The Living Books About Life series is written and produced by humanities scholars from universities across the world – from the UK and America to Poland and Australia – and has re-packaged and re-presented science-related research material to make it more accessible to a humanities audience.
Funded by JISC and published by the Open Humanities Press (OHP), the books address a number of scientific topics whose unifying theme is life, including air, agriculture, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, energy, neurology and human cloning.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: "By drawing only on Open Access material to create these ‘Living Books about Life’, the team is helping define a new era of scholarly communication – and thereby exploiting JISC’s vision to make the results of publicly funded research available to all."
The books present recent research on these subjects in a palatable way using interactive maps, podcasts and audio-visual materials. The result, which can be shared freely amongst both academic and non-academic individuals alike, is an engaging and diverse resource for researching and teaching relevant science issues across the humanities.
As well as bridging the divide between the humanities and sciences, the three partner institutions working on the project – led by Coventry University and including the University of Kent and Goldsmiths, University of London – have ‘rethought’ the conventional book by developing a new, low-cost and sustainable model for creating, publishing and sharing content.
By embracing the age of open information and the increasing prominence of crowdsourcing, the project leaders ensured each volume in the Living Books About Life series is a ‘living’ medium itself, able to be updated by readers through ongoing collaborative processes of writing, editing, remixing and commenting.
Gary Hall, Professor of Media and Performing Arts at Coventry University, said: "The ‘Living Books About Life’ series doesn’t just represent a new, exciting and more easily digestible way for people without a background in science to learn about important scientific issues – it also has the potential to refashion the process of book publishing itself. It’s a pioneering example of a sustainable, low-cost, low-tech approach to publishing high-quality books that can be shared easily and freely on an open access basis with anyone who has an interest."
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, said: "This remarkable series transforms the humble reader into a living form, while breaking down the conceptual barrier between the humanities and the sciences in a time when scholars and activists of all kinds have taken the understanding of life to be central. Brilliant in its simplicity and concept, this series is a leap towards an exciting new future."
Read more about the initiative
Image creative commons licensed by Halfrain
Tracking the UK’s research outputs will become easier in the future thanks to JISC and Research Councils UK (RCUK) working together to utilise their expertise.
Over the coming months a piece of work called the RIO Extension project will take place, to scope the issues and requirements from universities, funders and researchers in managing the information about research outputs. The aim of the work is to provide the UK education and research sector with clear, practical guidance on recording and sharing information about its research outputs, so that it can be reused for a variety of purposes, including by the systems used by the Research Councils.
Neil Jacobs, JISC’s digital infrastructure programme director, says, “The UK research community punches well above its weight in terms of the quality and quantity of research outputs. However, these are not systematically recorded, so it can be hard to demonstrate that impact. Researchers, universities and funders have a common interest in ensuring that the outputs from UK research are visible, and that this is achieved without putting undue burden on the sector.
“This can be done using both institutional repositories and more sophisticated research information systems but, in either case, it is important that these interoperate effectively with the systems operated by research funders and others. The RIO Extension project will describe a roadmap for the sector to achieve that.”
Four of the Research Councils are shortly to launch the Research Outcomes System, which will be the primary means by which these Research Councils will collect this kind of information. JISC is supporting the creation of this service by ensuring that it works effectively and efficiently with institutional systems, including the UK repository infrastructure. This flexible and community-owned infrastructure is well suited to meet the demands of the 21st century research community.
Dr Sue Smart, Chair of the RCUK Research Outcomes Project, comments, “With this clear and practical guidance agreed for the research community and Research Councils to use, we can work together to significantly lessen the burden on institutions and organisations wanting to collect this data.”
The RIO Extension project is also part of a larger programme of work scoping and delivering shared repository and curation infrastructure services at a national and international level. This work supports the strategic requirements of universities, colleges, JISC and the Research Councils to build a robust repository infrastructure for the future. It also contributes to the aspirations of the UK Open Access Implementation Group’s 2012 strategy.
Explore JISC’s repository infokit and find out how it could help your organisation
The University for the Creative Arts (UCA) has been awarded funding from JISC to digitise the archive of celebrated British designer Zandra Rhodes CBE.
Zandra Rhodes, who was made UCA’s first Chancellor in 2010, has played a significant role in the development of British fashion, helping establish its reputation on the world stage. Her diverse client base has included Diana, Princess of Wales; Jackie Onassis, Freddie Mercury; Kylie Minogue and Sarah Jessica Parker.
A digital images of Zandra Rhodes’ innovative work produced as part of this project will be stored in a digital database. This will be publically accessible, providing an important new global resource for fashion students, designers and researchers world wide. An Open Education Resource will embed a selection of images of her garments within the wider cultural context and support learning and teaching in the field.
Zandra said, “I am thrilled that this project is happening and students will be able to appreciate my work.”
“I am thrilled that this project is happening and students will be able to appreciate my work.”
Professor Kerstin Mey, Director of Research and Enterprise at UCA, said, “We are delighted to be working with Zandra on this exciting project. This digital archive will track a vital dimension of the evolution of British fashion and capture some of its landmark moments.
“It will provide inspiration and learning for new and emerging generations of professional fashion designers, but will also complement research on the overarching cultural situation and zeitgeist of the later 20th Century and early 21st Century.”
This project is funded by JISC as part of its Content programme 2011-2013, Paola Marchionni JISC’s digitisation manager says, “JISC is pleased to support collaboration between the higher education sector and private archives such as Zandra Rhodes’ fashion collection. These partnerships are vital to open up access to resources which wouldn’t otherwise be available, not only for the benefit of students and researchers in the UK but for the enjoyment and use of the public at large as Open Educational Resources.”
In this podcast JISC's Rebecca O'Brien chats to Kevin Ashley, director of the DCC, about the event and what delegates can hope to gain by taking part.
Listen to the podcast (Duration 6:58)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
JISC is supporting universities and colleges to create a business case for an integrated IT strategy to help them make better investment decisions.
The business benefit of strategic ICT is to be explored in a JISC webinar on 7 December for information service managers and practitioners, as well as senior leaders looking for a joined-up approach to technology.
The webinar will discuss how to conduct an audit of where your IT provision is now, establish your investment priorities and make decisions, using a new JISC toolkit.
The toolkit that the webinar will explore includes a range of checklists, case studies and good practice guidelines to help senior managers identify, analyse, assess and develop their current maturity level in IT.
Register for the webinar on Wednesday 7 December at 2pm – 3pm GMT
David Puttnam, Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, will consider the potential impact of a major, positive disruption to the way the world approaches learning and teaching at the JISC online e-learning conference on 22-25 November 2011.
Lord Puttnam, who is a renowned speaker and chairman of FutureLab, following a highly acclaimed career in the film industry, will share with participants his view on how pedagogy is going digital, in what is likely to be a controversial and challenging keynote.
Find out more in our special podcast about the conference, JISC on Air
Lord Puttnam is joined at the sixth annual JISC e-learning online conference by other expert speakers including:
Participants at the conference will be able to pose questions to the speakers and join in discussions from the comfort of their own workplace, using the Blackboard Collaborate platform followed by asynchronous discussions.
Sarah Knight, e-learning programme manager at JISC and event organiser said, “Taking part in an online conference is just as important as if you were attending in person. There will be ample opportunity to join in stimulating discussions and to share practice.
“This year the themes of ‘learning landscapes’ and ‘navigating pathways’ in the digital age, will be discussed focusing on the opportunities created by technology-enhanced assessment and feedback, digital literacy, open educational resources, lifelong learning and students as agents of change,” adds Sarah.
In order to help participants make full use of the networking and discussion opportunities, participants will be able to prepare for the event ahead of time in a pre-conference activity week.
Sarah concludes, “This year’s conference is one of the best yet, offering a big conference experience in the most cost-effective way. At £50 per delegate, it represents significant value for money for organisations and education departments feeling the constraints of a tight budget.”
Register now to explore through live presentations and debate some of the latest thinking about enhancing learning and teaching with technology.
Follow the conference on Twitter @jiscel2011 and online #jiscel11
Safe cloud storage to help avoid the risks of lost or stolen data is now on offer to help three UK final year undergraduate and master's students run their research projects.
The cloud computing facilities are the winning prize in a competition that aims to highlight new projects demonstrate the potential of cloud computing.
The competition is run by Janet Brokerage, the UK’s only independent broker for academic cloud services, and Eduserv, the not-for-profit IT services organisation.
Andy Powell, Head of Research at Eduserv, said: "Research students and staff have an understandable tendency to keep data close to their chest on laptops or university servers. However, lost and stolen laptops or local server failures can put research projects back by months. By storing data in a secure facility tailored to the needs of the education community, with ample capacity and processing power, academics can rest assured that their data is secure and accessible."
The winners will benefit from a package including a VMware vCloud virtual data centre which can support up to around 18 virtual machines.
They will have access to 100GB storage, enough to store the equivalent of about 125 doctoral theses, and one public IP address. They will also have a direct connection to the JANET network, with no additional transit fees.
The winners will have use of Eduserv's Education Cloud from January 2012 to January 2013.
The first forty bids will be able to enter the competition from 18 November 2011. Bidding closes at midday on Friday 2 December, or once forty bids have been received, whichever is the sooner.
Find out more about how cloud computing could benefit your organisation.
For more information about Janet Brokerage call 01225 822337, and to find out more about the services Eduserv offer visit their website or call 01235 474300.
Martyn Harrow, Director of Information Services at Cardiff University, has been appointed as Head of JISC for a fixed term of 9-18 months from 1 February 2012.
Martyn will succeed Dr Malcolm Read who retires as Head of JISC in January 2012 after 18 years in post.
Martyn will see the organisation through its transition into a 'new look' JISC, following the recommendations of the Wilson Review (February 2011).
Heather Fry, Director Education and Participation at HEFCE, which funds JISC together with other UK education funding bodies JISC, said: 'At this critical time in JISC's transition I am delighted that we have appointed Martyn Harrow who brings a wealth of technology and leadership experience from higher education and the commercial sector. Martyn will be leading JISC as it re-shapes to remain world class in a changing environment.'
Tim O'Shea, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Chair of JISC, said: 'JISC is embarking on an exciting period as it rises to the challenges of the Wilson report and renews its focus on supporting education and research across the UK. Martyn is ideally placed to lead JISC through this stage of its development, being able to draw on invaluable experience from across the education, public and private sectors.'
Martyn Harrow said: 'It is an honour to follow Malcolm Read and be invited to lead JISC through this very important and complex transition. We have the opportunity and the challenge now of building on from his amazing legacy to create a "new JISC for new times". Our driver will be to ensure that "new JISC" fosters, facilitates and enables modern approaches and sustainable strategic advantage for higher and further education in the coming years.'
Dr Malcolm Read OBE has led JISC since its inception and taken it to the world-class reputation it enjoys today, enabling it to make a real difference to ICT usage in further and higher education. He is looking forward to his planned retirement and more time to pursue his many interests and ambitions.
Martyn Harrow joined Cardiff University in 2003 with extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. His early career centred in local government where he became Senior Principal Management Services Officer at Avon County Council. Subsequently his career majored on global roles as Chief Information Officer for several international operating companies within Unilever. At various times he was responsible for IT across the USA, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Before joining Cardiff University, Martyn was Vice-President, IT, for a global food and fragrance company within ICI. Martyn is a member of the JISC Board and a Director of JISC Collections and JISC Advance.
The UK is to participate in a global experiment, based on the social media technology behind Twitter and Facebook, to find out how the social activity around online educational content can be captured and fed back to users, creators and publishers.
Working with the Learning Registry, a project funded by the US Department of Education and the US Department of Defence, JISC and the HE Academy are calling for institutions and developers to work with them on a new 10 month project. This project will lay the foundations of an infrastructure that will improve the way people choose educational information online.
Amber Thomas, JISC programme manager says, “This international collaboration will see us contributing the UK’s expertise to the Learning Registry. We are working with Mimas and JISC CETIS to support the Registry’s vision of gathering together the conversations, ratings, recommendations and usage data around digital content.
“We know that users and providers want access to more information about how educational content is used by others and this is an innovative approach to meeting that need.”
It is commonplace to read reviews of books, music and items before your choose to buy or use them. This experiment will look to assess how we can create the technical capabilities to reveal a rich picture of what people are doing with educational content.
Steve Midgley, Deputy Director, Office of Education Technology at the US Department of Education says, “I am greatly encouraged by the collaboration and opportunity presented by our work with JISC on the Learning Registry.”
This builds on JISC’s work in discovery, activity data, Jorum and open educational resources supporting the discovery, use and analytics of digital resources for teaching, learning and research. The experiment will give, JISC a much clearer view of the potential of this approach, and there will be a rich dataset of content available to future services.
Read more on the Learning Registry.
Find out about the JISC, Mimas and JISC CETIS project the Learning Registry Node Experiment.
#learningreg
During JISC's transition period to move the organisation towards a new legal entity, a Shadow Board has been formed to help manage the process.
Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of Edinburgh; Chair of JISC and Chair of the Shadow Board says: "We are very pleased to be able to announce the appointment of JISC's Shadow Board and welcome their insight and expertise in taking a reshaped JISC into the future.
Meet the members of JISC’s Shadow Board through their short video introductions and hear why they are looking forward to working with JISC during the next one to two years.
Heather Macdonald, Chief Executive and Principal of Sheffield College, is also a member of the JISC shadow board, video to follow.
Read more about JISC’s transition
An online training course to help disseminate good practice in research data management developed at the University of Edinburgh is now free to use by PhD students, early career researchers and digital data users at all UK universities. Are you ready to release your resources openly? Find out in our new resource.
The non-credit, free online course has interactive units focused on key concepts of data management including video clips of senior academics talking about data management challenges.
There are also practical exercises in handling data in four software packages widely used by researchers in different fields, which learners can download and work through at their own pace.
Simon Hodson, programme manager at JISC, the technology consortium for UK further and higher education, said: "When we listened to the delegates at our recent conference on data management, it was obvious that many universities feel the need to embed good practice much earlier in the careers of their researchers than they do currently. The fact that this course is available through an open license for repurposing and rebranding will help other universities benefit from the good work that Edinburgh has already done."
The Data Library team at EDINA, a JISC-funded UK national academic data centre based at the University of Edinburgh, produced the materials over the course of the past year as part of the JISC Managing Research Data programme.
The team chose to deliver the course online so that learners could engage with it in their own time. This means it has the potential to reach a wider community, by releasing it as an open educational resource.
Use the Open Access week hashtag to search for more updates on open
#oaweek
Robin Rice, data librarian at the University of Edinburgh and EDINA, said: "The online course supports statements about good practice in research data management with real life stories and scenarios. It is designed to be fun, relevant, useful, interactive and timely (FRUIT!) for those pursuing a research project. The accompanying software modules for data handling skills give a deeper grounding within particular analysis environments."
They worked with the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Studies, the School of GeoSciences and the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology to target the resources towards their doctoral training programmes.
The academic monograph is under threat. Increased costs and lower print runs are impacting on the principle means by which researchers share their knowledge and disseminate their findings. The gold standard for academic excellence in many disciplines, the effective dissemination of the monograph has major implications for the UK’s research base and its international standing.
Palgrave Macmillan, Taylor & Francis, Berg Publishers, Liverpool University Press and University Wales Press are also project partners. Each has submitted pairs of similar monographs for the project pilot. With one title in each pair randomly assigned to either the experimental group (available through open access) or the control group (available through the publishers’ standard routes to market) the pilot will, over the next three years, gather and compare sales and usage data for each group. The resulting data will provide an invaluable evidence base for the use of monographs under contrasting modes of access.
Further activities – such as annual benchmarking surveys, focus groups, interviews and surveys with research funders, authors, publishers, libraries and researchers - will allow investigation into whether an open access model for scholarly monographs could take hold in the minds of humanities and social sciences scholars, what funding policies and technical processes would need be developed to support an open access model and what the impacts of an open access model would be on key stakeholders.
David House, Chair of JISC Collections and the OAPEN-UK Steering Group, said: “It’s in all our interests to have a vibrant and innovative humanities and social science research environment. But for this we need to have scholarly communications models that match the rapidly-changing demands of the twenty-first century. This project is taking some bold and imaginative steps to look over the horizon and to explore a new publishing model. We hope OAPEN-UK will be a stepping stone towards informed decision making by a wide range of stakeholders.”
See OAPEN-UK for further information or contact Caren Milloy, Head of Projects.
Open access week 2011 is full of inspiration on the benefits of free immediate access to the results of scholarly research. Now more than 30 compelling stories have been collected together from across Europe showcasing the transformative effects of open access.
They come from over 11 countries and are told by a wide variety of stakeholders, from individual researchers and journal editors to publishers and companies, and cover a multitude of disciplines.
Dr Malcolm Read, executive secretary at JISC, said: “It’s interesting to see that even though these stories represent a diverse range of initiatives, some recent, some historical, they all share a common thread. That thread is that they have all been collaborative exercises – with people looking to share the benefits of their work beyond their own institutions.”
One example is First Monday, a 15-year-old open access journal about the internet.. It was launched in May 1996 and is now one of the longest established, most respected peer reviewed journals of the internet. By August 2011 it had published 1,133 papers in 181 issues, written by 1,469 different authors representing institutions in over 30 different countries. It is read in 180 different countries.
Another story tells of how a repository can successfully build relationships with publishers. Pedocs is a German educational science archive that uses an innovative cooperation model with German publishing houses to make available freely and openly a wealth of high quality pedagogic literature. Set up in 2008, in the last three years it has developed cooperative relationships with more than 25 small and medium-sized German educational literature publishing houses.
The stories can be found on a dedicated, easy-to-use website and are open for comments and ready to share. They are not only free for all to read and refer to, but they are also licensed under a creative commons licence. To allow for easier re-use the stories will be available for download and use in other publications and websites.
The Knowledge Exchange consists of :
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Read more about the Knowledge Exchange
Learners, educators and citizen scientists will benefit from an 18 month digitisation programme launching today which will bring back to life scientific medical archives, historical records and health reports.
JISC will be investing £5.6 million in 23 projects across 30 universities and cultural heritage organisations to bring selected archives out of the vaults and onto computer screens, specifically with the aim of creating resources for wide educational use. These archives will be publicly accessible too which means citizens scientists, school pupils and the general public will benefit as well as historians, medics and biologists in this growing UK collection of digital resources for research, teaching and learning.
Alastair Dunning JISC’s programme manager explains why this work is taking place and the reasons for continuing to unearth national archives to make them accessible for everyone.
“JISC believes that publicly-funded archives and collections should whenever possible be made openly available for people to be able to see, reuse and access.
“These new collections vary greatly. King’s College London are leading a project to digitise the entire 86 volume corpus of the Survey of English Place-Name, while the University of Bradford are running ‘Digitised Diseases’ which seeks to bridge the gap between modern clinical medicine and the use of historic medical collections by digitising pathological skeletal specimens from world renowned archaeological collections in Bradford and London. The new collections to be digitised also include over 150 years worth of annual reports summarising the health of Greater London’s population, held by the Wellcome Library.”
This programme of work supports the findings of the Seizing the opportunity for online learning for UK higher education report which recommended, the use of online learning to enhance student choice and meet learners’ expectations; realignment of training and development to support academics to play a leading role in online provision; and the development and sharing of open educational resources to enhance efficiency and quality.
To find out more about this latest phase of digitisation projects visit: http://bit.ly/sMFWnJ and to view existing online content already available visit: http://bit.ly/to2sds
JISC welcomes the UK Open Access Implementation Group’s (OAIG) reports and new repositories resource pack released today.
The Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and Scholarly Research report (PDF) and the Open Access Fees Report show the outcomes of research into the benefits of open access to commercial companies and findings from a consultation on the practicalities of paying for open access publication.
Taken together, these present a major step towards releasing UK research to underpin the nation’s prospects for growth both now, via direct innovation, and into the future, via a more efficient and effective research infrastructure.
Professor Martin Hall vice-chancellor at the University of Salford and chair of the OAIG says, “The report ‘Benefits to the Private Sector of Open Access to Higher Education and Scholarly Research’ shows how commercial companies would benefit from reduced costs, less time wasting, and shortened development cycles by having greater access to UK research outputs.
“It shows how UK universities can make a direct impact, and much needed contribution to business growth and sustainability, by making their research outputs more easily discoverable and translated into the language recognised by businesses as relevant to them.”
The evidence suggests that these benefits would flow across a wide range of sectors of the UK knowledge economy, and supports previous research which estimated benefits in the order of £100m per year.
Neil Jacobs, JISC programme manager for JISC’s digital infrastructure says, “There is certainly work to do to translate academic research into innovation and growth, for example in promoting research expertise and providing trusted and skilled brokerage services. JISC through its business and community engagement programme is providing some of the tools and methods for this to happen, but without open access to the research findings themselves, this work cannot be fully effective.”
Open access requires action by universities, funders and publishers to work together to make this happen. The OAIG has commissioned JISC Collections to produce an ‘Open Access Fees Report’ which consulted with these groups and other organisations on the arrangements whereby payment is made for open access publication.
Professor Martin Hall, OAIG chair, notes that, “During this consultation process there was a lot of agreement that open access journal publishing is making an important contribution, both to widening access to UK research, and to the success of UK publishers. However, there is still practical work to do to smooth the way for researchers, universities, funders and publishers.
“The ways forward identified in this report are both practical and the product of consensus. The UK Open Access Implementation Group will continue to press for expanded access to UK research, to meet our nation's need for innovation and growth based on a strong public science base."
A new repositories resource pack is also being launched today to help universities take immediate action to support wider access to UK research, by ensuring that as much of their research output as possible is made openly available via their institutional repository. The resource pack brings together all the information and guidance that UK universities might need in taking the policy decisions and practical steps for this to happen.
Follow the discussion online #jisc #oaig
William Nixon, digital library development manager at the University of Glasgow and co-ordinator of the resource pack, explains, “The resource pack gives the solutions to barriers which the OAIG have identified in setting up, managing and maintaining a repository as well as an institutional publication policy. This resource can also give senior managers and leaders within universities enough detail to influence and engage the rest of their teams in making these decisions.”
Members of the OAIG have agreed a 2012 strategy to help implement the recommendations from these reports and build on the past 12 months of its work. This strategy includes:
David Puttnam, Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, will consider the potential impact of a major, positive disruption to the way the world approaches learning and teaching at the JISC online e-learning conference on 22-25 November 2011.
Lord Puttnam, who is a renowned speaker and chairman of FutureLab following a highly acclaimed career in the film industry, will share with delegates his view on how pedagogy is going digital, in what is likely to be a controversial and challenging keynote.
Lord Puttnam is joined at the sixth annual JISC online conference by other expert speakers including:
Participants at the conference will be able to pose questions to the speakers and join in discussions from the comfort of their own workplace, using the Blackboard Collaborate platform followed by asynchronous discussions.
Sarah Knight, e-learning programme manager at JISC and event organiser said, “Taking part in an online conference is just as important as if you were attending in person. There will be ample opportunity to join in stimulating discussions and to share practice.
“This year the themes of ‘learning landscapes’ and ‘navigating pathways’ in the digital age, will be discussed focusing on the opportunities created by technology-enhanced assessment and feedback, digital literacy, open educational resources, lifelong learning and students as agents of change,” adds Sarah.
In order to help participants make full use of the networking and discussion opportunities, participants will be able to prepare for the event ahead of time in a pre-conference activity week. Sarah concludes, “This year’s conference is one of the best yet, offering a big conference experience in the most cost-effective way. At £50 per delegate, it represents significant value for money for organisations and education departments feeling the constraints of a tight budget.”
Register now to explore through live presentations and debate some of the latest thinking about enhancing learning and teaching with technology.
Publishing a lay summary alongside every research article could be the answer to assisting in the wider understanding of health-related information, say the findings of new citizen science project Patients Participate!
Commissioned by JISC and carried out by the Association of Medical Research Charities, the British Library and UKOLN, Patients Participate! asked patients, the public, medical research charities and the research community, ‘How can we work together in making sense of scientific literature, to truly open up research findings for everyone who is interested?’ The answer came from patients who explained that they want easy-to-understand, evidence-based information relating to biomedical and health research.
Every day people are bombarded by health news, advice columns, medical websites and health products and making sense of this information can be difficult. Tracey Brown, Director of Sense about Science says, "We have been working with scientists and the public for some years to challenge misinformation, whether about the age of the earth, the causes of cancer, wifi radiation or homeopathy for malaria.
"It's often very effective but no sooner is attention turned elsewhere than misleading claims creep back up again. To make a permanent difference, we need the public to be evidence hunters. We are delighted to encourage patients to engage with the evidence for medical claims."
Alastair Dunning digitisation programme manager at JISC adds, "JISC believes that publicly-funded research should be made available for everyone and be easy to find. We have funded this work to show how making access to scientific literature enables citizen-patients to participate in the research process, therefore providing mutual understanding and better links between scientists, medic, patients and the general public."
Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Science, Technology and Medicine, British Library says, "The British Library supports access for everyone who wants to do research, but providing access to information, through services like UK PubMed Central, is only the first part of the story. There is so much scientific literature – and it’s so complicated; developing ways to help people make sense of it has to go hand-in-hand with access."
Engaging with the wider community is increasingly important for researchers. Some universities now offer researchers training in communicating with lay audiences.
Dr Liz Lyon, director of UKOLN, University of Bath explains, "The Patients Participate! Project has demonstrated the potential value of lay summaries to make research more accessible to a wider audience. There is certainly an appetite for this information and we see the new How-to Guide for researchers as a positive step in helping academics and researchers to communicate their findings and to bridge the understanding gap."
Medical research charities have an important role in providing patients and the public with information about the research they fund.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough, chair of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) believes that the "Increasing volume of information about health and medical research available via the internet, the challenge for charities is to help their supporters make sense of it and distinguish the good from the bad. By translating complicated medical research information into language that is easy to understand, they can help researchers and patients talk to each other."
Find out more about why Patients Participate! is part of JISC's econtent programme
JISC is pleased to announce the second in its new series of free online seminars in which experts share advice on technology issues for education and research.
The regular ‘webinars’ are short one hour sessions focused on providing practical advice on topical issues. Participants can join the session without having to travel anywhere, using just a computer, headset and internet connection.
Register now for the second webinar in the series ‘Curriculum Design – Changing the Paradigm’ on Wednesday 2 November 2011 at 14.00. The webinar will share advice from Marianne Sheppard, Researcher/Analyst at JISC infoNet and Helen Beetham, eLearning consultant.
Helen and Marianne will discuss how a strategic approach to curriculum design and course information can lead to better outcomes for learners and other stakeholders in the curriculum.
By exploring the emerging outcomes from the JISC Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design programme it is the aim that all participants will have a greater awareness of resources available to support curriculum innovation.
Find out more about the webinar and register now here.
#jiscwebinar #jisccdd
More than 80,000 fascinating documents that uncover the lives led by Yorkshire women such as Charlotte Bronte in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are now only a mouse click away.
A major website launches today hosted by the University of Huddersfield, developed in partnership with West Yorkshire Archives Service and funded by JISC.
Researchers, archivists and the general public can now explore a vast online archive of diaries, letters, journals, minutes and other written material plus photographs and artworks that tell the story of women’s lives as led in the home, the workplace, the political arena and even the mental asylum.
Famous women such as author Charlotte Bronte and aviator Amy Johnson lives can be explored through original documents on the JISC-funded ‘History to Herstory’ website.
University of Huddersfield’s Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, Professor Tim Thornton, himself a historian, said: “This website is a great example of bringing underused resources back into the public gaze, and I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to take a lead on the project.”
The digitised material comes from the holdings of the West Yorkshire Archives, the archives of the University of Huddersfield, plus Hull University and the Bronte Society.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “Exploiting Britain’s cultural treasures in the digital age is not just about digitisation but using the Internet to tell stories about them. The University of Huddersfield’s From History to Herstory does this in an innovative way, presenting women’s history in Yorkshire in a new light.”
“We’re delighted to be online,” said Dr Rob Ellis, of the History Department at the University of Huddersfield.“This is a digitised archive that can be used for many purposes by anybody, from academic researchers to family historians,” he added.
The site also includes packages of learning materials, themes such as women and politics, women at work, women at war and women’s correspondence, the packages can be used for a wide variety of educational purposes. Some of the material will be used for undergraduate modules at the University of Huddersfield itself.
“This is a fantastic resource,” says Katy Goodrum, Head of Archives at West Yorkshire Archive Services, “and the main thing for me is a huge amount of the material is in women’s own words, which is quite rare.”
She added that people were still able to consult the original documents if they wished, and links on every digitised item reveal where the source material is archived.
“We certainly don’t want to deprive people of the ability to see the originals, but the website means you don’t have to travel from half way around the world to use the material.”
View highlights of the collection.
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Learn more about the key legal considerations of using Facebook in education
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JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance and Ithaka S+R release final report on their Case Studies in Sustainability, revealing how different business models fared during the economic downturn.
6 October New York, NY and London, UK – Ithaka S+R, with funding from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, released today “Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA/Ithaka S+R Case Studies in Sustainability,” a report that reviews the impact of tumultuous times on the business models of 12 digital projects first profiled by S+R in 2009.
Some of the projects profiled include the UK’s National Archives’ Licensed Internet Associates programme, which has shown major revenue growth in recent years despite budget cuts felt by the entire institution; Cornell University’s eBird, which has experimented with partnerships to develop new revenue generating offerings for users; and the University of Southampton’s Library Digitisation Unit, which has made strategic choices to better align its mission with that of the university.
Nearly all of the projects profiled live under the umbrella of larger institutions. One of the key findings to emerge is that many of these projects are relying on their host institutions for support to an even greater extent than two years ago. Whether this is a good arrangement and what this means for their future remains to be seen.
“While some project leaders have pursued an aggressive awareness-building strategy within their host institutions as a way of ensuring ongoing support, others have preferred to fly under the radar,” commented co-author and Ithaka S+R program manager, Nancy Maron. “Either way, where host support is a major part of the sustainability plan, aligning project goals with the host’s mission is especially important.”
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The report notes that difficult economic times have called for deep across-the-board spending cuts at many organizations, which can deny digital resource projects the capital investment they need just as they are beginning to grow. Many of the projects studied had the intention of contributing revenue to their host, but only some were successful in doing so, and even those were unable to fully support their ongoing costs.
"This research concentrates on organizations coming to terms with the long term liabilities incurred in digital projects and post grant funding,” stated Stuart Dempster, Director of the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance. “It’s not just the actions the project teams have taken but the reasoning behind those choices that will help others start to determine which strategies, or parts of them, might serve as models for their own projects.”
The projects that had the most success did not follow one particular business model but rather spent a tremendous time understanding all of their stakeholders – from their users to university administrators and volunteers.
“There is no single path to sustainability,” stated Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA. “Successful projects understand the value they offer to their most important constituents and are able to adjust their approaches to meet new challenges and changing conditions.”
The cases covered include scholar-led initiatives (Electronic Enlightenment, eBird, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, the National Science Digital Library MSP2: Middle School Math and Science Pathway, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae), library and museum projects (The National Archives, L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel, the University of Southampton Library Digitisation Unit, V&A Images), and publishing projects (Hindawi, DigiZeitschriften) with a diverse range of revenue models (e.g., subscription-based projects, endowment-funded resources, and open access digital libraries).
These case studies form part of a long term commitment by the Strategic Content Alliance to provide empirically-based evidence freely to education, research and cultural bodies in the development of digital content. This research is ongoing with the development of a new digital entrepreneurship syllabus due for delivery in summer 2012.
V&A Images: Scaling Back to Refocus on Revenue
The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®: How a Specialised Resource Begins to Address a Wider Audience
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Launching a ‘Freemium’ Model
Electronic Enlightenment: Outreach or Outsource? The Benefits and Challenges of Partnership
L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel: Balancing Mission-based Goals and Revenue Generation
DigiZeitschriften: A Niche Project at a Crossroads
University of Southampton Library Digitisation Unit: Reimagining the Value Proposition
The National Archives (UK): Enhancing the Value of Content through Selection and Curation
The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways, National Science Digital Library: The Challenges of Sustaining a Project as the End of a Grant Approaches
eBird: Driving Impact through Crowdsourcing
The Department of Digital Humanities (DDH) at King’s College London: Cementing Its Status as an Academic Department
Hindawi Publishing Corporation: Growing an Open-Access Contributor-Pays Business Model
Open access research is now more accessible as JISC has developed a new search engine to help academics, students and the general public navigate papers held in the UK’s open access repositories.
JISC has funded the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) to create an innovative new search facility which searches not just the abstract but the full text of the article.
When researchers use current systems like Google Scholar to search academic papers they can find themselves denied access to the full article, particularly when subscription fees are required. They also typically have to search across a number of open access repositories or use searches that harvest data from different sources.
But now, using the COnnecting REpositories tool or CORE, people can search the full text of items held in 142 approved Open Access repositories.
“UK repositories contain a wealth of high quality research papers. This service should help make it easier for researchers to discover and explore this content. CORE is an exciting demonstration of how JISC’s investment in emerging semantic technologies is being harnessed to benefit researchers.”
Once they’ve found what they’re looking for, the CORE system stores these downloads, so that people can still get access to the papers they have found useful even if the original repository is offline.
Andrew McGregor, JISC programme manager, said: “UK repositories contain a wealth of high quality research papers. This service should help make it easier for researchers to discover and explore this content. CORE is an exciting demo
nstration of how JISC’s investment in emerging semantic technologies is being harnessed to benefit researchers.”
CORE is accessible via an online portal, via users’ mobile devices or through repositories and libraries that have integrated CORE with their own search features.
Senior Research Fellow at the Open University, Zdenek Zdrahal, who led the project, said: “The Open University is at the forefront of producing new and innovative advancements in educational resources. CORE is an exciting addition to this history and we believe it will be beneficial to the academic research community and to the OU. There are plans to develop systems further, to aid research.”
CORE is already integrated into The Open University’s research repository, Open Research Online (ORO) which includes more than 18,900 research publications.
Search CORE with your research question.
Some of the books date back as far as the 1500s and, due to their fragile nature, would not be freely available to researchers, but thanks to this digitization project, musicians from around the world can now source the original music free of charge using the Early Music Online website.
Paola Marchionni, programme manager at JISC, said: “The value of this new resource isn’t just in putting the music online – it’s allowing researchers to find the music at their convenience from different access points, such as the project’s website, library catalogues and music databases. The project has also put great effort in opening up the background information, or metadata, behind the individual pieces of music, thus ensuring that researchers can more easily discover these internationally significant compositions.”
Highlights of the collection include church music by the Flemish composer Josquin des Prez and the English musicians Thomas Tallis and William Byrd; drinking-songs from Nuremberg and love-songs from Lyon; lute music from Venice and organ music from Leipzig.
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT Dr Stephen Rose, from the Department of Music at Royal Holloway, said: “This is an invaluable resource for any musician as it offers many insights into how these early works were originally sung and played. For the first time, musicians now have immediate access to more than 9,000 individual compositions.”
Dr Sandra Tuppen, from the British Library, added: “It's wonderful to be able to share such fantastic musical treasures at the click of a button and make the works available to anyone in the world.”
Dr Rose explained that the British Library had worked with the College’s music department on previous database projects and they were keen to make use of the College’s expertise again.
During JISC's transition period to move the organisation towards a new legal entity, a Shadow Board is being formed to help manage the process.
After successful recruitment of four of the six Shadow Board members, JISC is seeking two additional experts: a further education principal and a university vice chancellor to complete the Board's membership.
Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of Edinburgh; Chair of JISC and Chair of the Shadow Board says: "We are very pleased to be able to announce the appointment of four members of JISC's Shadow Board and welcome their insight and expertise in taking a reshaped JISC into the future. We are, however, still seeking two additional members so that all of JISC's interest groups are represented. If you think you have the drive, enthusiasm and passion to support the UK's education and research communities with their teaching, learning and research aims we'd like to hear from you."
The Shadow Board will be in post for the length of JISC's transition period which could be between one and two years.
Richard Boulderstone is the British Library's e-strategy and information systems director. Richard brings with him nine years experience of working at the British Library including leading their efforts to create a large-scale digital object management system that will become the primary repository for the Library's, and hence the UK's, legal deposit collection of electronic resources. Formerly a Chief Technology Officer and Product Development Director at a number of international information providers, he has led the creation of many information-based products - both in the UK and USA.
Professor Paul Jeffreys is IT director at the University of Oxford where he drives the overarching IT strategy which enables the University to make optimal use of IT in a rapidly-developing environment. He sees his role as ensuring that the University's IT services continue evolving to meet new needs, whilst providing a secure and reliable service which maximises energy efficiency and value for money.
Professor Noel Lloyd CBE is retired Vice Chancellor at Aberystwyth University. He was awarded the CBE for Services to Higher Education in Wales. Prior to holding the posts of Vice-Chancellor, and Registrar and Secretary, he was previously Pro Vice-Chancellor, Dean of Science and Head of the Department of Mathematics at Aberystwyth University. He has served on various Research Council committees and editorial boards, and was editor of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society from 1983 to 1988. He has been a member of the HEFCW Quality Assurance Committee, and was a member of the board of the mid-Wales TEC and then of the mid-Wales ELWa Regional Committee. At present he is Chair of HEW (Higher Education Wales), and a Vice-President of Universities UK. He is a member of the board of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), chairing its Health and Safety Committee, and serves on the board of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), chairing the Access Recognition and Licensing Committee.
Professor Celia Duffy is director of academic development at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Before joining the Academy in 1999, she lectured in music at Goldsmiths College, University of London, worked in commercial software design and started the Performing Arts Data Service at the University of Glasgow. Celia sits on a variety of national boards and committees. She is an elected member and former chair of the National Association for Music in Higher Education, a board member of the Red Note Ensemble, member of the Scottish Funding Council's Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee and was recently invited to be part of an international panel for arts-based research financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research.
If you are interested in applying for one of the two vacant positions and to contribute towards taking JISC into the future, please contact Dr Kathryn Turton, JISC's board and transition manager: k.turton@jisc.ac.uk or apply direct for the role here.
Deadline for applications is 14th October 2011.
JISC is pleased to announce the launch of a free online seminar series in which experts will lead discussions and share advice on technology issues for education and research.
The regular ‘webinars’ will be short sessions of 45 minutes to 1 hour focused on providing practical advice on topical issues and participants can join the session without having to travel anywhere, using just a computer, headset and internet connection.
Register now for the first webinar in the series on how to meet the research data challenge on Wednesday 12 October 2011 at noon. The webinar will share advice from Sarah Porter, JISC’s head of innovation, and Simon Hodson, JISC’s programme manager.
Sarah and Simon will give an overview of the key points for universities on managing research data, then discuss what managers can do now and how JISC can help.
The following seminar is on ‘Curriculum design – changing the paradigm’ on Wednesday 2 November at 2pm and will discuss how to join up information about different courses, and how to engage stakeholders in the curriculum.
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