One of JISC’s key aims in developing the Information Environment is to create a layer of scholarly resources which are freely available to all. This last year has seen some important landmarks towards reaching that goal.
| Information Environment highlights |
|
 Interview Alison Allden, JIIE Committee Chair
Download MP3 |
| Repositories Support project launched to increase adoption and use of institutional repositories |
| Projects & services (ie OpenDOAR) support authors and researchers with self-archiving in institutional repositories |
| OpenDOAR awarded SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications |
| RoMEO entries doubled - listing 300 publisher policies on self-archiving |
| Major JISC repositories conference held |
| The Depot launched - a national JISC-funded repository based at EDINA |
| Nearly half of FE colleges and more than two thirds of universities are now subscribed users of Jorum |
| Users & Innovation programme begins and conference explores the role social software can play in education |
| Scholarly Communications |
| Major international consultative conference held with a focus on open access issues |
| UK PubMed Central launched - jointly-funded by JISC as part of a 9-strong group of UK research funders |
| Major petition to the European Commission to adopt polices guaranteeing free public access to research results |
The Repositories Support Project (RSP) launched in January. Led by
SHERPA at the
University of
Nottingham, the project aims to increase the pace of adoption and use of institutional repositories across the
UK by providing practical advice and guidance. Although many institutions are well advanced in establishing repositories, the deployment of repositories is generally still uneven and the RSP is focusing on the operational issues of establishing and developing institutional repositories and promoting their use.
The work of the RSP is being supported through further capital investment through the Startup and Enhancement projects which began this year. Representing a novel and innovative approach to the funding of institutional development activity, the programme is awarding matching funding to those institutions which have demonstrated a level of long-term, institution-wide buy-in to the development of their repositories. Such an approach will ensure that sustainability is a key aspect of the emerging network of institutional repositories currently being developed across the UK.
Projects and services to support self-archiving in institutional repositories have also grown over the last year, providing invaluable services to authors and researchers. For example, OpenDOAR - the Directory of Open Access Repositories, developed by SHERPA - has now surveyed over 1000 candidate sites worldwide for inclusion in its list and, on the basis of this, produced a quality assured list of some 986 repositories.
OpenDOAR also released a trial search service for academics and researchers around the world which allows full-text searching from its list of repositories. Developments such as these ensured that OpenDOAR was selected as the leader in a global survey of 23 repository listings carried out by John Hopkins University and SHERPA awarded the prestigious SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications.
Listen to the podcast on how JISC is supporting the development of repositories
The JISC-funded SHERPA partnership also continued to develop its RoMEO service. RoMEO offers users the ability to look at summaries of publishers’ copyright policies in relation to self-archiving and to see if policies comply with funding regulations. RoMEO saw its entries double in the past year and now lists 300 publisher policies on self-archiving.
Electronic theses have been identified as a central element of the national infrastructure for research and 
this year saw a fully integrated national electronic theses service move a step closer with the launch of a 2-year project - EThOSnet – which will establish a live service run by the British Library in 1 years’ time. JISC and CURL (Consortium of Research Libraries), with the support of participating libraries, are funding the project to widen access to what is a rich and vast, but up to now almost invisible and untapped resource for researchers, making UK theses openly available for global use and providing an international showcase for some of the best of UK research. A briefing paper outlining the benefits of a national e-theses service and how institutions themselves can contribute to it was published and distributed during the year.
The academic year ended with a major JISC repositories conference held in Manchester which attracted nearly 200 representatives from higher education across the UK. Professor Drummond Bone, President of Universities UK and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, gave the keynote speech, suggesting that repositories are vital to the UK’s global competitiveness in research, science and innovation and praising JISC’s work in supporting their development.
Listen to the podcast with Professor Drummond Bone (Universities UK) talking about JISC’s repositories work
The conference also marked the launch of the Depot, a national JISC-funded repository based at EDINA. The Depot allows UK researchers without alternative access to a suitable open access repository to deposit their academic papers and other outputs under terms of Open Access,. The new facility, with its simple message and advice to “put it in the Depot”, represents an important step in the development of a scholarly communications environment for UK education and research.
Listen to the podcast with Peter Burnhill of EDINA about The Depot repository
While the needs of the research community have largely driven the development of repositories, JISC is also working to support their use in learning and teaching. The continued growth of Jorum, JISC’s national repository for online teaching materials, is evidence that repositories have application beyond their widespread use in research. Nearly half of further education colleges and more than two thirds of universities are now subscribed users of Jorum while 1 in 10 colleges and 1 in 5 universities are now actively contributing their resources for others to use and adapt.
The Users and Innovation programme began this year and is working to a new model – that of an initial community input and user needs phase, leading directly to development, specifically in the areas of emergent technologies and social software. The Emerge project, a consortium led by Oxford Brookes University and the University of Essex, formed the core first phase of the programme, bringing together a community of around 170 academics from over 50 institutions and providing both online and face-to-face opportunities to collaborate. This community is shortly to end its initial phase of community-building, and a range of development projects will be announced shortly.
The programme held a successful Next Generation Environments one-day conference in April at Aston Business School, exploring the role social software can play in education. This, and other aspects of the programme, received significant national press attention over the last year.
Listen to the podcast on Web 2.0 and how it is impacting education
The JISC IPR Consultancy has continued to provide expert advice and support to JISC over the last year, producing detailed papers on derived data (PDF), Web 2.0, rights management in FE and HE and Creative Commons licenses and developing and implementing an IPR Policy for JISC, including the development of supporting materials for JISC programme managers. The consultancy responded on behalf of JISC to the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, a major review looking to assess how far the UK’s Intellectual Property framework is fit for the digital age.
Listen to the podcast with the JISC IPR consultants on the challenges facing Web 2.0 users within education
Scholarly Communications
Technology is transforming research, supporting new ways of publication and dissemination of research outputs. Much of JISC’s work in this area is taken forward by its Scholarly Communications Group which this year continued its work to investigate how JISC can work with partners to exploit the full potential of ICT to support sustainable and cost-effective changes in scholarly communications.
In September 2006 a major international consultative conference took place under the auspices of the SCG which brought together leading representatives of key stakeholder groups – including funding agencies, authors, publishers and librarians - to share new developments and inform future strategy, with a particular focus on the issues around open access. Over the two days of the conference, presentations were given from each stakeholder perspective and the conference ended with some important points for action which JISC is taking forward through the SCG and other bodies.
The new year saw the launch of UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) which JISC is jointly funding as part of a 9-strong group of UK research funders. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UKPMC will provide free access to an online digital archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.
An example of international collaboration in this area is the publication by JISC and SURF – JISC’s counterpart organisation in the Netherlands – of a model agreement that will help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of a journal article. This Licence to Publish is the result of several years of international consultation and aims to establish a balance of rights and interests in the emerging scholarly communications environment with the overarching principle being that the results of publicly funded research should be made freely and openly available, and as quickly as possible, to all who want to access them.
International collaboration between JISC and partners also resulted in a major petition calling on the European Commission to adopt polices to guarantee free public access to research results which was delivered to Janez Potocnik, EU Commissioner for Science and Research. Nobel laureates were among the more than 20,000 individuals who signed the petition, which was also signed by nearly 750 education, research and cultural organisations from around the world. The petition called on the EC to formally endorse the recommendations outlined in the EC-commissioned Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe (PDF). The petition was sponsored by JISC, the SURF Foundation, SPARC Europe, DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany), DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek, Denmark).