require diplomacy when negotiating access to data and managing CERIF mapping. High-level support within the institution is vital both for the CRIS and for CERIF as the underlying standard; the Pro Vice Chancellor for Research in particular plays a key role.

Institutional use confirms that CERIF does model the real-world environment of research information management in the UK. As vendors have become increasingly familiar with UK institutional data requirements, mapping processes are becoming more straightforward and implementation less time-consuming. A two-year implementation period has been typical across institutions.

However, despite the widespread use of CERIF as an underlying standard, many institutions are not engaging with CERIF directly. Staff find CERIF complex and rely on external expertise from CRIS vendors and UK user groups; only institutions involved in JISC projects are properly engaging with CERIF. Many staff are keen to engage more, citing lack of time and tight implementation schedules as the main obstacles. As local CRIS implementations are completed, it is likely that institutions will have more opportunities to engage further with CERIF, together with the incentives to start exploiting its efficiency benefits.

The landscape report complements other work carried out by UKOLN ISC to support the JISC RIM Programme.

International Journal of Digital Curation, Volume 7, Issue 1

UKOLN has recently published Volume 7, Issue 1 (2012) of the International Journal of Digital Curation on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre. The issue contains eight peer-reviewed papers and seven general articles; of these 15 contributions, 11 were drawn from the 2011 International Digital Curation Conference held at the beginning of December last year and four were new contributions received by the Journal through general submission.

In his editorial, Chief Editor and Director of the DCC Kevin Ashley gives a personal selection of highlights from the issue. He notes how the use of grammars to validate file formats for preservation, as described by Underwood, represents a new spin on an established technique for producing compilers for programming languages quickly and robustly. Meanwhile, the work of Fetherston and Gollins to scope out a test corpus for file format identification and verification addresses a need that has hitherto been neglected. Some formats can be problematic in unexpected ways: Knight describes how curating XML documents at scale can unduly burden third-party systems.

Provenance remains an active area of interest. With respect to Web resources, Ashley urges readers to engage with the work of the W3C Provenance Group, as discussed by Groth, Gil, Cheney and Miles. Further papers discuss different techniques for tracking and surfacing the provenance of final results data.

UKOLN's Director, Liz Lyon, writes about the Informatics Transform as a model for realigning library services to meet the challenge of managing research data. Possible motivations for applying this model can be found elsewhere in the issue, with an article on the evolving data policies of research funders and a paper on the impact of Freedom of Information legislation. Further insights may be gained from an account of setting up an institutional data repository.

Data-intensive science is opening up a plethora of possibilities for answering hard research questions, so it is timely and appropriate to have an investigation into the sociology of such research based on an examination of data flows. A barrier to progress in this area, though, is a dearth of data; another article argues that a formal system of publishing and citing data may be a key factor in making more research data available. Even if data are freely available, there may be other barriers: with social media like Twitter, for instance, concerns about privacy and ownership give pause for thought.

Digital curation is still a maturing discipline, as shown by two papers that describe novel approaches to planning preservation strategies. One considers network modelling as a technique for choosing between options, while the other describes how one might assess the risks involved in migrating a corpus of resources from one format to another.

The publication of this issue of the IJDC marks some important changes for the journal itself. All its papers and articles now have Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), making them easier to cite in a consistent fashion. The licence for papers and articles from volume 7 onwards has also been relaxed to Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY), widening the range of possible channels through which readers can access the contents.

To read the Volume 7, Issue 1 of the IJDC, please visit the Journal Web site.

Research360 Project Underway

The joint University of Bath- and UKOLN-based Research360 Project is now fully up and running.

Research360 is one of a number of projects being funded through the JISC Managing Research Data Programme. It is an 18-month long institutional project designed to pilot policies, infrastructure and training resources to provide high-quality support for research, ensuring that the University and its partners get the best possible value from data generated by research.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a key funder of research at the University. In April 2011, the EPSRC published its Policy Framework on Research Data, identifying nine expectations of organisations in receipt of EPSRC funding. Unlike other funding bodies, who place responsibility for managing research data on individual researchers, the EPSRC put the onus on the institution. They mandated that EPSRC-funded research data should be as freely and openly available as possible and that institutions must have in place the infrastructure, policy and support necessary for researchers share their data. Institutions have been given until May 2012 to identify what they need to do in order to meet these expectations and must be fully compliant by May 2015. Developing the technical and human infrastructure to enable the University of Bath to meet the EPSRC expectations is a major element of the Research360 Project.

The project concentrates in particular on data generated during collaborative research with industry. It will seek to identify how data generated through such collaborations is currently organised, accessed, curated and preserved and any associated difficulties. From this, it should be possible to determine what can be done to overcome these problems in the future, enabling the production of guidance documents advocating best practice in managing academic-industry data.

Initially it will apply the research lifecycle model to the Faculties of Science and Engineering. Project outputs will ultimately be implemented across the institution. A key output of Research360 will be the publication of guidance documents and exemplar case studies that will assist other HEIs undertaking similar processes. Alongside this, members of the project team are linking up with related projects running at other institutions to share their experiences.

The project is also developing training in research data management. This will take the form of a virtual learning module and some face-to-face training. A pilot training session for post-graduate students has already taken place, where a number of alternative data management plans were trialled. The project will be building on this to develop an institutional template for the DMP Online tool and to generate guidelines in data management planning designed specifically for postgraduates based in Doctoral Training Centres.

The project team draws on experience from across the University, including representatives from the Vice-Chancellor’s Office, RDSO, the Library, BUCS, UKOLN, DCC and the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies.

For more information and regular updates, please visit the Research360 project blog, which is available from the Research360 Project pages on the UKOLN Web site. Alternatively, please contact Catherine Pink at UKOLN or visit the University of Bath’s Managing Research Data Web site.

Reminder: earlier news features are available from the News Feature Archive

UKOLN Blogs

Some members of staff at UKOLN make use of blogs to support their dissemination and user engagement activities, either as part of UKOLN's core activities or to support project work.