Humanities and social science researchers are being invited to help JISC Collections understand the future of the monograph through an online survey [http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/oapenukresearcher]
In an open access model the monograph is made freely available, but the process requires some investigation to establish the priorities for such a business model. Readers or their libraries do not have to pay to read it online because the costs of the publishing process such as typesetting and marketing are recovered through alternative routes such as research grants, institutional funding or perhaps through readers purchasing print editions or particular formats for their iPad or Kindle.
Caren Milloy, head of projects at JISC Collections said: “We’re six months into the project and, following a series of focus groups, have identified some key questions for researchers – both as authors and readers. The findings from this survey will combine with interviews and surveys of other stakeholder groups to help us understand the big issues and priorities that an open access publishing model must accommodate.”
To thank you for your help, if you complete the survey before 16 April 2012 you will be entered into a draw for Amazon vouchers – there are three £100 vouchers, three £50 vouchers and three £25 vouchers to win.
OAPEN-UK is an Arts and Humanities Research Council and JISC funded project exploring the issues impacting upon the publishing of scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences (HSS).
The project is working with Taylor & Francis, Palgrave Macmillan, Berg Publishers, Liverpool University Press, University Wales Press, research funders and universities, to understand the challenges and steps required to move towards an open access publishing model for scholarly monographs. Further information on OAPEN-UK is available on the project website:
OAPEN-UK has two strands: an open access pilot gathering data on the usage, sales and citations of 60 monographs, and a wider research project which explores the environment for open access publishing.
If you’d like any further information, please contact Ellen Collins ellen.collins@researchinfonet.org or Caren Milloy c.milloy@jisc-collections.ac.uk
Read more about the project and its findings to date on the OAPEN-UK website
Follow the project on Twitter @oapenuk
He shares his vision for the US and warns of the danger in commercialising public content: "The whole idea is to make the public heritage available to the public... It's crucial to maintain open access as a fundamental commitment and not fence off any cultural assets from the cultural commons that really belong to everyone."
Read more and watch videos of Robert Darnton here
Also in JISC Inform, we look at how universities and colleges are embracing the web to showcase their expertise and work smarter with seven predictions from JISC’s Sarah Porter on the future for tech-enabled universities.Jennifer Jones, research associate, shares a day in her life as an open researcher, with many of the technology channels she uses being supported by JISC.
Comment boxes allow you to upload your own video links and comments to add to the articles and we welcome your feedback to Rebecca O'Brien or Nicola Yeeles.
Each article also has its own url, which means if you find a particular topic or article of interest, you can forward it on to colleagues or add the #jiscinform tag to blog and Tweet about it.
Technology which translates sign language into text is being developed by scientists in Aberdeen as part of a small business research initiative (SBRI) managed by JISC TechDis, a leading UK advisory service on technology and inclusion.
The software application is the first of its kind in the world which can be used on portable devices and allows users to customise sign language to their own specific needs.
The technology has the potential to transform how sign language users – from the profoundly deaf to those who have lost hearing in later life – communicate.
The development of the portable sign language translator is funded by £150K from the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) sponsored by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and managed by JISC TechDis. JISC TechDis has also facilitated user testing so that the products developed are fit for purpose.
Sal Cooke, JISC TechDis director says, “The fact that BIS and TSB entrusted the project management to us is a wonderful endorsement of our expertise. Our direct links with the learners who may benefit most ensures that the end product will be fully tested and fit for purpose.”
Computing scientists at Technabling, a spin-out company of the University of Aberdeen, are behind the technology which aims to bridge the gap between sign language and more standard forms of communication.
Dr Ernesto Compatangelo, a lecturer in computing science at the University of Aberdeen, and founder and director of Technabling said: “The aim of the technology – known as the Portable Sign language Translator (PSLT) - is to empower sign language users by enabling them to overcome the communication challenges they can experience, through portable technology. The user signs into a standard camera integrated into a laptop, netbook, Smartphone or other portable device such as a tablet. Their signs are immediately translated into text which can be read by the person they are conversing with.
Did you know? The number of people in the UK whose first or preferred language is BSL is estimated to be between 50,000 (Action on Hearing Loss) and 70,000 (British Deaf Association).
The team will now work to develop an app to be used on different devices including Smartphones, laptops and PC.
The tool has the potential to be used with a range of sign languages including British Sign Language (BSL) and Makaton.
Dr Compatangelo continued: “One of the most innovative and exciting aspects of the technology, is that it allows sign language users to actually develop their own signs for concepts and terms they need to have in their vocabulary, but they may not have been able to express easily when using BSL.”
“Whilst the technology has the potential to transform the lives of all sign language users, a key target market has been identified.
Find out more about the other projects in this investment programme on the JISC TechDis website
A new JISC report shows that text mining - a complex and innovative method of searching and analysing data - has huge potential benefits for the UK economy and knowledge base, but its use is being held back by copyright law and other barriers. Read the report
Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said of the recommendations in the report: "This is a complete no-brainer. This is scholarly research funded from the public purse, largely from taxpayer and philanthropic organisations. The taxpayer has the right to have maximum benefit extracted and that will only happen if there is maximum access to it."
Text mining draws on data analysis techniques such as natural language processing and information extraction to find new knowledge and meaningful patterns within large collections.
Torsten Reimer, JISC programme manager, explains, “Text mining is already producing efficiencies and new knowledge in areas as diverse as biological science, particle physics, media and communications. It has been used to hypothesise the causes of rare diseases and how pre-existing drugs could be used to target different diseases.
“The technique was also used recently to analyse the vast amount of text produced on websites, blogs and social media such as Twitter - where copyright holders allowed - and showed that the messages exchanged on Twitter during the English riots of 2011 were not to blame for inciting riots," added Torsten.
The business benefit of text mining is in identifying emerging trends, and to explore consumer preferences and competitor developments. Text mining is particularly used in larger companies as part of their customer relationship management strategy and in the pharmaceutical industry as part of their research and development strategy.
The report shows that such techniques could enable researchers in UK universities to gain new knowledge that would otherwise remain undiscovered because there is just too much relevant literature for any one person to read. Such discoveries could lead to benefits for society and the economy.
The UK has a number of strengths that put it in a good position to be a key player in text mining development, such as the existence of good framework conditions for innovation and the natural advantage of its native language.
Professor Douglas Kell, chief executive of the BBSRC, says, “This report shows the importance of implementing the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review as current copyright law is also imposing restrictions, since text mining involves a range of computerised analytical processes which are not all readily permitted within UK intellectual property law. In order to be ‘mined’, text must be accessed, copied, analysed, annotated and related to existing information and understanding. Even if the user has access rights to the material, making annotated copies can be illegal under current copyright law without the permission of the copyright holder.
“The report also shows that text mining can add enormous value to the benefit of the UK economy, as long as the text is freely available and unencumbered. Otherwise there is a real risk that we will miss discoveries that could have significant social and economic impact.”
Torsten added, “These laws are inhibiting text mining’s wider usage and making academic institutions nervous of taking it up. Without wider usage, the potential for text mining to generate gains for the economy and society cannot be exploited and the UK economy will be less able to take advantage of its strong public research base. There is a danger that the UK may be left behind as other countries such as Japan adopt a more liberal approach that encourages text mining usage.”
The report identifies a number of barriers that we need to overcome to make best use of text mining tools in the future. Firstly, text mining is a complex technical process that requires skilled staff; secondly it requires unrestricted access to information sources; thirdly copyright can be a barrier.
The report authors conclude that more work needs to be undertaken to raise awareness of the potential benefits and value of text mining to UK further and higher education.
An event at the Wellcome Trust last night started the process of looking at how publishers, researchers and policy makers can make this happen.
Read a blog post sharing opinions on the report from the event at the Wellcome Trust
Find out how this work fits in with JISC's planned investments
• Explore the case studies to understand how others are working
• Follow @JISC on Twitter this week for new and interesting open resources
• Keep up to date with #openeducationweek and #UKOER
The case studies are examples of how institutions working in an open way can enjoy cost savings, a better student experience and make resources easier to find.
The stories come from a range of staff around the UK working in colleges and universities and in various fields including research, teaching and information services, some of whom are planning events for open education week [link to blog].
Amber Thomas, programme manager at JISC, said: “These case studies paint a rich picture of how institutions are already making use of open approaches to further their distinctive missions. JISC is supporting many academics and managers in their exploration of new ways of working and the OER Programme in particular is highlighting some really innovative and forward-thinking work.”
The case study launch marks Open Education Week which is being coordinated by the OpenCourseWare Consortium.
Mary Lou Forward, chief executive of the OpenCourseWare Consortium said: “The vision of the OER movement is to improve teaching and learning globally through free and open sharing. OER give people access to the educational content they desire, independent of time or location. Open Education Week is going to showcase projects, resources, people and ideas so more people around the world can see its potential and its benefits.”
JISC project managers from across the UK are planning various events which you can get involved in around the UK – find out more here.
A new tool launched by Cardiff University’s information services directorate and JISC allows people to assess the popularity and use of e-resources so they continue to deliver value for money.
Eileen Brandreth, director of university IT at Cardiff, said: “I am confident that Raptor will make a real difference to education institutions looking to maximise value from investments in e-resources. The information that Raptor provides will enable institutions and individual Academic Schools to assess the best value and most useful e-resource subscriptions for their students and researchers.”
People using Raptor can produce statistics on e-resource use whenever they are needed in as much detail as they require - for example, usage by an individual university department.
Chris Brown, JISC e-Research Programme Manager, added: “The Raptor tool has successfully gone through beta testing and incorporated user feedback prior to the release of this version, which is ready for production deployment. With universities looking at the potential cost savings and efficiencies, the Raptor tool provides valuable statistics on resource usage. It can analyse a variety of log files and present important information, not only promptly, but most importantly, in an easy to understand and visual way.”
The fully-released Raptor system lets institutions view usage statistics from different access management systems in use across the education sector.
Chris added: “The team at Cardiff have used their wealth of experience in this area to build a tool that is easy to install, use and is extremely powerful.”
The launch of the tool follows the JISC webinar on the Journal Usage Support Portal which can also help librarians assess their subscriptions.
The Raptor system focuses particularly on federated access systems, where online resources request access authorisation from the ‘home’ institution of the visitor, resulting in easier single sign-on access for users.
Raptor is also now available for both Linux and Windows servers, further widening the potential audience.
The broadest single collection of historical maps from around the world is now available online.
The JISC-funded Old Maps Online, described by its creators as like Google for old maps, will act as a central repository to a vast collection of maps held by institutions across the globe. It is the first time that access to such an extensive collection has been made available online.
"By customising existing technology Old Maps Online makes it easy for everybody to find and compare maps through time in a highly visual way without the need for specialist knowledge. JISC is supporting a big step towards widening access to and use of these fascinating resources.”
The service, hosted by the university of Portsmouth, launches with over 60,000 maps which will double by the end of the year.
Project director, the university of Portsmouth’s Dr Humphrey Southall, said: “Our obsession with the past includes an innate curiosity about how the world around us looked, and the sheer global reach of this collection is what sets it apart and makes it unique. But historical records must be accessible in order to be useful. Having a single point of entry to a repository of this scale offers historians and the general public a gateway to some of the most fascinating images from history.”
The site incorporates access to collections at the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Moravian Library in the Czech Republic and the prestigious David Rumsey Collection in California.
Adam Farquhar, head of digital scholarship at the British Library, said: "The Old Maps Online project brings together our cartographic heritage digitally in one place. It supports both researchers and the wider public, aligning beautifully with the strategic goals of the British Library."
Other collections to be added later this year include those from Harvard University, the New York Public Library, the National Library of Wales, the Bodleian Library at Oxford and several major European libraries.
Visit Old Maps Online to search maps by placename, date or collectionAll photos copyright David Rumsey collection
Today JISC is announcing how, by bringing the leadership from across JISC into a more cohesive structure supported and enabled by the creation of a legal entity, it will reshape itself for the future.
“This is the start of an exciting future for JISC,” said Professor Martyn Harrow, Head of JISC. “We are determined to continue and develop our crucial role in supporting UK colleges and universities and skills providers, keep at the forefront of best practice. This has never been more important than now at a time of tighter funding and unprecedented challenges to the sectors.”
The changes are designed to provide a firm footing for the organisation as it responds to the recommendations made in the Wilson Review in JISC which was published in February 2011. The Review was commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in response to the current economic environment looking at the value of JISC.
“It was important that we take the time to study the recommendations made by Wilson,” continued Professor Harrow. “We therefore set up a Transition Group, made up of expert representatives from across the communities that we serve to go through the Wilson report in detail. The Group, so ably and skilfully led by Professor David Baker, Deputy Chair of JISC, has provided recommendations that will help us secure a better and more sustainable future for JISC and the sectors we serve.”
One of the first changes will see JISC will become a company limited by guarantee on 1 August 2012 managing the JISC offering across its products and services. The new company’s primary focus will be on three distinct areas for UK education and research:
• Infrastructure services: networks, access management, cloud services
• Data and content services: procurement, data hosting, data management and interoperability
• JISC Futures/Solution Services: focussed on supporting education, students, research, and the running of institutions as businesses
JISC will be set up initially as a holding (parent) company and following this, step by step, the current elements of JISC will be brought into this new company structure.
Professor Harrow said, “While it is too early to detail of all the changes, we can say with certainty that our guiding principle will be to ensure that the new model for JISC meets the needs of all our stakeholders. Our challenge is to do the same, or more, with less, but I am determined that the changes will not compromise our record of providing excellent services to UK colleges, universities and skills providers. It is very clear to me that JISC itself must change if we are to meet the challenges that all our sectors are facing, and we must create a new JISC for new times.”
JISC Advance is inviting proposals to enhance or repurpose existing resources for use in the further education and skills sectors.
This £1.4 million funding will both improve the learner experience and increase efficiencies. JISC Advance is looking for proposals which:
• apply existing resources (from JISC or elsewhere) to their work and adapt them for their needs
• identify gaps in these resources or current uses for technology leading to the development of additional resources for the sector
£900,000 will be available for large-scale projects and £450,000 for smaller projects.
Bids may be submitted from 1 March until noon on 31 May 2012, but the call will be closed once all the funding has been allocated.
The project will be supported by the Regional Support Centres (RSCs) who will provide advice and support for providers in developing and implementing their projects.
Guy Lambert, managing director of JISC Advance, said: “This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for the FE and Skills sector and JISC Advance is proud to be leading the project. Not only will it enhance the learner experience, but it will also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of providers, a challenge which everyone is currently facing.”
For more details, contact your local RSC or Nigel Ecclesfield, programme manager at JISC Advance, nigel dot ecclesfield @jiscadvance.ac.uk tel: 07508 531431.
How to gain the best value from journal subscriptions? JISC offers library managers and librarians advice in the first of a number of interactive online seminars this spring.
The webinar on 29 February at 13.30 will offer a practical demonstration of the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP), a 'one-stop shop' for academic libraries to download and analyse their journal usage.
Jo Lambert, senior development officer at Mimas and Angela Conyers of Evidence Base will highlight the time and cost saving benefits you can achieve by using JUSP to manage your usage statistics.
Using open source software could also improve the efficiency of your organisation, so the team from OSS Watch will be leading the following two webinars in March.
The first webinar will offer advice to open source project managers on how to increase the chances of sustainable community engagement in your project.
The second webinar will discuss how to increase the longevity and sustainability of your academic project or research outputs by choosing the right open source licence.
Future webinars will explore how to increase citations of your research data, extend your Virtual Learning Environment for the benefit of students and access and use a wealth of free online moving images and sound to enhance your teaching and research.
Find out more about the webinars and register now for the next one
Do you have a smart idea for using technology in your college or university? If you’re looking for rapid project funding, pitch your idea on a new JISC website and receive feedback from your peers.
The JISC Elevator is a new beta platform for people to pitch ideas for projects up to £10,000 using video and short descriptions.
Once an idea has been submitted to the site, people working and studying in UK higher and further education will be able to vote if they like the idea.
When an idea receives the target number of votes then JISC will decide whether or not to fund the idea.
Andrew McGregor, who is managing the JISC Elevator, said: “JISC’s remit is to fund cutting edge innovation – so we hope that by creating a different platform for bidding we’ll be able to capture the brainwaves of many more people in colleges and universities, perhaps people who haven’t previously bid for JISC funds. The voting mechanisms on the Elevator will also allow us to respond directly to what’s important for people in further and higher education.”
The JISC Elevator is open to all kinds of ideas, with suggestions including:
For details on what kinds of idea we are looking for please see the submission criteria.
Successful projects will be notified in April and expected to complete by the end of July 2012.
Visit the JISC Elevator
Doctoral theses can attract significant attention when made openly accessible in electronic form according to the respondents of a sector-wide survey of information professionals.
The JISC-funded survey gives a clearer picture of progress toward electronic thesis deposit in the UK, and how universities are achieving it.
The respondents to the survey were library and repository staff from 144 higher education institutions – and their responses suggested that 81% of their organisations will be providing open access to doctoral theses in five years time.Neil Jacobs, programme director at JISC, said: “Doctoral theses are important records of research. Many of them are already openly accessible via repositories and the UK EThOS Service, which most UK universities have joined. The resulting high visibility benefits both researchers and universities, and suggests that electronic theses will have a significant role to play in accelerating sharing our knowledge in the future.”
This publication was a joint venture between UKCGE, and UCL Library Services, based on a JISC project by UCL Library ServicesTina Barnes, senior research fellow at the University of Warwick, is one of the authors of the report. She said: “The move to electronic theses is a very positive development that wholly supports the academic principle of sharing knowledge for the common good and for the advancement of science and human development.”
Paul Ayris, director of UCL library services and co-chair of the DART-Europe partnership, said: “DART-Europe provides access to the full-text of over 280,000 Open Access research theses from 403 European universities in 20 countries. Open Access to such a critical mass of blue skies research is good for research and good for the researcher .”
The report shows there are a number of reasons why researchers may not make their theses available electronically, but the principal reason may be the inclusion of sensitive material.
Concerns regarding third-party copyright, plagiarism and restrictions on future publications are having little impact on access so far.
The report also suggests that theses need to be preserved over the long term - something that the British Library service, EThOS, originally a JISC project, aims to do.
Watch the presentation for more on the key findings of the report
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Final Report: Digital Monograph Technical Landscape: Exemplars and Recommendations
Listen to the podcast (Duration 6:31)
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Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal.
EUscreen – the result of collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.
The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.
John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”
The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.
The British Universities Film & Video Council which is partly funded by JISC, and Royal Holloway, University of London, are the two UK partners in the project.
The three year EUscreen project began in October 2009 and is funded by the European Commission. The project aims to standardise and provide a framework for the diverse collections held throughout Europe and encourage exploration of Europe’s rich and diverse history.
By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.
Academics are choosing the library as their first choice for getting hold of scholarly material because access is quick, it helps them make new connections to related information and the library may be the only place they can access that material.
Academics are then using their reading to inspire new thinking and improve their research results.
This picture of the library at the heart of university life has emerged as part of a new JISC Collections report which canvassed over 1000 academic and associate staff at six UK universities in 2011.
Lorraine Estelle is chief executive of JISC Collections which is responsible for negotiating journal and database deals for the higher and further education communities as a whole. She said: "This report provides further evidence about the value and impact of the resources and discovery systems which UK academic libraries make available. This makes it even more important for JISC Collections to continue to work with publishers and libraries to secure affordable and sustainable journal deals for the future."
Although the survey focuses on academics, reading articles also helps them teach, so staff and students alike are benefiting from access to these resources.
Dr Hazel Woodward, chair of the electronic information resources working group and librarian at Cranfield University said: "At this time of economic constraint, it is important for policy makers and Library directors to provide additional evidence of the value of library-provided resources. Whilst in the past these resources have been regarded as implicitly valuable, this research goes some way to making that value more explicit by focusing on specific benefits and outcomes for academics."
The research is part of a wider international Lib-Value project being coordinated by the Center for Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee.
Are you looking to secure JISC funding this year? As competition grows for funds, our advice on successful bidding can help you make a strong application.
Sarah Porter, JISC director of innovation, said: “We want to attract bids from a wide range of universities and colleges, those that know JISC well and others that might be bidding for the first time or need additional help with their application. We know bidding for funds is a time-consuming process and we are therefore aiming to give organisations the best possible chance of being successful in their applications.”
More useful resources:
Read a briefing paper about applying successfully for funding (PDF)
Find out what we’re looking for from responses to tender invitations
JISC advice for successful bidding includes:
Dominic Tate, repository and digital assets manager at Royal Holloway, university of London, who has compiled advice on successful JISC funding bids, said: “I would recommend an email or telephone call to the contact at JISC to sound them out about whether your idea for a bid is in scope for the call for funding. I would also recommend that you ask someone else outside your immediate team/colleagues to review a draft of your bid and give you feedback on the clarity of what you are proposing to do and deliver.”
Joss Winn, senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln who has managed a number of JISC projects, said: “When I write a bid, it is a somewhat open, collaborative process that proposes to formalise and build on work that we’re already doing and what we already know. I know that this is not uncommon and is not a guaranteed ‘secret to success’, but it is worth underlining.”
He adds: “Bid writing can be a useful reflective exercise - rather than simply 'bidding for money', it's part of the overall narrative of the project itself that starts with the bid and ends with the project outputs and papers.”
He also leaves Jisc with an OBE, awarded in 2009 for his services to further and higher education.
Malcolm said: “In my time at Jisc I have steered the organisation from its earliest foundations focussed on networking and the library sector to a world-class organisation supporting education and research. I am immensely proud of Jisc’s achievements, largely due to the enthusiasm and hard work of its staff and funded services. I look forward to following its future successes with interest. My retirement begins with a trip to Antarctica. Such plans, combined with my confidence in Martyn Harrow and colleagues, means I am looking forward to moving into the next stage of my life.”
Read more recognition for Malcolm on his retirement:
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Watch Malcolm’s personal milestones from his time at JISC: http://youtu.be/cI6WF4eDhU8
Martyn joins Jisc from Cardiff University, where he was chief information officer, and has previous experience in global business (Unilever and ICI), local government and running his own IT leadership consultancy and coaching practice.
A new website designed to help students make the transition between school, university and employment is launched today, by Queen Mary, University of London's Thinking Writing team.
The 'Writing in Schools, Higher Education and Employment Settings' (WISHEES) project is funded by JISC, and aims to help raise aspiration and attainment in schools and universities.
Working in collaboration with local schools and employers, Teresa McConlogue and Debra Hills of the Thinking Writing team have developed an online collection of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) writing texts and podcasts. The site features examples of real student texts, with tutor commentaries on those texts and interactive tutorials to help students think about quality in STEM writing.
The team hope school teachers and academics will find the website useful when designing STEM writing tasks that better prepare students for the demands of university and employment.
Sally Mitchell, Thinking Writing Co-ordinator at Queen Mary, commented: "This resource provides fascinating insights into what teachers and lecturers value in their students’ writing. It’s a great addition to the Thinking Writing website which supports academics to develop their thinking and practice in relation to writing."
Resources like WISHEES help to celebrate the good work that goes on in schools and universities around writing, and help students explore the trajectory of student writing from school to employment.
Academics from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, USA and employers such as Transport for London and Astrium Ltd (space transportation and satellite systems) have also contributed to the WISHEES collection.
Osman Bawa from Astrium Ltd commented: “Technical writing is an essential skill on which industry and business as a whole depend. To our thousands of engineers and managers it is their main means of communication. Students and young engineers need to actively develop and practice their technical writing, not only to speed up the process or reduce the time it takes, but to guarantee a project's success.
“Astrium is pleased to be a part of the STEM WISHEES project as it is an excellent way of helping students and academics to understand just what industry expects.”
JISC Digitisation Programme Manager Paola Marchionni added: "This resource is an excellent example of how the higher education sector, schools and employers can work in partnership to tackle the need for innovative resources which are engaging and at the same time develop students' digital literacy skills to prepare them for the demands of tertiary education as well as for the job market."
This project is funded by the JISC eContent programme 2011.
Click here to find out more about the project and view the resources or contact Teresa McConlogue (WISHEES Project Director).
For more information, please contact:
Siân Halkyard
Communications Manager
Queen Mary, University of London
020 7882 7454
07970 096 175
s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk
Analysing 600 years of music, drilling down into population databases, understanding social unrest through digitised newspapers – these are just some of the new lines of research that the winners of the second Digging into Data Challenge will now undertake.
Their research is part of an international competition that promotes innovative humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis.
Funded by eight international research organisations from four countries – including JISC, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the arts and humanities research council (AHRC) from the UK - the successful 14 teams are mixed groups of researchers from the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States.
They will receive grants of over £3m in total to investigate how computational techniques typically applied to the sciences can also be applied to change humanities and social sciences research.
Alastair Dunning, digitisation programme manager at JISC, said, "Digitised data offers researchers radically new opportunities for understanding old questions and formulating new ones. The range of projects demonstrate some of these opportunities."
1. Cascades Islands or Streams? (Indiana, Wolverhampton and Montreal universities) will measure the impact of humanities and social science research on traditional scholarly sources but also across social networks, blogs and other informal modes of communication.
2. ChartEx (Washington, Leiden, York, Toronto, Brighton and Columbia universities) will develop new ways of exploring medieval charters in their full text versions
3. Digging into Connected Repositories (The European Library Office, Open university) will analyse the effects of open access publishing on research
4. Digging by debating (universities of Indiana, East London, Dundee and London) will develop and implement a workbench called InterDebate, with the goal of digging into data provided by millions of expert books and articles
5. Digging into Metadata (Universities of Drexel, Manchester and Glamorgan) will create new metadata tags to help researchers discover information across multiple repositories
6. Electronic Locator of Vertical Interval Successions (ELVIS) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, universities of Aberdeen, McGill and Yale) will study changes in Western musical style from 1300 to 1900, using the digitized collections of several large music repositories
7. Imagery Lenses for Visualizing Text Corpora (Universities of Utah and Oxford) will explore whether data visualization can help researchers make new observations and generate new hypotheses about literature and linguistics
8. Integrated Social History Environment for Research (ISHER)-Digging into Social Unrest (Manchester, Illinois and Tilburg universities and International Institute of Social History) will develop an integrated tool to help social history researchers use sophisticated text mining
9. Integrating Data Mining and Data Management Technologies for Scholarly Inquiry (University of California, Berkeley; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; University of Liverpool; the Internet Archive and JSTOR) will integrate large-scale collections into a stored and managed preservation space
10. Mining Microdata (Minnesota, Leicester, Guelph, Alberta, Montreal and Essex universities) will make use of make use of data-mining technology to exploit one of the largest population databases in the world originally digitized for genealogical research
11. Trading Consequences (Universities of Edinburgh, York and St Andrews) will examine the economic and environmental consequences of commodity trading during the nineteenth century using information extraction techniques to study large corpora of digitized documents
Total programme funding is approximately £3,075,000
Find out more about the competition and why JISC is involvedThis year has seen approximately half a million people visit the JISC website – who have looked at over 2.3 million pages in 2011 taking advantage of our resources and guidance across teaching, learning and research.
Nearly 800 of you took time to visit the JISC website on Christmas Day 2010 with the most popular searched story on the day being the Great War Archive rolled out in Germany.
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Funding, online resources and JISC Collections were the three most searched-for terms on JISC’s website in 2011, with the top topics you wanted to know about shown below:
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Isaac Newton’s own annotated copies of his works, notebooks and manuscripts are being made available online by Cambridge University Library and the University of Sussex with JISC funding.
Digitised title page from
Newton’s own copy
of Principia
Researchers, students and the public can now zoom in to each page to explore texts like Principia Mathematica in incredible detail and make use of transcriptions to understand Newton’s mind – and handwriting.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “The end results of Newton’s work are world famous but his notebooks and annotations give a rather different insight into the process that he went through to get there. JISC looks to share insights like those with as wide an audience of possible and digitising this collection means that researchers and students now have online access wherever they are.”
However, while the two universities have received JISC funding to help expose Newton’s papers to the eyes of the world, a closer look at some of the pages from the newly digitised archive reveals that not all his peers thought his output should be shared so openly.
Several of the manuscripts in the collection contain the handwritten line ‘not fit to be printed’, scrawled by Thomas Pellet, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who went through Newton’s papers after his death to decide which ones should be published.
Project manager Rob Iliffe, Professor of Intellectual History and History of Science at the University of Sussex, said: “The publication of these foundational texts, thanks to funding from JISC, represents the result of a great deal of hard work put in by both the Cambridge and Sussex teams over the past year. It is a significant milestone in the work of the Newton Project, and with access to nearly five million words of Newton's personal, scientific and religious writings, readers can now look at Newton's creativity in its broadest contexts.
Cambridge University librarian Anne Jarvis said: “With great collections comes a responsibility to make these as accessible as we can. Now, through the use of new technologies and with vital support from the Polonsky Foundation and bodies such as the JISC, we are able to open up our collections in ways that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. Wherever possible we will seek to enhance our digital collections by aligning them with scholarly research.
“Our initial collection, the Newton Papers, is a good example. Through our collaboration with the Newton Project at the University of Sussex, we’ve been able to provide superb transcriptions alongside the images of many of Newton's manuscripts.”
Launching the website with more than 4,000 pages of its most important Newton material, Cambridge University Library will upload thousands of further pages over the next few months until almost all of its Newton collection is available to view and download anywhere in the world.
Researchers have today unveiled a new interactive map that reveals London’s social history in unprecedented detail, enabling users to explore everything from the world’s first gay scene to eighteenth century riots.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “Researchers in the humanities and social sciences are turning increasingly to geographical analysis as a way of bringing the facts and figures to life. What’s exciting about this resource is that the existing data you can explore today is just the start – the interface could be expanded to include new data sets and new maps, making it potentially useful to scholars in dozens of different disciplines. JISC’s commitment to funding open source projects means that other universities are already looking at how they might reuse the programmes that the Sheffield team has developed.”
Trial accounts from the Old Bailey, tax and population data, and even archaeological records can all be uploaded onto John Rocque’s famous 1746 map of London, now fully referenced to modern geographical coordinates by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).
Locating London’s Past is the result of a collaborative project between the University of Sheffield, the University of Hertfordshire, and the University of London.
Using the new website, people are now able to explore fully geo-referenced detail using Google maps technology to reveal the distribution of crimes, wealth and poverty, mortality, archaeological finds, voting records and much more.
Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Hertfordshire commented: “This project has allowed us to add a new, third dimension to our understanding of the first ‘World City’. Text on the page can now be reconfigured around place and space to create a new historical landscape to reveal pockets of crime and poverty, wealth, and illness. It allows us to know the past in a new way.”
18th Century riot trials
Professor Robert Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield’s Department of History commented: “Locating London’s Past makes it possible for the first time to map a wide variety of data from London’s past onto fully geo-referenced historical maps of the metropolis. For me, the most exciting findings concern the spread of crime locations from Old Bailey trials. Rather than simply reflecting the distribution of poverty (or wealth), criminal prosecutions took place in mixed areas, where social tensions were highest. These and other discoveries will transform our understanding of the historical development of Europe’s first modern city.”
Dr Matthew Davies, Director of the Centre for Metropolitan History at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, commented: “The project’s website provides a new tool for understanding the relationships between the people and places of pre-modern London. It will enable the visualisation through maps of important characteristics of the metropolis during a time of rapid growth, from everyday patterns of family, home and work, to the interactions between inhabitants and institutions such as the parishes, hospitals and city companies.”
A study of 2.4 million Twitter messages from the time of the riots has found that politicians and other commentators were wrong to claim the website played an important role in inciting and organising the disturbances.
It is published today (8 December) in the Guardian newspaper as part of its Reading the Riots investigation.
Professor Procter, who is based at The University’s Manchester e-Research Centre, said: "In August this year, social unrest spilled over onto the streets of English cities and the summer riots were the largest public disorder events in recent history.
"Politicians and commentators were quick to claim that social media played an important role in inciting and organising riots, calling for sites such as Twitter to be closed should events of this nature happen again.
"But our analysis found no evidence of significance in the data we have analysed that would justify such a course action in respect to Twitter.
"In contrast, we do find strong evidence that Twitter was a valuable tool for mobilising support for the post-riot clean up and for organising specific clean up activities."
Also according to the research team, rumours 'break' quickly in Twitter and the mainstream media lag behind citizen reports.
Examples include rumours the London Eye had been set on fire and animals had been released from the London Zoo – which both turned out to be untrue.
Other stories turned out to be true such as the burning down of a Miss Selfridge shop in Manchester.
Professor Procter added: "Only after a period of time does the influence of mainstream media organisations become critical for determining a rumour's credibility.
"But we do find the mainstream media is perfectly capable of picking up and publishing unverified information from social media without adhering to the usual standard of fact checking.
"Consequently, some stories of this nature, though never verified, go unchallenged."
The research team of the Universities of Manchester, Leicester, St Andrews, Wolverhampton and UCL, draws on the expertise of a wide range of disciplines within the social sciences and computer science.
Dr Torsten Reimer, JISC programme manager, said: "The influence of social media on society is growing rapidly so we need a much better understanding of their impact on people's lives.
"In the case of Twitter this means analysing gigantic amounts of data, constantly created by millions of people, - a task that requires new tools and methods, supported by a broader digital infrastructure for research.
"We are pleased that we had the chance to support the project team working in collaboration with the Guardian to demonstrate how this infrastructure can be used to understand what happened during the riots in August."
The analysis of messages exchanged on Twitter during the riots was undertaken through a larger, JISC funded project called NeISS: National e-Infrastructure for Social Science Simulation.
The NeISS project aims to introduce social scientists to new ways of thinking about social problems.
Clinical images, videos and other recordings are vital to good teaching and learning within the health care professions. Increasingly these are originated outside the institution that wishes to use them. This raises a number of legal, ethical and other issues relating to their re-use.
Debra Hiom, the project’s manager at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol, added: “Students and teachers increasingly use pre-existing patient images from the web without adequately considering copyright or how they have been consented. The new materials will help individuals be clear how resources can or can not be reused.”
Listen to Debra (Duration 6:02) explaining the issues that professionals face when using recordings and how the new guidance can help:
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
The materials aim to help users of clinical healthcare recordings to:
The guidance is aimed primarily at students, teachers or doctors who wish to use a patient recording for learning and teaching. It will also be of interest and use to other clinical and healthcare workers as well as to university staff where patient recordings are being made available for learning and teaching.
Dr Jane Williams, Director of e-Learning in the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Bristol, said: “There is already a wealth of advice and guidance but it is currently overwhelming. The new advice and guidance attempts to provide an easy navigable route through a very sensitive area of professional practice.”
Stuart Dempster, Director of the Strategic Content Alliance at JISC, said: “I am delighted to see that the significant advances being made in medical recordings, networks and other technological innovation within the education, research and health are being matched with clarity in the advance and guidance being offered to clinical and non-clinical staff alike through this project. This work builds on from earlier JISC investments in improving the skills required in the digital age.”
The materials have been created by a collaboration of cross-sector organisations and individuals, including the General Medical Council (GMC), Wellcome Trust, Institute for Medical Illustrators, University of Bristol and Newcastle University.
The project has been funded through JISC’s Strategic and Content Alliance and will be hosted by JISC Digital Media.
Read the advice and guidance
http://jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/clinical-recordings/
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT Fascinating records from the Church Courts of York are now available on-line at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, allowing historians new insights into a huge variety of topics over many centuries.
From arguments about church taxes on liquorice, roses and pigeon dung, to families disputing wills and inheritance, the records paint a vivid picture of the social, economic, political, religious and emotional world of people living in a period from the 14th to 19th centuries.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: "Digitisation of this resource opens up the records to a far greater range of research and teaching uses. To date use has been limited by the physical format and the conservation needs of the documents. These new digital images can be shuffled around, enlarged, re-ordered and compared in ways that are not possible with the physical items themselves."
Digitisation of the York Cause Papers, which record the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts of York from 1300 to 1858, has been funded through a grant from JISC. The development means the papers are set to become one of the most widely-used historical records in the UK.
Borthwick Institute Keeper of Archives Chris Webb said: "Until 1858 the church courts, under the authority of bishops, had jurisdiction over a wide variety of crimes which we would now consider secular and the business of the state.
"They oversaw cases concerning marriage and separation, and disputes over wills and inheritance. They also dealt with cases involving personal reputation and defamation, the maintenance of the Church, the orthodoxy of its services, and the regulation of the moral and professional conduct of the clergy, schoolmasters, physicians and midwives.
"The Church of England was supported by a system of taxation known as tithes and the records also show exactly how this taxation was calculated and how people tried to evade it."
Professor Mark Ormrod, from the University’s Department of History, added: "The digitisation of the Cause Papers brings to completion a comprehensive project designed specifically to allow the widest possible public access to this vitally important historical resource.
"The resource is of tremendous importance to specialists in social, economic, religious and legal history and in the history of gender, sexuality, marriage and domesticity, as well as to a wide range of users with interests in family and local history. The York Cause Papers are now set to become one of the most widely-used historical resources in the United Kingdom."
The digitisation project adds to original work funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation which provided an on-line catalogue. A range of detailed searches are now available which are suitable for building up a list of sources for thematic research and enable searches by personal name and place, adding to the resources available to family and local historians.
The Humanities Research Institute (HRI) at the University of Sheffield provided crucial technical support in enabling this project to link the images of the York Cause Papers with the Borthwick’s searchable database of the Cause Papers. The searchable database had been created by the Borthwick and the HRI during a previous project, funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.
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