Research data management in crystallography at the XXII IUCr Congress

  On Aug 29th a session on research data management will be held at the XXII Congress of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr2011). The session will feature talks by Brian McMahon (IuCr), Brian Matthews (I2S2 Project), Peter Murray-Rust (CrystalEye), John Westbrook (wwPDB) and Nick Spadaccini (DDLm). Peter Murray-Rust will deliver a talk along the session on Open Crystallography.

Strategies for research data deposit in ongoing data management projects

  Prior to start performing pattern analysis for research data deposit into (institutional or subject-based) data repositories –whether or not open access– first step by Sonex is to scope ongoing projects dealing with that kind of deposit, as well as already closed projects which supplied relevant guidelines on the subject. A list of projects working on data management follows, with their specific approach on how to deal with actual data deposit as taken from project blogs:


TARDIS (Monash University–Australian National Data Service).
“There is a pressing need for the archival and curation of raw X-ray diffraction data. However, the relatively large size of these datasets has presented challenges for storage in a single worldwide repository. This problem can be avoided by using a federated approach, where each institution or university utilizes its institutional repository”.


ADMIRAL: A JISC-funded data management infrastructure for research across the life sciences.
"The purpose of the ADMIRAL Project is to create a two-tier federated data management infrastructure for use by life science researchers, that will provide services (a) to meet their local data management needs for the collection, digital organization, metadata annotation and controlled sharing of biological datasets; and (b) to provide an easy and secure route for archiving annotated datasets to an institutional repository, The Oxford University Data Store, for long-term preservation and access, complete with assigned Digital Object Identifiers and Creative Commons open access licences".
(See Oxford University Library Services' Databank)


XYZ Project. “The XYZ Project will create a demonstrator of a new workflow for publishing data in support of full-text. The author prepares data for publication (if possible with validation) in a third-party trusted repository before the paper is submitted to a publisher. Our software will manage the deposition, release to reviewers, dis-embargo and for conventional publication or as a data journal. Two Open Access publishers (International Union of Crystallography and BioMed Central) are engaged with the project and will test the new workflow”.
Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes: A demonstrator repository hosted by the IUCr.


FISHnet: Freshwater information sharing network. “This project will allow researchers in multiple academic, governmental and voluntary-sector institutions to share their data. Data will be held securely in a sustainable subject repository which preserves and disseminates multiple datasets as part of the FreshwaterLife.org information portal. Data creators will be able to manage access rights to their content, from Open Access to sharing with trusted colleagues”.


DMBI: Data Management in Bio-Imaging. “The quantity of data generated by modern high-throughput bio-imaging systems presents a significant challenge in both data management and processing. Furthermore, there is no explicit system/way to record the processing algorithms and parameters that are used to produce results. Thus there is no strong link between images, software and results. This projects aims to address these issues”.
Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes: Build a prototype DMBI system around OMERO.


CaiRO: Curating Artistic Research Output. “No prominent subject-based repository exists to act as the custodians of arts practice-as-research data. Where institution provision for data management is in place (for instance, an institutional repository service) the arts researcher-practitioner cannot always rely on an understanding of the special nature of arts research data. More commonly, data is retained in departmental collections, built and maintained by small teams which often include researchers themselves”.


BRIL: Biophysical Repositories in the Lab. “The BRIL project aims to enhance the repository facilities at the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London. This will involve:
» Embedding the repository within the researchers’ day-to-day research and experimental practices;
» Integrating the repository into the wider King’s infrastructure”.
Example of KCL “internal” repository: Mutation Testing Repository.


ADS+: Enhancing and Sustaining the Archaeology Data Service digital repository. The project aims to “Increase the sustainability of the ADS, by implementing Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture). This is a world-leading open source digital repository application which will allow the automation of many ADS curatorial functions, according to the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (ISO 14721:2003). This will help ensure the long term preservation of all ADS digital archives, as well as making the ADS archival procedures more cost-effective”.


IDMB (Institutional Data Management Blueprint) Project, U. Southampton.
The project’s aims are to provide the University of Southampton with a ten-year roadmap for delivery of a comprehensive data management infrastructure.

[IDMB Recommendations] The data management audit and gap analysis indicates where improvements can be made in the short, medium and long-term to improve data management practices and capabilities at the University. The following preliminary recommendations are put forward for short (one year), medium (one to three years), long (more than three years) term action.
[Short Term (1 year)] Crucial to supporting researchers is the consolidation of data management into a coherent framework that is easy to understand, use, and has a sustainable business model behind it. A number of major recommendations are put forward here for the short-term:
• Create an institutional data repository
• Develop a scalable business model
• One-stop shop for data management advice and guidance


MaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester.
A pilot infrastructure for Biomedical Researchers at the University of Manchester, which covers data capture, data storage and data curation. This infrastructure comprises procedural support, hardware and software.
[18/03/2010] The development team have built a prototype data management front end which fits a generic set of needs amongst our Life Sciences researchers. It is aimed at being flexible enough to allow researchers themselves to assign attributes (i.e. metadata) to their experiments and datasets for them to be usefully categorised and tagged. The prototype is also entirely dispensable and intended as a catalyst for feedback from our use cases on their specific functionality requirements.


DISC-UK DataShare Project. The DISC-UK DataShare project, led by EDINA National Data Centre and the Edinburgh University Data Library, with partners at the Universities of Southampton and Oxford, has advanced the current provision of repository services for accommodating datasets in the UK.
Key conclusions: 1) Data management motivation is a better bottom-up driver for researchers than data sharing but is not sufficient to create culture change, 2) Data librarians, data managers and data scientists can help bridge communication between repository managers & researchers, 3) Institutional repositories can improve impact of sharing data over the internet.

A preliminary list of discipline-specific projects on research data management

A preliminary list follows of currently running discipline-specific projects and initiatives (as of Dec 2010) dealing with research data management. The list below is not comprehensive, but a sample of ongoing projects, brought together in order to find out potential biases by area in current research data management projects. Should there be relevant projects missing, we’d appreciate a notification for including them as well.

[projects/initiatives listed in alphabetical order]

Project name: ACRID: Advanced Climate Research Infrastructure for Data
Institution/Funder/Manager: U East Anglia, STFC, Met Office, JISC
Project Description: The ACRID Project aims to develop an approach to publishing climate research data in a way that facilitates citing, re-use and the provision of full provenance information for processed data.
Area/Discipline: Climate Science

Project name: ADMIRAL
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Oxford, JISC
Project Description: A data management infrastructure for research across the life sciences
Area/Discipline: Life Sciences

Service/Project name: ADS: Archaeology Data Service
Institution/Funder/Manager: U York, AHRC, JISC, EU (mandated repository for AHRC, NERC)
Service/Project Description: The Archaeology Data Service supports research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. It does this by preserving digital data in the long term, and by promoting and disseminating a broad range of data in archaeology. The ADS promotes good practice in the use of digital data in archaeology, it provides technical advice to the research community, and supports the deployment of digital technologies.
ADS is actively engaged with research projects working with partners in all sectors of UK archaeology.
Area/Discipline: Archaeology

Project name: Global Argo Data Repository
Institution/Funder/Manager: NOAA, NODC (National Oceanographic Data Center), GODAE (Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment), IFREMER (Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea)
Project Description: In the year 2000, a global array of approximately 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats, known as the Argo Ocean Profiling Network, was planned as a major component of the ocean observing system. Argo originated from the need to make climate predictions on both short and long time scales and has led to international participation and collaboration to ensure global coverage.
Centers to handle the data collected by profiling floats have been established in a number of countries. These centers normally handle data from their nationally deployed floats, but sometimes provide that service to other countries or organizations. All Argo data will be publicly available in near real-time via the GTS (Global Telecommunications System) and in scientifically quality-controlled form with a few months delay.
Area/Discipline: Marine Sciences, Oceanography

Project name: BlueObelisk
Institution/Funder/Manager: Group of chemists/ programmers/informaticians
Project Description: The Blue Obelisk Data Repository lists many important chemoinformatics data such as element and isotope properties, atomic radii, etc. including references to original literature
Area/Discipline: Chemoinformatics

Project name: BRIL: Biophysical Repositories in the Lab
Institution/Funder/Manager: CeRch-KCL, JISC
Project Description: The BRIL project aims to enhance the repository facilities at the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London by:
- Embedding the repository within the researchers’ day-to-day research and experimental practices
- Allowing data and metadata to be captured in automated fashion
- Allowing the structure of experimental processes as a whole to be captured, modelled and stored within the repository
- Enhancing browse and access facilities and data exchange facilities to increase interoperability.
Area/Discipline: Biophysics

Project name: CAiRO: Curating Artistic Research Output
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Bristol, DCC, JISC
Project Description: Research data created by the UK’s performance and visual arts departments is often rich, technically complex and amazingly varied in nature. This work may include interconnected multimedia records of a single live event or software which exhibits complex behaviours dependant upon the choices made by a viewer. The CAiRO project, funded as part of the wider JISC Managing Research Data programme, aims to offer data management skills tailored to the special requirements of the arts researcher-practitioner.
Area/Discipline: Creative Arts

Project name: The CEACS Data Library
Institution/Funder/Manager: CEACS Library, Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (CEACS), Instituto Juan March, Madrid, Spain
Project Description: The CEACS Data Library provides support to its research community in conducting quantitative research with primary and secondary data. The Data Library has a collection of over 2,000 secondary research datasets from major data centres. The service supports research data management through a thematic website, one to one support and a Dataverse data repository to help with the management, sharing and preservation of the data produced by researchers.
Area/Discipline: Social Sciences

Project name: Data Conservancy: A New Vision for Data-Driven Science
Institution/Funder/Manager: National Science Foundation (NSF), Johns Hopkins University (Lead institution)
Project Description: The Data Conservancy (DC) embraces a shared vision: scientific data curation is a means to collect, organize, validate and preserve data so that scientists can find new ways to address the grand research challenges that face society.
Area/Discipline: Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences and Social Sciences

Project name: DataONE
Institution/Funder/Manager: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Project Description: DataONE was conceived to ensure preservation and access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national data about life on earth and the environment that sustains this life. It was recognized from the outset that such data are often difficult to discover, access, integrate and analyze.
Area/Discipline: Earth & Life Sciences

Project name: DataTrain
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Cambridge, ADS, DCC, JISC
Project Description: The DataTrain project aims to build on findings and tools developed in the Incremental project (JISC 07/09 funding strand), to design discipline-focused data-management training modules for post-graduate courses in Archaeology and Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Area/Discipline: Archaeology, Social Anthropology

Project name: DATUM for Health: Research data management training for health studies
Institution/Funder/Manager: Northumbria U, DCC, JISC
Project Description: This collaborative project seeks to promote research data management skills of postgraduate research students in the health studies discipline through a specially-developed training programme which focuses on qualitative, unstructured research data.
Area/Discipline: Health Sciences

Project name: DMBI: Data Management in Bio-Imaging
Institution/Funder/Manager: The John Innes Centre (BBSRC), Norwich BioScience Institutes, JISC
Project Description: DMBI aims to raise the level of data management/handling for high-throughput bio-imaging, and strengthen the interactions between image data silos, both internally and with partner organisations.
Area/Discipline: Biology/Bio-imaging

Project name: DMP-ESRC: Data management planning for ESRC research data-rich investments
Institution/Funder/Manager: UK Data Archive (UKDA), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Project Description: Data Management Planning (DMP) project aims to increase the data management and sharing capability within the social sciences community.
Area/Discipline: Social Sciences

Project name: DMTpsych: Data Management Training for psychologists
Institution/Funder/Manager: U York, U Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam U, DCC, JISC
Project Description: The aim of DMTpsych is to build capacity and skills within psychology postgraduates relating to research data management. The project builds upon existing research data management materials developed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) to create discipline-focused postgraduate training materials that can be embedded into postgraduate research training for the psychological sciences.
Area/Discipline: Psychology

Project name: DRYAD UK
Institution/Funder/Manager: British Library, University of Oxford, JISC
Project Description: Dryad is an international repository of data underlying peer-reviewed articles in the basic and applied biosciences as published by a Consortium of Journals. Dryad UK aims to expand Dryad into the UK by establishing a UK mirror site and extending service to new publishers and disciplines.
Area/Discipline: Biomedical Sciences

Project name: EDgrid Central: Data Repository System for 3-D Full-Scale Earthquake Testing Facility
Institution/Funder/Manager: National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan
Project Description: A data repository system called EDgrid Central is designed for storing huge amount of experiment data by using a 3-D full-scale earthquake testing facility. The EDgrid Central prepares large storage capacity and implements a data modeling for the shake test in the backend. The frontend is a portal for users to retrieve the stored data by meta-data search and bulk download. This system uses the NEEScentral developed by the NEES project in the United States by enhancing search and download functionalities, according to the EDgrid users' requirements. The EDgrid Central allows facility sites to have a permanent repository of the shaking table experiment and it also enables civil engineering researchers to share their data and reports in their daily activities.
Area/Discipline: Geophysics

Project name: EIDCSR: Embedding Institutional Data Curation Services in Research
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Oxford, JISC
Project Description: The Embedding Institutional Data Curation Services in Research (EIDCSR) project aims to address the data management and curation requirements of three collaborating research groups in Oxford, by scoping their requirements and embedding selected elements of the digital curation lifecycle, including policy, workflow, and sustainability solutions within the research process. The workflows generated by the project are intended to scale to include other research domains and the outputs should be of use to other research intensive institutions. Project runs until Dec'10.
Area/Discipline: Medical & Life Sciences

Project name: ERIM: Engineering Research Information Management
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Bath, UKOLN, JISC
Project Description: ERIM aims to specify in practical terms how effective data management can be enabled and supported in research projects, particular to support reuse or more broadly what can be thought of as 're-purposing'. The project will look primarily at the engineering research domain.
Area/Discipline: Engineering

Project name: EURO VO: European Virtual Observatory
Institution/Funder/Manager: CNRS, ESO, INAF, U Edinburgh
Project Description: The Virtual Observatory (VO) is an international astronomical community-based initiative. It aims to allow global electronic access to the available astronomical data archives of space and ground-based observatories and other sky survey databases. It also aims to enable data analysis techniques through a coordinating entity that will provide common standards, wide-network bandwidth, and state-of-the-art analysis tools. The EURO-VO project aims at deploying an operational VO in Europe. Its objectives are the support of the utilization of the VO tools and services by the scientific community, the technology take-up and VO compliant resource provision and the building of the technical infrastructure.
Area/Discipline: Astronomy

Project name: FISHnet
Institution/Funder/Manager: Centre for e-Research, King’s College London, JISC
Project Description: Freshwater information sharing network
Area/Discipline: Freshwater Biology

Project name: HALOGEN - History Archaeology Linguistics Onomastics and GENetics
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Leicester, JISC
Project Description: The cross-disciplinary Roots of the British collaboration between scholars in humanities and genetics seeks to interrogate the evidence for the migration and/or continuity of human populations in the British Isles in the distant past. The HALOGEN project will support the data management needs of the researchers involved and thus establish organisational best practice in terms of data management planning and the support of diverse cross-disciplinary research data.
Area/Discipline: Ancient history/Genetics

Project name: I2S2
Institution/Funder/Manager: UKOLN/DCC/Soton/STFC, JISC
Project Description: Infrastructure for integration in structural sciences
Area/Discipline: Chemistry (with a view towards inter-disciplinary application)

Project name: Incremental: A step by step approach to informing, improving, & increasing research data curation practice
Institution/Funder/Manager: Cambridge University Library, Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at U Glasgow, DCC, JISC
Project Description: The aim of Incremental is to inform, improve and increase research data curation within UK HEIs, by providing exemplars and resources for others to use. Specific objectives are: (1) to investigate current practices and requirements at each institution; (2) to develop a plan for addressing these requirements; (3) to pilot tools and services at each HEI and then make further adjustments and recommendations; (4) embed the work within each institution; and (5) to deliver resources and findings to the DCC, DPC and JISC for wider dissemination. In addition to resources, the project will seek to provide information about their cost and sustainability.
Area/Discipline: Archaeology, Chemistry, English, Engineering and Medicine

Project name: IODP: Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
Institution/Funder/Manager: National Science Foundation (NSF), Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
Project Description: IODP is an international marine research program that explores Earth's history and structure recorded in seafloor sediments and rocks, and monitors subseafloor environments. IODP builds upon the earlier successes of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), which revolutionized our view of Earth history and global processes through ocean basin exploration.
The IODP oversees repositories around the world. Samples are distributed according to ODP and IODP policies.
Area/Discipline: Marine Sciences

Project name: MaDaM
Institution/Funder/Manager: Manchester eResearch Centre, JISC
Project Description: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers
Area/Discipline: Biomedical Sciences

Project name: Managing Research Data: Gravitational Waves (MRD-GW)
Institution/Funder/Manager: STFC, University of Glasgow, JISC
Project Description: MRD-GW aims to examine the way in which Big Science data is managed, and produce recommendations as appropriate. Gravitational Wave (GW) data generated by the LIGO Scientific Consortium (LSC) will be used as a case-study.
Area/Discipline: Particle physics/Astronomy

Project name: PANGAEA
Institution/Funder/Manager: Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), DFG
Project Description: Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental Data
Area/Discipline: Earth Sciences

Project name: PEG-BOARD
Institution/Funder/Manager: School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, JISC
Project Description: Palaeoclimate and environment data generation - building open access to research data
Area/Discipline: Palaeoclimatology

Project name: Quixote
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Cambridge/CSIC
Project Description: The main objective/vision of the Quixote project is to design, test and deploy a modular, open source system of tools that allow computational chemistry data (now sitting in the darkness of individual hard-disks) to be organized, shared, and queried
Area/Discipline: Quantum Chemistry

Project name: Research Data MANTRA
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Edinburgh/JISC
Project Description: Aims to develop open, online learning materials which reflect best practice in research data management grounded in three disciplinary contexts: social science, clinical psychology, and geoscience. The resulting materials will be embedded in three participating postgraduate programmes and made available through the Transkills programme for use by all postgraduate and early career researchers as well as made available generally through an open license. In addition to web-based 'chapters' that students can work through at their own pace, the course will include video interviews with leading academics about data management challenges, and practical exercises in handling data in four software analysis environments: SPSS, NVivo, R and ArcGIS.
Area/Discipline: Social and political science, Geoscience, Clinical psychology

Project name: SageCite: Citing network models of disease and associated data
Institution/Funder/Manager: UKOLN, U Manchester, British Library, JISC
Project Description: SageCite will develop and test a Citation Framework linking data, methods and publications. The domain of bio-informatics provides a case study, and the project builds on existing infrastructure and tools. Citations of complex network models of disease and associated data will be embedded in leading publications, exploring issues around the citation of data including the compound nature of datasets, description standards and identifiers.
Area/Discipline: Bioinformatics

Project name: ShareGeo Open
Institution/Funder/Manager: EDINA, JISC
Project Description: ShareGeo Open is a spatial data repository that promotes data sharing between creators and users of geospatial data
Area/Discipline: Geography

Project name: SPQR: supporting productive queries for research
Institution/Funder/Manager: KCL, U Edinburgh, Humboldt U Berlin, JISC
Project Description: The overall aim is to investigate the potential of linked data for integrating datasets related to classical antiquity, in particular addressing the particular challenges raised by our material – its incompleteness, uncertainty and fuzziness. We will achieve this by developing mechanisms for breaking data out of silos and exposing it as linked data, using standard ontologies, and in particular the Europeana Data Model, as the semantic “glue” for linking data into a wider network of knowledge. The ultimate objective will be to create a common corpus or “RDF warehouse” of linked Classics data that can be explored, searched and enhanced by further annotations.
Area/Discipline: Classics, Epigraphy and Archaeology

Project name: SUDAMIH
Institution/Funder/Manager: University of Oxford, JISC
Project Description: Supporting data management infrastructure for the Humanities
Area/Discipline: Humanities

Project name: TARDIS
Institution/Funder/Manager: Monash University, Australian National Data Service (ANDS), University of Sidney and some other Australian institutions
Project Description: TARDIS is a multi-institutional collaborative venture that aims to facilitate the archiving and sharing of raw X-ray diffraction images (collectively known as a 'dataset') from the protein crystallography community.
Area/Discipline: Crystallography

Project name: VAMDC Project: Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Centre
Institution/Funder/Manager: EU, CNRS, CMSUC, UCL, OU, UNIVIE, UU, KOLN, INAF, QUB, AOB, ISRAN, RFNC-VNIITF, IAO, IVIC, INASAN
Project Description: VAMDC aims at building an interoperable e-Infrastructure for the exchange of atomic and molecular data. It embraces on the one hand scientists from a wide spectrum of disciplines in atomic and molecular (AM) Physics with a strong coupling to the users of their AM data (astrochemistry, atmospheric physics, plasmas) and on the other hand scientists and engineers from the ICT community used to deal with deploying interoperable e-infrastructure.
Area/Discipline: Astrophysics

Project name: WissGrid: Grid for Science
Institution/Funder/Manager: DFG, U Göttingen, Astrophysikalisches Institut (AIP), Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI), Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum GmbH (DKRZ), Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik (ZIB), Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG), Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (SUB), Technische U Dortmund (UDO), U Heidelberg, U Trier, U Wuppertal
Project Description: WissGrid’s objective is to establish long-term organisational and technical D-Grid structures for the academic world. WissGrid combines the heterogeneous needs from a variety of scientific disciplines and develops concepts for the long-term sustainable use of the organisational and technical grid infrastructure. In this context, the project aims to strengthen the organisational cooperation of scientists in the grid and to lower the entry barriers for new community grids.
Area/Discipline: Astrophysics, High Energy Physics, Climate Research, Medicine

Project name: XYZ Project
Institution/Funder/Manager: U Cambridge/IUCr/BioMed Central/Open Knowledge Foundation, JISC
Project Description: The XYZ Project will create a demonstrator of a new workflow for publishing data in support of full-text. The author prepares data for publication (if possible with validation) in a third-party trusted repository before the paper is submitted to a publisher. Our software will manage the deposition, release to reviewers, dis-embargo and for conventional publication or as a data journal
Area/Discipline: Crystallography

Besides this preliminary set of discipline-specific research data-related running projects -to be shortly enriched by Sonex with a complementary list of general purpose projects dealing with research data management- a thorough list of open data repositories for all areas may be found at the data repository section of the Open Access Directory (OAD).

OA-RJ Multiple Deposit meeting (HEFCE, London, 2010/04/08)

This meeting aims to debate relevant issues for the already running Open Access-Repository Junction (OA-RJ) project, as a means of advancing with successive phases of it. The meeting, organized by OA-RJ manager Theo Andrew (EDINA), joins up different stakeholders related to OA-RJ, such as publishers (NPG, UKPMC, BMC), funders, IR managers, the Sonex workgroup, the NAMES project, the SWORD protocol and JISC (represented by David Flanders and James Farnhill).

Some meeting conclusions from a Sonex viewpoint (general conclusions summarized by Theo in a post at the OARJ blog):

- The PEER project should be considered as a key reference for OA-RJ, at least at its initial stages, for there are important similarities between both projects. NPG has also taken part in the PEER project, which dealt mainly with publishers depositing authors' manuscripts into an array of IRs, and warns about risk of redundancy at this stage. However, publishers as deposit agents is just one of the OA-RJ lines of work, so overlapping between both projects should be just partial. Nevertheless, whenever PEER previous developments may be reused for OA-RJ purposes, a strong effort should be made to ensure this is done. Sonex may be of great help in achieving some degree of cooperation between both projects.

- The Sonex workgroup may eventually support the OA-RJ project for tackling some of the basic issues at design stage (such as the multiple copy vs one copy+multiple links dilemma or the way deposited items may be kept at the OA-RJ deposit until -and even after- receiving notification from target IRS of the item going live). These points are dealt with in the meeting, but there are still questions remaining and new issues are likely to show up along the project development. If Sonex succeeds in organising the proposed Deposit meeting (initially set for Oct'2010) on ongoing deposit initiatives worldwide, it may also be a good opportunity for discussing different approaches to the same objectives among members of the represented projects.

JISC Deposit Call

As of Mar 9, 2010, JISC Grant Funding Call 2/10 on "Deposit of research outputs and Exposing digital content for education and research" was released. Strand A in such call relates to Deposit, with the specific objective of "Ensuring take-up of solutions that enable and encourage author deposit of Open Access research outputs into repositories by embedding deposit into research or related practice". Sonex already working on the issue, there is an opportunity for the workgroup to assist projects funded under the JISC Deposit Call by supplying the bigger picture of repository deposit. The possibility of providing a webspace where people interested in deposit can go to learn about deposit work was also suggested.