8th International JISC/CNI meeting 2010: "Managing data in difficult times"

Along Jul 1-2, 2010, JISC and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) are holding their 8th International meeting 2010 in Edinburgh, under title "Managing data in difficult times". This meeting joins experts from the US, Europe and the UK to examine policies, strategies, technologies and infrastructure to manage research and teaching data in a fast changing technological and economic environment.

Topics for sessions include: Cloud Computing; Innovation in Learning and Teaching; Open Data Policies; Shared Services; Repositories; Digital Content and Institutional Planning; Resource Discovery; Digital Preservation; e-Science (see meeting programme).

Peter Burnhill from EDINA National Data Centre Edinburgh and member of the Sonex workgroup will deliver a presentation on "Repositories Update UK" at the Repositories update session on Conference Day 2 - which includes also a talk on "Repositories Update US" by Sandy Payette, DuraSpace. Presentation by Peter Burnhill will be shortly available here.

CRIS2010 Aalborg: a brief report

The 10th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems (CRIS2010), "Connecting Science with Society: The Role of Research Information in a Knowledge-Based Society", was held last week (June 2nd-5th) at Aalborg University, Denmark. Organised by the euroCRIS association, the conference "aimed to give insight into the role of CRIS in terms of shaping the research agenda and transferring research outcomes from the laboratory to areas of usage and application". Updated information on projects and initiatives for devising CRIS-based National and Institutional Research Information Systems was presented, see conference programme. CRIS2010 presentations will be shortly posted at the conference website.

Some comments below on the outcome of discussions at CRIS2010:

• All across Europe and beyond, CERIF is spreading as an increasingly accepted standard for building Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) both at national and institutional levels. Previously existing databases and management systems at HEIs are frequently undergoing adaption to CERIF.
  


• CERIF-based National Research Information Systems for research management and assessment (such as NARCIS in The Netherlands, Frida in Norway, U-GOV in Italy or the USDA-CRIS in the United States) usually rely on CERIF-compliant Institutional CRISs for supplying the underlying institutional information. This often leads to a two-way strategy for infrastructure development, where National and Institutional Systems are simultaneously being built.
  


• As a consequence, there is an increasing number of CERIF-compliant National Research Information Systems in operation, and more of them are in progress (eg DeGóis in Portugal or SEMAT in Iran).
  


• At institutional level there is also a growing trend towards adoption of CERIF-based solutions, either developed inhouse or based on CERIF-compliant commercial CRISs: there are already several examples of ePrints being upgraded to PURE (presently the most successful of such commercial solutions) in the UK and elsewhere. This trend leads to a variety of resources available at institutional level depending on the adopted strategy: some institutions have plain CRIS systems, others work with CRIS/IR integrated solutions and finally there are also some universities running CERIF-based enhanced-IRs.
  


• The Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) is by no means a closed standard at this point, but it benefits from interaction with existing National, Subject and Institutional Research Information Systems in order to "epitaxially" enrich its description features for providing solutions to various system needs.
  


• A wide array of commercial solutions is presently flourishing around the area of institutional research system implementation or enhancement, such as Atira PURE, Avedas Converis or Symplectic Repository Tools to mention just some examples.
  


• There are interoperability issues still to be tackled at various points of CRIS/OAR and CRIS/CRIS integration, but remarkable progress is underway, both from publicly-funded international projects and from private companies.
  


• The presently soundest example of Author ID standard, Dutch DAI, having been driven by institutional integration purposes, CERIF & euroCRIS initiatives could possibly bring in a new momentum for solving pending Author ID issues, as it is a basic requirement for operation of both National and Institutional Research Information Systems.
  


• Despite the fact that "everything being seemingly developed at the same time doesn't make things easier" (quote from Sonex BoF at OR10 preliminary list of issues), important progresses are clearly taking place worldwide on the field of research information system implementation. Some integrated research system development strategy from planning bodies, particularly at institutional environments, may therefore be useful for adapting to the rapidly changing landscape.

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).
  

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 Project	STM-Assoc/ESF/Max Planck G/UGöttingen/INRIA/SURF/ UBielefeld	EU	Julia Wallace (STM)/Foudil Bretel (INRIA)
Open Access Repository Junction (OA-RJ)	EDINA	UK	Theo Andrew (EDINA)
BMC Deposit into DSpace@MIT	BMC/MIT	UK/US	Matthew Cockerill (BMC)
National & Institutional CRIS/IR integration initiatives
NARCIS	Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)	NL	Elly Dijk (KNAW)
Enrich: Repository and Research System Integration	University of Glasgow	UK	William Nixon (U Glasgow)
CRISPool	University of St. Andrews	UK	Anna Clements (U St. Andrews)
TDC Systems Integration	TCD	IE	Niamh Brennan (TCD)
U-GOV	CINECA Consorzio Interuniversitario	IT	Nicola Bertazzoni (CINECA)
CRIStin	University Centre for Information Technology (USIT-UiO)	NO	Anne Asserson (U Bergen, UiB)
Aramis	State Secretariat for Education and Research (SER)	CH	Beat Sottas (SER)
USDA-CRIS	US Dept Agriculture. National Institute of Food and Agriculture	US	Carolyn Deckers, Juanita Hammond, Teresa Bailey (USDA)
RCAAP/DeGóis Integration	UMIC/FCCN/FCT	PT	Eloy Rodrigues (UMinho)
RIS/IR Integration at UPC	Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)	ES	Jordi Serrano, Toni Prieto (UPC)
CRIS/OAR Interoperability Project	KE/DTU	DK	Mikael K. Elbæk (DTU), Mogens Sandfær (DTIC)
CCLRC Corporate Data Repository (CDR)	Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC)	UK	E. Grabczewski (CCLRC)
SEMAT	Iranian Research Institute for Information Science & Technology (Irandoc)	IR	Omid Fatemi (Irandoc)
Commercial initiatives
Article Authoring Add-in	MS Research	US	Lee Dirks/Alex Wade (MS Research)
Repository tools	Symplectic Ltd	UK	Richard Jones (Symplectic Ltd)
Pure	Atira	DK	Bo Alroe (Atira)
Converis	Avedas	DE	Rudolf Weiss (Avedas)
Enovation Solutions	Enovation	IE	Gavin Henrick (Enovation)
Other
SWORD Project	UKOLN/JISC	UK	Adrian Stevenson (UKOLN), Julie Allinson (U York)
York Digital Library - Integration for the Next Generation (YODL-ING)	University of York/University of Leeds	UK	Julie Allinson (University of York)
EasyDeposit – SWORD deposit tool creator	University of Auckland	NZ	Stuart Lewis (U Auckland)

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.

'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.

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.