Output – IncReASe: Final Report – research management

Title: IncReASe: Final Report

Page: 14, 21-22

Date Released: 30 April 2009
URI for Output: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/increase/increase_finalreportv1.pdf

Summary of contents:
All three universitiies particpating in WRRO have begun to examine Research management systems with differing results.
University of Sheffield have put their working group’s findings on hold pending more information about the REF but are investigating systems.
University of York is currently scoping a Research Information System (WRRO is likley to have a significant role)
University of Leeds has selected a system. Their RIS system “will [probably] become the primary ingest route for both metadata and full text”. As yet workflows and staffing (including any involvement of repository or library staff) for the metadata creation in this new system are unclear. As the source of metadata and primary point of contact with academic/ research staff this has the potential to greatly benefit the integration of WRRO into the publication process.

From the conlucions:
“Our discussion with researchers suggests that a comprehensive service – essentially, a publication database – is probably an easier sell than a pure “open access” repository (echoing the conclusions previously drawn by, for example, the TARIS project); its raison d’être is clearer and the possibility for providing services back to researchers in the form of full listings of research and detailed information on traffic to individual works, is increased. Currently, this is not the direction being taken by WRRO; rather, because other central services are likely to fulfil the publication database function, the emphasis remains on external dissemination of open access outputs.”
“Capturing grant and project data relevant to research outputs is likely to increase in importance; this data can help maximise the value of repository content for both research and administrative purposes.”

Comments:
The RIS system at Leeds does of course also raise potential to difficulties for metadata quality.

All three institutions invovled in WRRO are actively moving towards some form of CRIS system; in all institutions this will impact significantly on the role and prominence of the repository. It is not clear how positive or negative this impact will be. What is clear is that for a institutional repositories covering the area of scholarly communicaitons CRIS systems are very likely to change what and how they operate.

Output – OARS – OARS Functional Specification Document

Output Name: Output – OARS – OARS Functional Specification

Title: OARS Functional Specificationn
Number of pages or page numbers:30 pages
Section:

Date Released: 18 January 2008

URI for Output: http://oars.forcedmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/oars-functional-specification.pdf

Also of interest might be:

http://oars.forcedmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/oars-specification-migration.pdf

Depicting the current system in place for managing content.

Summary of contents:

Useful fucntional specification document for the OARs project.  Could be useful for instituions who need to look at exemplars of funtional specifications for their own needs, with useful fucntionality check list on page 27 (appendix 1) and for metadata requirements – appendix 2 – pages 28-30

Project – RSP

Project Name: Repositories Support Project

Short Project Name:RSP

Programme Name: Repositories and Preservation

Strand:

JISC Project URI:  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/reppres/repsupport.aspx

Project URI: http://www.rsp.ac.uk

Start Date: October 2006

End Date: March 2009

Governance:JISC IIE

Contact Name and Role:  Bill Hubbard (Project Manager)

Brief project description:

The Repository Support Project (RSP) is a 2.5 year project to co-ordinate and deliver good practice and practical advice to English and Welsh HEIs to enable the implementation, management and development of digital institutional repositories.

Name of Trawler: Mahendra Mahey

Outputs: (just link to individual output postings) as a bulleted list

Output: VIF – VIF website: versioning issues

Title: VIF: why versioning matters

Pages: webpage
Date Released:

URI for Output: http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/vif/Problem/importance.html

Summary of contents:
The project notes the common versioning issues that repositories face.

• ” Confusion over whether an article is the published version, a copy that is identical in content to this but unformatted, a draft version, an edited version and so on.
• Repository searches yielding many results which ostensibly appear to refer to the same item, but actually vary in terms of content, formatting or propriety file type.
• Research work with multiple authors being deposited in different places at different stages of development without guidance as to which is authoritative or most recent.
• Multimedia items being handled poorly by repositories that treat them as text, and their relationship to other objects that form part of the research project being undefined by the repository.
• Vastly inconsistent approach of different repository software packages and implementations in how versions are dealt with.”

Comments:

Although this is intended to provide the context of the project, it also provides a succient introduction to the survey findings and the problem repositories face.

Output – KULTUR – Institutional Profile: University College for the Creative Arts

Title: Institutional Profile: University College for the Creative Arts
Number of pages or page numbers: pp 6-7
Section: Summation

Date Released: 27th March 2008

URI for Output: http://kultur.eprints.org/docs/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20UCCA%20profile%208%20April%20online%20version.pdf

Summary of contents:

A few observations of interest w.r.t. repositories for the arts in the ‘summation’ section of the report:

“The project will need to engage, advocate and secure ‘buy-in’ from the academic community. It will be important to establish an understanding of the culture of each college so that local differences or requirements can be taken into account. We will need to create a network of contact with key individuals and interest groups across the institution with which to communicate and gain direction on the project. Following on from this it will be imperative to be able to understand, interpret and communicate the range of differing concerns with the project team so that development is accurately representative.”

Additional information:

Comments:

Output – KULTUR – Environmental Assessment of the University of the Arts, London

Title: Environmental Assessment of the University of the Arts, London
Number of pages or page numbers: pp 6-7
Section: Summary

Date Released: 8th April 2008

URI for Output: http://kultur.eprints.org/docs/UUAL%20profile%208%20april%20online%20version.pdf

Summary of contents:

The summary section has a few useful observations w.r.t. repositories in the Arts sector:

“The opportunities for a repository at UAL are great since there is a wealth of research
being produced at all levels within the University. At the same time the sheer amount of
research and research active staff can present its own problems. The targeting of key
research staff, the enlisting of research centres/units and the research offices are
essential for the success of the project. Advocacy from the top and from the bottom is
needed but this can only really be effective by establishing good relationships and links
with relevant University bodies and staff. We need to identify just what a repository can
do for each group and advocate along those lines … Populating the demonstrator with a good number of pieces of research will help the project become more attractive and viable to research staff. The interface and the software itself will also play a large part in any success.”

Additional information:

Comments:

Output – NECTAR: Nectar Case History – embedding

Title: NECTAR: Northampton Electronic Collection of Theses And Research

Pages: all
Date Released: 2008

Summary of contents:
“Existing research reporting channels are being exploited to gather NECTAR content. From January 2008 the university’s Annual Research Report will be derived from NECTAR — if a research output is not in NECTAR it will not be reported.”

URI for Output: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/NECTAR_case_study_OR08_ver2.pdf

Comments:
this case study is largely superceded by the fuller later one – but i don’t recollect this line in the later article.
This illustrates both how embedded the NECTAR repository has become within the institution and also one of the roles a repsitory can play in the institutional infrastructure.

Output – NECTAR: ALISS Case Study – embedding

Title:Gathering NECTAR at The University of Northampton

Pages: 2-7
Date Released: 2008

Summary of contents:
Quotes highlighted in article’s text provide useful summary of key features of this output.

• “From the start, NECTAR has been a joint project between the Department of Information Services and the research community. This was not to be seen as a ‘library thing’.”
• “By consulting widely at an early stage we gained greater understanding of our future users’ needs, generated interest in the project and flagged up future challenges.”
• “Gaining commitment from your own senior management is crucial; involving them in the direction of the project is even better.”
• “A snappy name, ideally with positive connotations, is easy to remember and works well later in marketing and advocacy activities. “
• “Gaining acceptance of NECTAR’s fundamental principles by the University Research Committee gave them ownership of the repository and gave it an authority which could be exploited later.”
• “The combination of outsourced initial implementation followed by ongoing in-house support has worked extremely well for us; the service provided by the Eprints team has been particularly good.”
• “Populating the repository with the institution’s most prestigious research outputs [i.e. the metadata of RAE submitted papers] not only set a high standard for the showcase, but also conveyed a clear message to potential depositors: this is where the best research should be.”
• “By embedding NECTAR into the research reporting processes of the university, the repository immediately became part of researchers’ normal workflow.”

URI for Output: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/1283/

Citation: [accepted version] Pickton, M. (2008) Gathering NECTAR at The University of Northampton. ALISS Quarterly. 3(4), pp. 33-38. 1747-9258.

Comments:
The italicised quotes highlight some of the key features of the embedding strategy so far and offer an example of the advocacy dimension of the process of setting up a repository.

Output – NECTAR: ALISS Case Study – scope/theses

Title:Gathering NECTAR at The University of Northampton

Pages: 3 and
Date Released: 2008

Summary of contents:
The Research Committee’s support shaped the scope of the repository and has helped secure mandatory deposit of research degrees.

“Members of the focus group [a subgroup of the University Research Committee] were primarily concerned about the quality of NECTAR content and it was decided that NECTAR should contain only items that had previously been made available in the public domain. So, published journal articles, exhibited artifacts and presented conference papers were acceptable; internal working papers and other unpublished work were not. Research degree theses (PhD and MPhil level) were to be included, but not undergraduate or taught Masters level dissertations.” p3

“We had had the support of Professor Hugh Matthews in our Steering Group from the very start. As Chair of the university’s Research Degrees Committee and Deputy Chair of the University Research Committee, Hugh gave us very useful influence in both groups. A proposal for the mandatory submission of electronic copies of research degree theses was accepted by the Research Degrees Committee in December 2007 and a proposal to ensure that all research outputs are included in NECTAR is scheduled for discussion in June 2008” p5

URI for Output: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/1283/

Citation: [accepted version] Pickton, M. (2008) Gathering NECTAR at The University of Northampton. ALISS Quarterly. 3(4), pp. 33-38. 1747-9258.

Comments:
This illustrates the type of backing that is helpful in securing mandated deposit for theses and marks Northampton as a UK institution with a mandate for the deposit of doctorates and related research degrees.

Output – MetaTools – Final Report – Summary

Output Name: Output – MetaTools – Final Report

Title: MetaTools – Final Report
Number of pages or page numbers:  98 pages
Section:

Date Released: 24 November 2008

URI for Output: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/258/

Summary of contents:

Automatic metadata generation has sometimes been posited as a solution to the ‘metadata bottleneck’ that repositories and portals are facing as they struggle to provide resource discovery metadata for a rapidly growing number of new digital resources. Unfortunately there is no registry or trusted body of documentation that rates the quality of metadata generation tools or identifies the most effective tool(s) for any given task. The aim of the first stage of the project was to remedy this situation by developing a framework for evaluating tools used for the purpose of generating Dublin Core metadata. A range of intrinsic and extrinsic metrics (standard tests or measurements) that capture the attributes of good metadata from various perspectives were identified from the research literature and evaluated in a report. A test program was then implemented using metrics from the framework. It evaluated the quality of metadata generated from 1) Web pages (html) and 2) scholarly works (pdf) by four of the more widely-known metadata generation tools – Data Fountains, DC-dot, SamgI, and the Yahoo! Term Extractor. The intention was also to test PaperBase, a prototype for generating metadata for scholarly works, but its developers ultimately preferred to conduct tests in-house. Some interesting comparisons with their results were nonetheless possible and were included in the stage 2 report. It was found that the output from Data Fountains was generally superior to that of the other tools that the project tested. But the output from all of the tools was considered to be disappointing and markedly inferior to the quality of metadata that Tonkin and Muller report that PaperBase has extracted from scholarly works. Over all, the prospects for generating high-quality metadata for scholarly works appear to be brighter because of their more predictable layout. It is suggested JISC should particularly encourage research into auto-generation methods that exploit the structural and syntactic features of scholarly works in pdf format, as exemplified by PaperBase, and strongly consider funding the development of tools in this direction. In the third stage of the project SOAP and RESTful Web Service interfaces were developed for three metadata generation tools – Data Fountains, SamgI and Kea. This had a dual purpose. Firstly, the creation of an optimal metadata record usually requires the merging of output from several tools each of which, until now, had to be invoked separately because of the ad hoc nature of their interfaces. As Web services, they will be available for use in a network such as the Web with well-defined interfaces that are implementation-independent. These services will be exposed for use by clients without them having to be concerned with how the service will execute their requests. Repositories should be able to plug them into their own cataloguing environments and experiment with automatic metadata generation under more ‘real-life’ circumstances than hitherto. Secondly, and more importantly (in view of the relatively poor quality of current tools) they enabled the project to experiment with the use of a high-level ontology for describing metadata generation tools. The value of an ontology being used in this way should be felt as higher quality tools (such as PaperBase?) emerge. The high-level ontology is part of a MetaTools system architecture that consists of various components to describe, register and discover services. Low level definitions within a service ontology are mapped to higher-level human-understandable semantic descriptions contained within a MetaTools ontology. A user interface enables service providers register their service in a public registry. This registry is used by consumers to find services that match certain criteria. If the registry has such a service, it provides the consumer with a contract and an endpoint address for that service. The terms in the MetaTools ontology can, in turn, be part of a higher-level ontology that describes the preservation domain as a whole. The team believes that an ontology-aided approach to service discovery, as employed by the MetaTools project, is a practical solution. A stage 3 technical report was also written.