The Networking People (TNP) and Jisc are pleased to announce TNP’s appointment to the nationwide telecommunications framework, a service from Jisc.
This will bringing innovative high-capacity connectivity to further education (FE) and higher education (HE) institutions and research organisations across the UK. This provides these organisations flexibility with access to TNP’s range of innovative and cost-effective point-to-point wide-area network solutions.
The new framework began on 20 June and runs for four years until 19 June 2018. Split into two lots – namely, managed transmission services and dark fibre – it may be used by further and higher education purchasing consortia, specialist colleges and research council establishments in the UK. The framework enables the purchase of transmission services including leased circuits, dark fibre, wide-area Ethernet and xDSL.
“We’re committed to providing our community with the best value services to suit business needs,”
said Steve Kennett, head of operational services at Janet: a part of Jisc.
“Our framework makes it possible for the research and education community to save time and money when purchasing a range of transmission services. There’s no need for customers to go through the procurement process unless they wish to run a competition between suppliers that we have shortlisted and evaluated. Imagine the time that saves.”
Chris Wade, commercial director at TNP, said:
“This agreement further demonstrates TNP’s real commitment to the public sector and to education in particular. Users of the framework will be able to benefit directly from our experience in designing, building and supporting higher education based networks. In addition to cost effective leased line solutions, TNP offers the ability for customers to own their own infrastructure, reducing operating costs and leveraging existing investment with the option of using alternative technologies.
We allow much greater flexibility and long-term sustainability, which we know is sorely needed in the education sector. We’re thrilled to have received this recognition on a national scale, validating TNP as a major player within the UK education sector.”
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The Wellcome Library and Jisc today announce nine partner institutions whose holdings will be digitised and added to the UK Medical Heritage Library, an online resource for the history of medicine and related sciences.
Six university libraries have joined the partnership – UCL (University College London), University of Leeds, University of Glasgow, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Kings College London and University of Bristol – along with the libraries of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Approximately 15 million pages of printed books and pamphlets from all ten partners will be digitised over a period of two years and will be made freely available to researchers and the public under an open licence. By pooling their collections the partners will create a comprehensive online library. The content will be available on multiple platforms to broaden access, including the Internet Archive, the Wellcome Library and Jisc Historic Books.
The project's focus is on books and pamphlets from the 19th century that are on the subject of medicine or its related disciplines. This will include works relating to the medical sciences, consumer health, sport and fitness, as well as different kinds of medical practice, from phrenology to hydrotherapy.
Works on food and nutrition will also feature: around 1400 cookery books from the University of Leeds are among those lined up for digitisation. They, along with works from the other partner institutions, will be transported to the Wellcome Library in London where a team from the Internet Archive will undertake the digitisation work. The project will build on the success of the US-based Medical Heritage Library consortium, of which the Wellcome Library is a part, which has already digitised over 50 000 books and pamphlets.
Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, said:
"We are pleased that these nine institutions have chosen to add their valuable collections to the Medical Heritage Library. As well as our partners Jisc and Research Libraries UK, we will be working closely with our Academic Advisory Group to produce an online resource that is both a repository for a superb wealth of content and an effective research tool for a broad range of users."
Peter Findlay, digital portfolio manager, Jisc, said:
"We are delighted that the Wellcome Library team has been able to identify such valuable collections, which will be digitised to a high standard, freed from the confines of their original format and made openly available for teaching, learning and research. By working closely with the partner institutions to build the UK Medical Heritage Library, we are converting books into searchable data so that users can explore every aspect of 19th-century medicine and develop new insights into this period of unprecedented medical discovery."
The UK MHL initiative started in 2013 when the Wellcome Library embarked on a project with the Internet Archive to digitise their collection of 19th-century medical books. The project was extended earlier in 2014 with the support of Jisc and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It was co-designed with Research Libraries UK and is informed by an Academic Advisory Group to ensure that the best collections are included.
For the Wellcome Library this forms part of a larger ambition to digitise and make freely available over 50 million pages of historical medical books, archives, manuscripts and journals by 2020.
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The Myerscough College board of governors is conferring an honorary college fellowship on Sal Cooke in recognition of her ‘outstanding career in the use of pioneering technology, particularly within the education sector.’
This is the highest honour that the college can bestow and is given to inspirational people from the world of business, sport, entertainment and education.
Professor Stephanie Marshall, chief executive of the Higher Education Academy, said:
“This fellowship is very well-deserved and I’m delighted that Sal has been recognised in this way. I have worked closely with her over the years and her commitment and enthusiasm is second to none. Through Sal’s leadership Jisc TechDis has made a remarkable impact on the learning experience of thousands of students and I congratulate her on this achievement.”
Sal has taught in schools, further and higher education. In the early 1980s, she was seconded as the curriculum manager for the Yorkshire and Humber regional centre where she was to introduce technology to the curriculum of further education colleges as technology moved from the BBC computers to the first PCs.
As a result of the success of this project, Sal was seconded to Becta and subsequently other organisations, where she worked with partners such as the BBC, the funding councils and the Learning & Teaching Subject Network (a precursor of the Higher Education Academy). This led to working at the Department of Education and Skills as an adviser where she was integral to the creation of the e-learning strategies in higher and further education.
In 2000 Sal was asked to sit on one of the Jisc committees and took a lead role in the formation of the Jisc Regional Support Centres and was chair of their UK board for the first three years. Sal became the director of Jisc TechDis, the Jisc advisory service that provides advice on technologies for inclusion, when it re-located to the Higher Education Academy office in York ten years ago. Sal continues to bring vision, energy and enthusiasm to the role, working to promote the use of technology for independent learning, working and living, wherever she can. This includes more recently, within the charity sector, as currently she is a serving trustee of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Stephen Rigby, Chairman of Myerscough College Corporation, presented Sal with her fellowship at the Myerscough higher education presentation of awards ceremony which took place on the afternoon of Thursday 10 July 2014. Sal said:
“I was quite overwhelmed and pleasantly shocked when I received the letter from Myerscough. I feel that although this is a tremendous honour, I have to acknowledge that much of what I have achieved is down to the excellent teams and colleagues that I have had the pleasure of working with, throughout my long and varied career."
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AAAS and Jisc are pleased to announce an agreement which will give researchers, teachers and learners free access to over 100 years of peer-reviewed scientific news, commentary and cutting-edge research.
The Science Classic archive will be available to staff and students in UK higher and further education and the research councils.
Founded in the late 19th century on $10,000 of seed money from the American inventor Thomas Edison, Science is now the largest paid circulation peer-reviewed general-science journal. The archive runs from its 1880 foundation until the online version was launched in 1997 and includes historically significant articles on the human genome, breast and colon cancer genes, and the Bose-Einstein condensate in physics.
Lorraine Estelle, executive director digital resources, Jisc and divisional CEO Jisc Collections said:
“With this agreement Jisc is pleased to be able to make more high quality research available free of charge to researchers, teachers and learners in UK universities and colleges. This purchase will save institutions money and increase the ability of institutions to provide their users with the best materials for research, teaching and learning.
It also adds to the significant investment that Jisc has already made in journal archives for UK institutions over the last decade, adding over 160,000 articles to a collection of over 3.75million articles already purchased on behalf of institutions.”
Beth Rosner, the publisher of Science, said:
“We are very pleased to provide researchers in the United Kingdom with access to the Science Classic archive, which delivers peer-reviewed scientific research and commentary from 1880 until 1996. Our partnership with Jisc will help advance the research capabilities at UK institutions of higher and further education by providing full-text access to this prestigious source of research knowledge.”
via Jisc news
AAAS and Jisc are pleased to announce an agreement which will give researchers, teachers and learners free access to over 100 years of peer-reviewed scientific news, commentary and cutting-edge research.
The Science Classic archive will be available to staff and students in UK higher and further education and the research councils.
Founded in the late 19th century on $10,000 of seed money from the American inventor Thomas Edison, Science is now the largest paid circulation peer-reviewed general-science journal. The archive runs from its 1880 foundation until the online version was launched in 1997 and includes historically significant articles on the human genome, breast and colon cancer genes, and the Bose-Einstein condensate in physics.
Lorraine Estelle, executive director digital resources, Jisc and divisional CEO Jisc Collections said:
“With this agreement Jisc is pleased to be able to make more high quality research available free of charge to researchers, teachers and learners in UK universities and colleges. This purchase will save institutions money and increase the ability of institutions to provide their users with the best materials for research, teaching and learning.
It also adds to the significant investment that Jisc has already made in journal archives for UK institutions over the last decade, adding over 160,000 articles to a collection of over 3.75million articles already purchased on behalf of institutions.”
Beth Rosner, the publisher of Science, said:
“We are very pleased to provide researchers in the United Kingdom with access to the Science Classic archive, which delivers peer-reviewed scientific research and commentary from 1880 until 1996. Our partnership with Jisc will help advance the research capabilities at UK institutions of higher and further education by providing full-text access to this prestigious source of research knowledge.”
via Jisc news
The 20 winners of this year’s Summer of Student Innovation competition have been announced today.
Winning teams will develop digital technologies to improve every aspect of students’ experience, from work-planning and making sure they eat well to improving exam performance and boosting employability.
The winning students will each receive an award of £5,000 from Jisc to develop their ideas into tools that can be used by fellow students, colleges and universities. They’ll also attend a series of summer schools to help them develop their project management and entrepreneurial skills and give them an opportunity to learn from experts in digital technology.
Dr John Shemilt, director of ICT, Imperial and Summer of Student Innovation steering group member said:
“It is fantastic to see such great ideas put forward this year, building on the success of last year’s competition. It gives a real insight into what the students see as important. I’m looking forward to the autumn showcase event, it will be rewarding to see how these ideas have grown and been developed by the students.”
The competition attracted dozens of entries from further education, undergraduate and postgraduate students and 8,400 votes from 160 institutions as their peers voted on the Jisc Elevator website.
The winning ideas will be developed over the summer and presented to universities and colleges later in the year. This will give the students a chance to pitch their ideas and offer individual universities and colleges an early opportunity to adopt these new technologies.
This is the second time the Summer of Student Innovation competition has been run. A number of the 2013 winners have successfully developed their concepts and have seen them start to take off both in the UK and overseas: several of these have been selected by Jisc to receive further development support. Call for Participants’ Matt Terrell comments:
“We are just adding the finishing touches to the new website being launched late this summer, while fast approaching another milestone - registered users from 200 different institutions. The grant enabled us to speed up our development process, and working with Jisc has provided us with many useful connections.
I am very excited about this year’s competition winners as there are some interesting ideas and innovations, many of which I can see being adopted by students and institution staff as early as next year, if not before.”
The Summer of Student Innovation is managed by Jisc and is a co-design project with Research Libraries UK (RLUK), Russell Universities’ Group of IT Directors (RUGIT), the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL), Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) and the Association for Learning Technology (ALT).
For more information visit the Summer of Student Innovation web pages. To join the conversation on Twitter, use #studentideas
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Last night Loughborough University were announced as the winners of the Departmental ICT Initiative of the Year, sponsored by Jisc, at the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards 2014.
The awards, announced by the evening’s host, comedian Rob Brydon, celebrate the extraordinary innovation, teamwork and commercial acumen of UK higher education institutions, from HR to estates and finance to fundraising.
Loughborough University’s winning entry came from their school of aeronautical, automotive, chemical and materials engineering. The team used information and communications technology to transform its student placement process to improve its efficiency and provide a better student experience.
An 18 month project started in 2012 to upgrade the university’s in-house Co-Tutor platform and develop a set of standard digital forms. After a series of consultations with staff and students, a ‘service blueprint’ was developed that outlined how the school would use ICT to improve its placement processes.
Co-Tutor now keeps placement information in an organised central repository, monitors the submission of health and safety forms, makes allocating placement supervisors quick and easy, and ensures that placement information is kept in line with the Data Protection Act. To date, it has facilitated more than 700 industrial placements.
Martyn Harrow, Jisc’s chief executive and a member of the judging panel, said:
“In a strong field, Loughborough’s entry stood out as best meeting the brief and demonstrating impressive results.
The judges particularly recognised the imaginative yet highly systematic approach to collaboration between staff, students and developers that drove the success.”
Professor Morag Bell, pro vice-chancellor (teaching) at Loughborough University, said:
“We are delighted that Loughborough has received this prestigious award. It recognises the way in which different parts of the university work in partnership to develop the efficiency of our processes and provide an enhanced service to our students.”
See the full list of award winners on the Times Higher Leadership and Management Awards 2014 website.
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Jisc welcomes the publication of the Government response to the independent report, produced by the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG), encouraging innovation in the use of technology by the UK further education system.
Matthew Hancock, Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise, explains in the executive summary that the aim of the report is to remove the obstacles for providers to harness digital technologies. This is so they are able to potentially 'engage more learners, improve the learning experience and enhance [their own] effectiveness and efficiency'.
Nigel Ecclesfield, head of change implementation support programmes – further education and skills at Jisc, said:
“We look forward to working with the Education & Training Foundation and sector membership partners through our experts, services and technological infrastructure to transform the UK’s digital learning experience.
“Working together across the sector we will contribute to the developments sought by FELTAG in particular across technology horizon scanning, investment and capital infrastructure, relationships between the further education community and employers, engaging learners, access and inclusion.
“Through this work we’ll help providers, learners and the sector workforce improve their use and implementation of digital technologies across all aspects of the FE and skills sector.”
Jisc is closely involved in the work with Educational Technology Advisory Group (ETAG) working with both the Department for Education and BIS as well as HE and FE stakeholders contributing our detailed knowledge of the higher education sector to that already provided for FELTAG on FE and skills.
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Jisc and the National Crime Agency (NCA) are today reminding UK computer users that there is still time to protect themselves from the GoZeuS and CryptoLocker malicious software (malware) threats.
On Monday 2 June, the NCA announced that an international operation had temporarily weakened the global network of infected computers, providing a two–week opportunity for members of the public to rid themselves of the malware and help prevent future infection.
That two week period ends at Midnight on Tuesday 17 June. Before then, individuals and businesses can take full advantage of the criminal network’s relative weakness by updating security software, running system scans, and checking that computer operating systems are up to date.
Those in the education and research sector can find tailored information on the Janet Computer Security and Incident Response Team (CSIRT) blog.
Andy Archibald, head of the national cyber crime unit, NCA, said:
“This is about taking a few simple steps to keep your money and personal information in your hands, rather than those of international criminals. While there is never a bad time to maximise your online security, and it is something we should all do regularly, acting now can provide unprecedented levels of protection from these types of malware. If you haven’t already, we urge individuals and small businesses alike to take action this weekend.”
Tim Marshall, executive director technology and infrastructure, Jisc and divisional CEO Janet, said:
“The internet is crucial to modern life and particularly to those in the education and research sector. So we are pleased to work with the NCA to help make digital technologies for education and research safer.”
Members of the public who think they have lost money through malware such as GoZeuS and CryptoLocker should report it.
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Today Jisc welcomed reforms to copyright law that expand the ability of ‘authorised bodies’, including colleges and universities, to copy work and make it more accessible for disabled people.
It does this by removing previous legal restrictions on what can be copied and by whom.
All disabled people, regardless of impairment, are now covered by the legislation where their impairment affects their ability to access work on an equal basis to someone without the impairment. The previous law restricted the exception to visually impaired persons only. This brings the law more in line with the Equality Act 2010 definition of disability and means, for example, that students with dyslexia are now covered by the exception.
All copyright work is now covered, including recordings of performances and broadcasts, film and video clips.
Betty Willder, legal information specialist, Jisc Legal said:
"Universities and colleges, as authorised bodies under the reforms, can now make more materials than ever accessible to disabled students. They can for example now subtitle a lawful broadcast or a video clip for disabled learners, where there is no commercial alternative available, without risk of infringing copyright.
These changes are a positive step forward in bringing copyright law up-to-date with the digital learning environment and accessibility needs."
Alistair McNaught, senior adviser, Jisc TechDis said,
“These changes are of great significance to library and disability staff in higher and further education. They can now support learners more quickly and confidently because the law is more inclusive and much clearer.
Ideally, learning materials and textbooks should be created so they are accessible at source for all learners. I hope these reforms will increase demand from staff and students thereby putting more pressure on suppliers to do just that.”
Jisc is providing support and guidance for UK colleges and universities on the changes.
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A new agreement for a national license between Jisc and ProQuest will enable access for the UK higher education community to two major digital archives: Early European Books Collections 1-4 and The Vogue Archive.
Providing access to almost 25,000 rare and often unique books, Early European Books is a key resource for those with a strong research interest in the period from 1450 – 1700, delivering a wide variety of primary sources from one of the most fascinating and influential periods in Western history and has been developed in collaboration with a range of major European libraries. Very few libraries have access to such a large corpus of works as Early European Books offers and researchers and students will now be able to view this material wherever and whenever they choose.
Updated monthly with the most recent edition of the magazine, The Vogue Archive gives researchers of fashion, photography, advertising and history access to the entire publication run of the US edition of Vogue magazine, back to its first issue in 1892. Fashion marketing students will be able to research the history of a brand identity by viewing every advertisement featured, whilst researchers in cultural and gender studies can explore themes such as body image, gender roles and social tastes from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The collection contains over 400,000 pages, reproduced as high resolution full colour images, along with very rich indexing and metadata.
We champion the use of digital services and solutions in UK colleges and universities and working with ProQuest to make these archives available to researchers will help us achieve this aim. Having both of these products available on the one ProQuest platform will enhance efficiency in accessibility which will benefit both the students and those teaching them.
Lorraine Estelle, executive director content and discovery, Jisc and divisional CEO Jisc Collections said:
“We are committed to making scholarship as accessible as possible across UK institutions and are thus very pleased to ensure all libraries can have access to Early European Books and the wealth of material it contains. We have long seen the potential of The Vogue Archive to support education across many disciplines – not only those with a focus on fashion – and look forward to it being a well-used resource in higher and further education.”
Stephen Brooks, senior director for literature and the arts at ProQuest said,
“This agreement is great news for researchers and students across a range of disciplines; providing them with access to a vast collection of new, digitised content. We are incredibly passionate about meeting researcher needs around the world and this partnership is a valuable and effective way for us to achieve this goal. We applaud Jisc for its recognition of the potential for these resources to impact research in the UK and will continue to work closely with Jisc and the higher education community to support its use of Early European Books and The Vogue Archive.”
via Jisc news
Light bulb moment? Apply by 30 May 2014 for £5k to develop your digital technology idea to improve student life.
17 further and higher education (FE and HE) student teams are already registered for this year’s Summer of Student Innovation, hoping for the chance to create technology solutions that could change the education landscape forever.
The Summer of Student Innovation is a Jisc co-design programme with RLUK; RUGIT; SCONUL; UCISA and ALT. Successful entrants will receive a £5,000 grant from Jisc to develop their education technology ideas, with the aim of improving students’ creative design, research, entrepreneurial and project management skills. The teams will also attend a series of nine innovation workshops between July and September. These events are designed to show off work in progress, offer the opportunity to learn from relevant experts and discuss ideas with other teams.
To enter, students must submit a two to five minute video pitch on the Jisc Elevator website alongside a short summary and a 300-500 word description which includes details on the benefits of their idea and its impact on research and education. To be considered for funding entrants must hit a target of 250 votes before 10 June 20141. Voting is open to everyone but votes must come from ten different FE and HE institutions.
The winners’ ideas will be showcased later this year to FE and HE IT directors, learning technologists and librarians offering them the chance to learn more about the benefits of these newly-developed technologies.
To enter your ideas and encourage your fellow students to vote for your suggestions visit the Jisc Elevator website or follow #studentideas on Twitter.
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Jisc is pleased to announce the launch of Aurora2, our new national dark fibre research and development platform.
The internet is built on fibre optic cables which are installed by the telecoms companies. Until light-emitting equipment is connected to the fibres they are ‘dark’. These fibre cables run under our cities and carry the internet services that we use every day. Aurora2 will also use these cables, but with its own dedicated fibres which will allow researchers to test new ideas without running the risk of disrupting the internet we all rely upon.
The network is funded jointly with the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and will enable researchers to develop the underpinning communications technologies for the future internet.
Dr David Salmon, research support unit manager, strategic technologies for Jisc’s network Janet said:
"We are delighted to be able to work with our funding partners and research colleagues to implement this important new facility. It will form the foundation of a very rich multi-layer environment now emerging in the UK within which new network techniques and technologies can be investigated.
The funding commitments give us a stable forward-look for the next five years, which in turn will encourage strong collaborations to form and exploit the facility to develop these techniques and the applications that will make use of them"
The new network will offer programmable transmission parameters, dynamic reconfiguration into multiple sub-networks and the ability to handle multiple transmission formats simultaneously.
The 5 year contract for Aurora2 has been awarded to UCL as prime contractor for a consortium comprising them and their partners at the universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Southampton. Aurora2 will provide access to a dedicated dark fibre network connecting these universities, with the possibility for onward connection to European and worldwide research networks.
Aurora2 can be configured remotely and dynamically enabling rapid and flexible configuration changes. Researchers in the UK, with a requirement to use the network, will be able to access it directly by placing equipment at consortium sites and connecting remotely using the Janet Lightpath service.
National dark fibre infrastructure service director, Professor Alwyn Seeds from UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering said:
“We are delighted that the EPSRC and Janet have enabled the creation of the new national dark fibre infrastructure service. This will enable UK researchers to remain at the forefront of technology research for the future internet. UK photonics and UK electronics are large industries with annual revenues of £10 billion and £29 billion respectively.
We will be working with leading UK companies to transfer technologies developed with the aid of national dark fibre infrastructure service into new products and services. The benefits to the UK economy will be correspondingly large."
National dark fibre infrastructure service technical director, Professor Dimitra Simeonidou from University of Bristol said:
"NDFIS will be a platform for experimentation and collaboration across ICT disciplines and user communities. The platform will use software defined network control principles and, as such, will be fully programmable by experimenters and end-users.
Internationally, national dark fibre infrastructure service will be the first experimental infrastructure of this kind and will generate new exciting opportunities to pioneer the development of hardware and software technologies for future communication systems"
As well as supporting research on the future core optical network which underpins the internet, Aurora2 will also enable research with experimental city-wide networks, such as the Gigabit Bristol network. It will also enable interaction with research on wireless access networks like 5G, the successor to 4G.
Jisc is committed to supporting Aurora2 to continue enabling researchers to shape the future of the internet.
via Jisc news
Jisc today announces with Arkivum Ltd that five of its member universities, Queens University Belfast, Gonville & Caius, UCL, and the universities of Leeds and York, have purchased the Arkivum data archiving service via the Janet Data Archive Framework Agreement which was announced 14 January 2014.
The five universities are the first to purchase the Arkivum service via the framework agreement, which enables fast and cost-effective archiving for research and education. Under the terms customers of Jisc’s network, Janet, benefit from pre-negotiated, preferential pricing and a fully managed, easy-to-use service, through a single supplier framework. It also allows all qualifying organisations to procure the archive service quickly without the administrative overhead and costs of an EU compliant competitive tender.
Rhys Davies, director of IT at the University of Leeds commented,
"The Arkivum service will allow us to provide a long term guaranteed data archiving service to researchers with virtually no up-front capital investment and no infrastructure to manage locally. The Janet framework agreement gives us confidence both in the quality of the service on offer and its value for money.
We have also benefitted from being able to use the standard contract for the service, which has been reviewed and approved as part of the comprehensive procurement process undertaken by the Janet Brokerage service on behalf of the sector."
Dan Perry, director of product and marketing for Jisc’s network Janet said:
“In a world with massively expanding data storage requirements it is great to see universities quickly realising the benefits of cost-effective, long-term data storage with Arkivum through the Janet framework. This demonstrates the power of Jisc to understand and aggregate the needs of the sector, work with partners and deliver the solution.”
Jim Cook, CEO Arkivum added:
“I’m thrilled that the framework agreement is benefitting Gonville & Caius, Leeds, York, UCL and also Queens Belfast universities. Our aim is simple; we want to offer the most competitive and cost-effective data archiving service that guarantees the integrity of your data, no matter how long you choose to archive it for.
Through the framework agreement institutions are guaranteed to receive competitive and pre-negotiated prices based on the total size of the Janet community and not just the size of their particular institution.”
via Jisc news
The opportunity for healthcare professionals to read cutting-edge research has been given a boost today by an agreement between Jisc and scientific journal publishers.
A year-long pilot will allow staff working across the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland free trial access to some of the most respected medical and scientific journals so they can read for themselves the latest trials and research. This is good news for evidence-based healthcare and will give healthcare professionals the opportunity to weigh up the latest developments in the study of disease.
A steering group comprising representatives from the UK academic sector, Jisc, NHS Education for Scotland and the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is overseeing this pilot. The publishers who have agreed to take part include: AAAS, Annual Reviews, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Royal Society of Chemistry and Springer.
Lorraine Estelle, executive director content and discovery and divisional CEO Jisc Collections said:
“Jisc is committed to opening up research so that academics and clinicians can read the latest studies and develop a broader understanding of disease and treatment. This work is supported by the government-commissioned Finch report into research availability which recommended that more research journals be available to healthcare professionals.”
Chair Dr Paul Ayris said on behalf of the steering group:
“Practitioners in the NHS will benefit from the content that is being made available in this pilot, based on the recommendations of the Finch Report. Access to high quality information is key to good clinical practice and patients can only benefit from the well-informed clinical community that will result from this work.”
After the trial period of a year the steering group will determine how to take forward future opportunities for NHS staff to access research journals. NHS practitioners should contact their trust or Health Board librarian for information on the trial.
via Jisc news
Alexander Street Press has forged an agreement with Jisc to provide access to video resources for colleges and universities in the UK using the publisher’s popular evidence-based acquisition (EBA) model.
The EBA agreement gives colleges and universities in the UK the opportunity to have unlimited access to Alexander Street Press’ complete suite of academic video titles - more than 33,000 titles - for up to one year at a time. At the end of this period, university staff can use Alexander Street Press’ detailed metrics to evaluate their patrons’ most-viewed titles and select those they’d like to incorporate into their permanent collection.
Gareth Bish, UK and Ireland sales manager at Alexander Street Press said:
“We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Jisc, not only because of their dedication to providing UK institutions with market-leading academic resources for scholarly research, teaching, and learning, but also because they are highly trusted by the academic library community to negotiate license agreements for digital media via flexible business models such as this.
We are thrilled to have their support for our EBA programme. In return, as part of our commitment to driving and analysing usage, we will be working with Jisc on enhanced provision of usage statistics for academic libraries.”
This agreement is the result of heightened interest in EBA, following agreements made in 2013 with the University of Dundee and Leeds Metropolitan University, and will further pave the way for libraries worldwide to add the most highly sought-after content to their collections in a precise, cost-effective way.
Lorraine Estelle, executive director content and discovery and divisional CEO Jisc Collections, Jisc said:
“Jisc Collections is very pleased to work with Alexander Street Press on bringing this evidence based acquisition model to the attention of academic libraries. The model has worked very successfully for some libraries in the acquisition of e-books and we believe it has the same potential in the area of multimedia.”
For more information about Alexander Street Press’ evidence-based acquisition model, please contact sales@alexanderstreet.com.
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Jisc is pleased to announce that those universities and colleges affected by the Open Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) bug, dubbed 'heartbleed', will be able to obtain replacement certificates through Jisc’s Janet Certificate Service for free.
SSL allows websites to demonstrate their authenticity to users. Most universities and colleges in the UK use OpenSSL for this process. Yesterday the heartbleed bug was detected in OpenSSL. Jisc’s Janet Certificate Service provides certificates in order to authenticate your website. This service is designed to speed up the process of requesting certificates for .ac.uk and .gov.uk domains and for other domains owned by UK universities and colleges. This service normally carries a fee of up to £35.
Affected universities and colleges are advised to follow the technical advice to protect their websites issued by Jisc-funded service, computer security incident response team (CSIRT).
Tim Kidd, operations director, said:
“As a trusted advisor to the education and research sector we are pleased to be offering advice and assistance to those affected by this issue. As well as technical advice we are offering affected universities and colleges replacement certificates free of charge. Any university or college affected and requiring a replacement certificate, should contact service@ja.net.”
If you have been affected by the heartbleed bug, and as a result need to replace SSL certificates, then please visit our community group to find out how to obtain yours for free.
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Jisc today welcomed the announcement by Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning that from 2016 they will expect all articles submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a system for assessing the quality of research, to be available by open access.
This framework will be used by the HEFCE, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland to inform the selective allocation of their research funding to higher education institutions. This means that any university which applies for research funding will have to show how they support open access.
This is potentially great news for universities and researchers keen to raise their profile and their impact. However, as with any benefit, it will require some investment on the part of the sector.
Jisc, the Association for Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) , Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) have come together to help universities reduce the investment needed so that good practice and lessons can be shared between those responsible for putting the REF policy into practice.
Lorraine Estelle, executive director of digital content and resource discovery and CEO Jisc Collections, said:
“There are few things to which universities pay more attention than the REF, so I’m delighted that Jisc is working so closely with our partners to help universities prepare for it, and gain the maximum benefit from doing so.“
Jisc works with the Open Access Implementation Group to offer a range of support and guidance which can help your university choose a model of open access which is right for your institution. We are supporting the open access implementation community with a number of Jisc-funded pathfinder projects, along with events, workshops and briefings over the next two years until the policy comes into force. And we are working with HEFCE, the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust to provide the Sherpa FACT service, advising authors on complying with open access policies.
Simon Kerridge (ARMA), Stella Butler (RLUK), Sara Marsh (SCONUL) and Neil Jacobs (Jisc) agree that
“working together in this way, our organisations can reduce the burden on universities as they adopt open access in ways that best suit their missions in a diverse higher education sector”
The future of research is open access. Jisc is proud to be ensuring that institutions are involved in shaping that future and equipped to get the best out of it.
via Jisc news
Today the Wellcome Library and Jisc are pleased to announce that they have strengthened their successful working relationship by signing a new three year agreement for the digitisation of more than 10 million pages of 19th century published works.
These are focused on medicine and related disciplines and drawn from university and other research libraries across the UK.
The Wellcome Library is one of the world’s major resources for the study of medical history and provides access to a growing collection of resources relating to contemporary medicine and biomedical science in society.
The Wellcome Library is digitising its 19th century collections. Jisc will support the digitisation of complementary collections which are housed within universities to create a comprehensive online resource for the history of medicine and related sciences. The Wellcome Library will also provide support to allow non-university research libraries to participate in the project. Open access to all of the content will be provided across multiple platforms, including the Wellcome Library’s website, the Internet Archive and through Jisc.
By collaborating on the creation, dissemination and aggregation of digital content the charities will streamline the provision of digitised historical medical content by deploying common standards, infrastructure and best practice.
The project will significantly increase the availability of digitised text for teaching learning and research. The project is being undertaken in partnership with a number of higher education and specialist libraries, co-designed with Research Libraries UK (RLUK), and informed by an academic advisory group.
Simon Chaplin, head of the Wellcome Library said:
“We are building on the success of the US-based Medical Heritage Library, which already has over 50,000 digitised books online – our project will add significantly to this. For the Wellcome Library, this forms part of a bigger project that will digitise over 50 million pages of historic medical books, archives, manuscripts and journals by 2020.”
Stella Butler, chair of RLUK and chair of the academic advisory group for the project said:
"RLUK is delighted to be working with Jisc and the Wellcome Library on this important project which will make a step change to the availability of research resource for humanities scholars enabling important projects in areas such as medical history, ethics and the social sciences.”
Lorraine Estelle, Jisc’s executive director content and discovery and divisional CEO Jisc Collections said:
“By working with the Wellcome Library and the Internet Archive to aggregate dispersed medical collections of books and pamphlets, we are building the UK’s research capability in the most sustainable way.
High quality digitisation allows text to be liberated from its page, and the resulting data enables new forms of research inquiry. The project also meets the increasing demand, from our customers, that traditional content should be made digital for use and reuse.”
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Student coursework is not the reason behind the huge increase in the number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests received by UK universities last year.
On average, just seven percent of the requests came from staff, researchers and students from other institutions and only five percent from a university’s own students. These percentages are lower than they were in 2005, the first year of the survey.
That’s one of the findings revealed in the ninth annual Jisc infoNet, GuildHE and Universities UK information legislation and management survey, which was published earlier this month following the Times Higher Education (THE) who reported the increase earlier this year.
The Jisc survey is broadly in line with THE’s own survey, showing that the number of FOI requests received by UK universities has risen by 43% since 2012 and by 147% in the last five years.
The 53 universities that took part in the survey averaged 184 FOI requests each, with 426 reported by one. In 2013 universities in Yorkshire and Humberside received most, followed by those in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Universities in the East Midlands and the East received fewest.
Journalists made the most FOI requests (26%), followed by members of the public (17%) and commercial organisations (13%). The key interests were student issues and numbers, followed by financial information, and HR and staff issues.
Last year was the busiest so far for FOI requests, and also the most unpredictable, with numbers varying between an average of just 11.2 in February to 26.8 in November. Moreover, the pattern of requests seen in previous years was broken, with the final quarter being the busiest for the first time since the survey started.
Jisc infoNet researcher and analyst Teresa Tocewicz comments,
“The big upsurge in FOI requests has put an added burden on universities, especially in 2013 when it became much harder to predict when they were likely to be made.
Even so, the HE sector managed to beat their performance in 2012 by dealing with 93% of requests within the 20 working days set out in the legislation. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to sustain that high level of performance without increased resources or organisational change.”
More details about the survey are available on the Jisc infoNet website.
via Jisc news
As part of World Storytelling Day today, a new scheme on technologies for inclusion and accessibility is launching called Jisc TechDis ambassadors.
It invites disabled learners to share stories celebrating technology, independence and individual achievement.
Sal Cooke, director of Jisc TechDis explains,
“An ambassador is someone with a disability who shares and celebrates their use of technology in learning or work. We are encouraging disabled learners (who are 16 or over) and staff to send in their personal stories. We want to know who you are, what technology you are using, what it does and how it helps you.”
The scheme provides a voice for disabled learners and a unique opportunity for them to share their specialist knowledge and skills with one another as well as with education providers across the UK. It gives us the chance to learn from them and for them to learn from one another.
Lisa Featherstone, adviser at Jisc TechDis says,
“There is a lot of discussion in the sector about bring your own device (BYOD) but very little consideration for enabling and assistive technologies within this discussion. The ambassador programme redresses this by showing how they use their devices in their own unique and personalised way.”
Ambassadors will receive an official letter and certificate for use in portfolios. In addition, their story will be published on the Jisc TechDis blog, where you can find a number of interesting and inspirational example stories.
The aim is to get a wide range of stories from both higher and further education as well as the wider skills sector. These stories will then be shared throughout May which is National Share-a-Story Month.
The short individual stories may be a video, an audio file or a written document. The scheme is inclusive; it is not a competition and the technology need not be new or innovative. It simply needs to have helped the individual.
Ambassadors are champions of technology. They are not representatives of Jisc TechDis nor do they need to ‘do’ anything on behalf of the service.
For more information, guidance and to fill out an application form, visit the Jisc TechDis website.
via Jisc news
Speaking at the close of the two-day Jisc Digital Festival Jisc’s chief executive, Martyn Harrow highlighted the organisation’s continued support in enhancing digital capabilities within the education and research communities.
The event which took place at the Birmingham ICC, saw over 650 delegates attend with 286 more following the coverage online.
In its inaugural year, the Jisc Digital Festival drew together 132 speakers from the sector to share best practice on a number of topics focused on enriching student experience and boosting research excellence. In addition to speaker-led sessions and workshops, the event offered an exhibition showcasing the practical teaching and research applications of technologies including augmented reality, 3D printing and cloud computing.
The event which has already been confirmed for March 2015, gained huge participation with an online audience, attracting over 16,000 tweets and #digifest14 trending in the UK. Online participants who logged on to watch the live stream of the event represented countries including Japan, Canada and South Africa.
Supporting Martyn Harrow’s assertion that the best of digital is yet to come, keynote speaker Diana Oblinger, CEO of EDUCAUSE said:
“My talk was designed to try and make people understand that although we have been using digital technology, we maybe haven’t designed our systems in a way that is truly digital, and that is the next frontier for us. Engagement is a fundamental value for learners, and there are many ways of using digital technology to enhance engagement; whether it is a simulation, games or visualisation. Digital technology promotes a deeper understanding.”
In her address, Diana also addressed the pertinent issue of higher education using data activity to monitor ‘at risk’ students and intervening with personalised support to avoid them failing their degree programme.
Other keynote addresses were delivered by City University London’s vice-chancellor, Paul Curran and educationalist Sugata Mitra, who shared the success of his schools in the cloud experiment. Also presenting at the Jisc Digital Festival was futurologist Ray Hammond, who spoke about need to create a language of the future and how educators and researchers were in the privileged position to drive innovation and shape the digital future.
Summing up Jisc’s commitment to enhancing digital technology use, Martyn Harrow said:
“Digital technology is the core, and what you can do with it is the core subject matter of the Digital Festival. It is the fastest growing, most powerful tool to enhance human organisational performance and it can do that for individuals, for teams for groups, nationally and internationally.
The role of Jisc is quite simply to help UK education and research across the nations and the sectors that we serve, really harness and exploit the potential of technology and the fast developing capabilities of that technology for the advantage of colleges and universities. We’re at the start of the digital age, the digital future is going to be bigger than the digital past and we have to go there if we’re to keep up with that game and turn it to our advantage.”
To view the live stream of the event for free visit the Jisc Digital Festival pages.
via Jisc news
The two day Jisc Digital Festival exploring the latest policies, issues and technologies at the heart of the further education (FE), higher education (HE) and research sectors begins on Tuesday 11 March at the ICC in Birmingham, with its pioneering programme of content streamed live to online delegates from 9:40.
Award-winning keynote speakers, education experts and futurologists Prof Paul Curran, Ray Hammond, Prof Sugata Mitra and Dr Diana Oblinger will join leading practitioners from the FE, HE and research for a programme of content that mixes inspiration and futurology with practical advice and guidance. The online audience can also join in with debates via live feeds and Twitter conversations using #digifest14.
Sessions cover topics such as preparing new generations for the digital future over the next 20 years, aligning IT and university strategy, the student experience, big data, organisational change and mobile technology.
Keynote Dr Diana Oblinger, chief executive officer of EDUCAUSE, commented:
“I’m looking forward to attending and speaking at the Digital Festival. As well as sharing insight, I hope to come away from the Digital Festival with tangible and innovative ideas on how we can collectively advance the use of information technology in higher education.”
Day two keynote, Sugata Mitra, commented:
“It is refreshing to see Jisc hosting a conference like this. Ours is a time when we need to factor in the internet into every aspect of education. It is time for teachers and lecturers to be ready for change.”
Speaking about the event, Jisc’s chief executive, Professor Martyn Harrow commented:
“Following a two year break from our annual conference, the Jisc Digital Festival offers a programme that encompasses the achievement and innovation that is enhancing education and opening the door to exciting new possibilities in teaching and learning. The headline speakers embody the purpose of this festival, which is all about sharing cutting edge ideas and best practice.
I am confident that visitors to the event, both onsite and online, will come away with useful advice they can implement in their institutions.”
Jisc champions the use of digital technologies in the FE, HE, research and skills sectors to position the UK as the centre of digitally advanced education and research. The Digital Festival, which replaces Jisc’s annual conference, will offer the sector an opportunity to share ideas of best practice and learn and discuss innovative ways to harness digital technology.
To follow the live streamed coverage of the festival, visit the Jisc website.
via Jisc news
With just one week to go, today Jisc is announcing details of how to follow its Jisc Digital Festival 2014 online.
The Jisc Digital Festival, which will be held in the ICC in Birmingham on the 11-12 March 2014, will bring you its highlights, showcasing innovations in higher education (HE), further education (FE) and skills, as well as exploring the future of digital technology from the comfort of your office, home, or on the move.
Online participants will be able to follow the event online thanks to Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite software which will stream the keynote speakers and expert presentations from the festival’s ‘Hangout’ area. There is no need for registration, simply visit the live coverage page on the Jisc website to join in on the day.
In addition to the four keynote addresses, the Digital Festival will offer a wide selection of workshops, surgeries, panel discussions, expert speakers and live demonstrations of the latest education technology.
As well as the livestreamed video, there will also be a social media team live-tweeting all keynotes, workshops and expert speakers as well as highlights from the Technology Garden and images from around the site.
For the keynote speakers, follow the @JiscLive Twitter account and for expert speakers, workshops and the Technology Garden check the programme to find out which member of the team to follow. Follow the @Jisc Twitter account for updates on activity from around the site.
Robert Haymon-Collins, Jisc’s executive director customer experience and one of the event’s online hosts said:
“Whilst there’s no replacement for attending an event in person, our livestreaming highlights, combined with delegate and speaker interviews, provide a great opportunity to take part in the Jisc Digital Festival.
Being able to deliver the event through multiple online channels means that as many people as possible have the chance to discover the latest innovations in digital technologies for education and research.”
If you are tweeting, blogging or sharing photos, videos or other materials related to this event, please use the event hashtag #digifest14.
via Jisc news
Students offered £5k grants for innovative ideas to improve education, research and student life.
Registration opens today for this year’s Summer of Student Innovation, offering digitally savvy further and higher education (FE and HE) students the chance to create technology solutions that could change the education landscape forever.
The Summer of Student Innovation is a Jisc co-design programme with RLUK; RUGIT; SCONUL; UCISA and ALT. Successful entrants will receive a £5,000 grant from Jisc to develop their ideas further, with the aim of improving students’ creative design, research, entrepreneurial and project management skills.
The successful entrants will be announced in July and given opportunities to join networking workshops with fellow students and experts to further their ideas. Volunteer education organisations will trial the technology developed and those products that are successful will be provided to other interested parties through sustainable routes.
Sharing why RUGIT designed to be a co-design partner in the Summer of Student Innovation, John Shemilt, director of IT at Imperial College London commented:
“It may sound like an obvious answer, but those most likely to know what students want are students themselves. Giving our bright generation of young people full credit for their ideas and an ongoing role in their development will improve student satisfaction and engagement and potentially uncover the entrepreneurs of the future.”
To enter, students must submit a two to five minute video pitch on the Jisc Elevator website alongside a short summary and a 300-500 word description which includes details on the benefits of their idea and its impact on research and education. To be considered for funding, entrants must hit a target of 2501 votes before 10 June 20142. Deadline for submission remains as 30 May 2014.. Voting is open to everyone but votes must come from ten3 different FE and HE institutions.
The winners’ ideas will be showcased later this year to FE and HE IT directors, learning technologists and librariansRemoved commercial companies - May 2014, offering them the chance to learn more about the benefits of these newly-developed technologies.
Andrew McGregor, deputy chief innovation officer at Jisc said:
“Technological developments should not only come from academics, college and university managers and organisations operating in the education sector but from the ground up, enabling an internal and needs-led perspective. After the success of last year’s Summer of Student Innovation, we’re sure this year will be even bigger and better.
We look forward to receiving more creative ideas in different areas to support young people in improving the way they and their classmates interact with technology in their education.”
The deadline to apply for the Jisc Summer of Student Innovation is 30 May 2014.
To enter your ideas and encourage your fellow students to vote for your suggestions visit the Jisc Elevator website or follow #studentideas on Twitter.
via Jisc news