First objective of the JISC-supported Sonex initiative was to identify and analyse deposit opportunities (use cases) for ingest of research papers (and potentially other scholarly work) into repositories. Later on, the project scope widened to include identification and dissemination of various projects being developed at institutions in relation to the deposit usecases previously analyzed. Finally, Sonex was recently asked to extend its analysis of deposit opportunities to research data.






Wednesday 26 May 2010

Recently held and upcoming events on CERIF-CRIS/IR integration

An euroCRIS-organised event related to CERIF-CRIS/IR integration was recently held at CNR Rome, Italy, and forthcoming CRIS2010 will be taking place next June 2nd to 5th in Aalborg, Denmark:

  • Workshop on CRIS, CERIF and Institutional Repositories: Maximising the Benefit of Research Information for Researchers, Research Managers, Entrepreneurs and the Public (Istituto di ricerche sulla Popolazione e le Politiche Sociali, IRPPS, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR, Rome, Italy, May 10-11, 2010).

  • CRIS2010: Connecting Science with Society: The Role of Research Information in a Knowledge-Based Society (10th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems, Aalborg, Denmark, June 2-5, 2010).

Monday 24 May 2010

A summary of ongoing deposit-related projects


A summary of currently running deposit-related projects and initiatives (as of Jun 5th, 2010) is shown in the table below. The list is not intended to be comprehensive, but just a sample of ongoing initiatives known to the Sonex workgroup. Should there be any remarkable deposit-related project missing from the list, it shall be promptly added as soon as we get a notification.

Project name

Institutions/
Organisations

Country(ies)

Contact person

Publisher-driven initiatives
PEER ProjectSTM-Assoc/ESF/Max Planck G/UGöttingen/INRIA/SURF/ UBielefeldEUJulia Wallace (STM)/Foudil Bretel (INRIA)
Open Access Repository Junction (OA-RJ)EDINAUKTheo Andrew (EDINA)
BMC Deposit into DSpace@MITBMC/MITUK/USMatthew Cockerill (BMC)
National & Institutional CRIS/IR integration initiatives
NARCISRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)NLElly Dijk (KNAW)
Enrich: Repository and Research System IntegrationUniversity of GlasgowUKWilliam Nixon (U Glasgow)
CRISPoolUniversity of St. AndrewsUKAnna Clements (U St. Andrews)
TDC Systems IntegrationTCDIENiamh Brennan (TCD)
U-GOVCINECA Consorzio InteruniversitarioITNicola Bertazzoni (CINECA)
CRIStinUniversity Centre for Information Technology
(USIT-UiO)
NOAnne Asserson (U Bergen, UiB)
AramisState Secretariat for Education and Research (SER)CHBeat Sottas (SER)
USDA-CRISUS Dept Agriculture. National Institute of Food and AgricultureUSCarolyn Deckers, Juanita Hammond, Teresa Bailey (USDA)
RCAAP/DeGóis IntegrationUMIC/FCCN/FCTPTEloy Rodrigues (UMinho)
RIS/IR Integration at UPCUniversitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)ESJordi Serrano, Toni Prieto (UPC)
CRIS/OAR Interoperability ProjectKE/DTUDKMikael K. Elbæk (DTU), Mogens Sandfær (DTIC)
CCLRC Corporate Data Repository (CDR)Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC)UKE. Grabczewski (CCLRC)
SEMATIranian Research Institute for Information Science & Technology (Irandoc)IROmid Fatemi (Irandoc)
Commercial initiatives
Article Authoring Add-inMS ResearchUSLee Dirks/Alex Wade (MS Research)
Repository toolsSymplectic LtdUKRichard Jones (Symplectic Ltd)
PureAtiraDKBo Alroe (Atira)
ConverisAvedasDERudolf Weiss (Avedas)
Enovation SolutionsEnovationIEGavin Henrick (Enovation)
Other
SWORD ProjectUKOLN/JISCUKAdrian Stevenson (UKOLN), Julie Allinson (U York)
York Digital Library - Integration for the Next Generation (YODL-ING)University of York/University of LeedsUKJulie Allinson (University of York)
EasyDeposit – SWORD deposit tool creatorUniversity of AucklandNZStuart Lewis (U Auckland)

Friday 21 May 2010

Sonex Deposit BoF at OR10 Madrid

The programme of BoF session proposals for Open Repositories 2010 Conference in Madrid was just released. There will be a Sonex Deposit BoF taking place along the conference (final date & location still to be announced), under following guidelines:

Along last year Sonex workgroup has been devoted to analysis of Scholarly Output Notification and Exchange, that is, of potential deposit processes into repositories for scholarly publications from various sources and related interoperability issues. Several relevant usecases have been selected for following their implementation at institutional environments. After recent publication of Deposit call by JISC (Feb’10), Sonex was assigned the new role of providing support and eventual coordination for selected bids. We are therefore inviting colleagues taking part in ongoing or future deposit-related projects to debate on different approaches, common problems and chances for avoiding redundancies among them.

Tuesday 11 May 2010

'Learning how to play nicely: Repositories and CRIS: a report', by Richard Jones

Friday 7th was the joint JISC and ARMA event "Learning how to play nicely: Repositories and CRIS", aimed at stirring up some discussion around the relationship and integration between these two kinds of system. Such integration has been talked about for some time, and I find myself recalling the Knowledge Exchange workshop in Utrecht where JISC, in partnership with SURF and DEFF and DFG initiated similar discussions in 2007. It is good to see that this discussion has moved from the domain of Repository, CRIS and CERIF developers into the mainstream of Research and Repository Managers, where requirements can more appropriately be sourced. For this technical observer the event was somewhat too non-technical, but I think this was the intention and for the best.

Andy McGregor from JISC set the scene for the event, giving us a little background on JISC involvement, and talking about different approaches that could be taken to integration, such as the use of CERIF or of Linked Data for the sharing of information. He then passed us over to Simon Kerridge from ARMA, who discussed in a bit more detail what a CRIS is; he also gave us some better terminology that we might prefer to use: RMAS (Research Management and Administration System) and ERA (Electronic Research Administration). The briefing paper that accompanies the event tells us that "by communicating research information more effectively ... the process of sharing data becomes more efficient, duplication of effort is reduced and information becomes more accurate", and this clearly drives the purpose of the day. Particularly, there is no intention here to merge CRIS and Repositories - the two communities have sufficiently different use cases that this is unlikely to happen - but simply to enhance communication between them in the correct way.

Anna Clements then introduced the CRIS that they use at St Andrews, while William Nixon and Valorie McCutcheon from the University of Glasgow presented Enlighten. Particularly, Enlighten is an interesting case as it is based on the EPrints software, and started life as an institutional repository in around 2003, but has now grown into a fully fledged publications management system. The presentations were then wrapped up by Jackie Knowles, from the Welsh Repository Network (the event organisers), who gave us an insight into things that went well and things that didn't during development of CRIS and Repository systems at institutions around the country. The ones that stuck for me were:

  • Don't overcomplicate your requirements

  • Don't develop DIY solutions which turn into single points of failure (i.e. ensure they are robust against staff changes)

  • Ensure that your requirements are well specified and met; she cites an unfortunate and extreme tale of a team who lost their jobs after failing to successfully implement a system which had no formal requirements in the first place!


The afternoon of the event was given over to discussion among delegates, and this observer did not attend due to his position as representing a supplier - the event coordinators felt that without the suppliers present the conversation would be more candid. The results of those discussions should be made available soon, and we'll link them when they are. Meanwhile, I therefore represented Symplectic in the exhibition stall, alongside Avedas, EPrints, Atira, ARMA, ThomsonReuters, IDEATE and DuraSpace; it was busy for much of the afternoon, which I think shows a clear interest in this space at this time.

Sunday 9 May 2010

Learning how to play nicely: Repositories and CRIS event

Last Friday May 7th a joint JISC and ARMA one-day event on repositories and Current Research Information Systems (CRISes) was held at Leeds Metropolitan University. Organised by the Welsh Repository Network (WRN), this event brought together representatives from both research administration and repository management functions within institutions to explore the synergies, overlaps and opportunities in our role of curating institutional research and publication management information.

Following issues -among others- were discussed at the meeting (see event programme for contributions):

  • Why a CRIS? The perspective from the repository and research management communities
  • The ideal CRIS: a view from euroCRIS
  • DIY Success: Case study from the University Glasgow - How repository and research management systems have been successfully integrated
  • Where did it all go wrong?: Case study on how repository and research management systems have not been so successfully integrated

Tweets about the event were saved, and presentations are already available online as well. Finally, Richard Jones from Sonex workteam was attending the seminar at Leeds Met and will also be delivering a brief report on the main issues dealt with at the event.