Humanities scholars will now be able to benefit from a collaborative open access (OA) consortium agreement which means that authors won’t have to pay to make their research open access.
The publishing model – the first of its type in the UK – is being offered by Open Library of Humanities (OLH) following negotiations with Jisc.
Not-for-profit and scholar led, the Open Library of Humanities is a gold open access platform for a range of humanities journals. Publishing across a wide range of humanities disciplines, the model works by sharing the costs across its consortium of library members – who pay a fee to join – rather than charging authors and their institutions an upfront fee on publication (article processing charges).
Liam Earney, director of Jisc Collections, said:
“We are keen to engage with a variety of business models to help universities in making their research openly available and compliant with open access policies.
The OLH has a transformative business model that is supportive and inclusive of all humanities scholars. It strengthens the relationship between publishers and libraries by actively involving the libraries in the governance of the OLH. This collectively-funded model offers a cost competitive, sustainable path to gold open access that our universities have told us they want.”
Dr Martin Paul Eve, co-director of the OLH, added:
“We are thrilled and privileged to be working with Jisc in the UK to implement another route to achieve open access. The humanities disciplines still pose a substantially greater challenge than their scientific counterparts.
With our unique financial model and innovative approach to transition, we hope to contribute to a solution.”
OLH has already launched a similar approach in North America. Since the consortium was announced in January 2015 more than 60 libraries have signed up from all across the US, including the GALILEO consortium, which comprises over 2,000 institutions in the state of Georgia.
Furthermore, the OLH has been internationally recognised as an important development in open access for the humanities with David Armitage, the Lloyd C. Blankfein professor of History at Harvard, writing that
“there is hardly a more important project in train for scholarship in the humanities today”.
Institutions wishing to find out more or to sign up should visit the OLH catalogue page or contact the Jisc Collections helpdesk.
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Lawrie Phipps, senior co-design manager at Jisc, talks about the challenges facing colleges and universities when it comes to embedding a technology strategy and how these can be overcome. Read the original blog post.
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Last year, Jisc began work with EDUCAUSE - the US organisation for IT professionals in higher education - to find out the skillset of the CIO of the future.
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One of the findings of our project was that many aspiring technology leaders find it difficult to make the step up.
Louisa Dale, director Jisc group sector intelligence, talks us through some of the learnings and opens a call for IT professionals to get involved in the next phase of work.
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A new report on the potential of collaboration and shared services in UK higher education (HE) launches this week from Loughborough University and the Efficiency Exchange – the service operated by Universities UK (UUK) in partnership with Jisc, Leadership Foundation and HEFCE.
Praise is given to the efficiency savings achieved by universities, estimated at £1.38bn between 2005 and 2011, and the adoption of shared services have made a vital contribution to this sum. However, there is a clear message that UK HE must do more to emulate the business world and further embrace a culture of collaboration if it is to remain competitive on an international stage.
As next steps, the report highlights the opportunities for universities to streamline processes and create new efficiencies across internal departments, and with other institutions.
Martin Hamilton, futurist at Jisc, says:
“We welcome this report, which shows our sector is awake to the excellent opportunities that come with sharing functions, facilities and expertise. We are increasingly recognising that when we come together, we put the UK in the best competitive position.”
The report mentions a number of successful initiatives already in use that are increasing productivity and opening up access to expensive research assets. For example, Kit-Catalogue, a searchable online database of publically bookable equipment, developed by Loughborough University and subsequently taken in-house by Jisc, allows universities to pool their resources to create high technological capabilities.
Martin continues:
“What’s interesting is that some of the most successful shared services have not always been thought of as such. Jisc’s role in providing the Janet network which provides an internet connection for UK education and research institutions, now over 30 years old, probably makes it the first true example of shared services in UK HE. Universities and colleges all around the UK are reliant on this world class infrastructure.
We see shared services as vital for the future of HE and will look to review and refine our offer to support everyone in the sector. We look forward to working with the project team and the Efficiency Exchange to progress the recommendations.”
Jisc is actively looking to support this agenda, making it easier for universities to benefit from shared infrastructure. Last year Jisc launched the UK’s first shared data centre for education and research, which is helping to lower the operational costs and increase collaboration between some of the UK’s leading research institutions.
We believe there is significant potential from taking a shared approach to new developments and work is already underway, including a business intelligence tool, developed in conjunction with HESA, that will bring together data from all UK universities, and our brokerage work on supercomputing which makes £60m of publicly funded facilities and expertise available under a standard contractual template.
The report follows a review from earlier this year led by Professor Sir Ian Diamond, on ‘Efficiency, effectiveness and value for money’ in UK HE, which highlighted shared services as ‘critical’ in improving quality and lowering costs. It was written by Dr Andrew Rothwell, director of MBA programmes, and Ian Herbert, deputy director of the centre of global sourcing and services, programme director (Singapore) and senior lecturer in accounting and financial management, both at the school of business and economics, Loughborough University.
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Jisc is sponsoring the innovation technology excellence category in the inaugural Herald Higher Education Awards, the first awards to recognise best practice specifically in Scottish higher education. Jason Miles-Campbell, head of Jisc Scotland and Jisc Northern Ireland, tells us about the awards and how to enter.
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John Chapman, information security policy and strategy manager at Jisc, describes how a recent consultation is informing development of some new security products and services. Read the original blog post.
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Flipped classrooms are turning education upside-down: students watch videos in their own time, then come together in a curated discussion to interact and learn together with their teacher. But what about flipped learning for professional development?
Flipped learning, blended learning, mixed-mode instruction. The terms change, but the concept stays the same. Learners study material at their own pace, typically through watching videos, and then benefit from an interactive group session. Tutors spend time doing what they do best: working with individuals, guiding discussions, creating hands-on activities, and less time presenting. The pedagogy is starting to gain interest among educational researchers, too. A study in 2011 split a class of undergraduate physics students during the 12th week of their course, with half the students taught in person as usual and the other half taught through flipped learning, without a formal lecture. At the end of the week, they were tested. In the control classroom, students gained an average score of 41%, but the flipped learners scored an average of 74%.
So could this be applied to training the staff themselves? And if tutors were more confident having been on the other end of this practice, would they feel better about using the technique with their learners? Samantha Broom, head of modern foreign languages at St Mary's Catholic Academy in Blackpool, definitely thinks so.
As someone who regularly flips her continuing professional development sessions, Samantha sees a number of benefits:
“Flipping is extremely effective as it gives everyone the opportunity to engage with the learning materials at their own speed, and this then gives you more time to go deeper into the learning during training time with professionals.”
That face-to-face learning between mentor and learner is what turns straightforward distance learning into flipped learning. These sessions may also give learners more time to engage in one-to-one discussion with the tutor, something they couldn’t do in a lecture or workshop scenario. Writing in the US publication Faculty Focus, Dr Penne Restad, who uses the flipped model to teach history at the University of Texas, has said:
"Working in class along with a master of the discipline (you), they learn to think more critically, communicate more effectively, and have a greater appreciation for the unique importance and logic of the subject."
With such a diverse range of staff working in any learning provider, the flexibility of this approach can be particularly useful. Martin Compton is a teacher trainer and elearning specialist at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. He uses flipped CPD to train teachers from various subject areas in one room. They may have watched subject-specific material before the session, but can discuss it more generally with colleagues from other departments.
Isabel Boothby, a participant on the eteaching course that Martin runs, explains,
"I am given tasks to do without a huge amount of support which means that I have to actually research the methods and find a way of being able to do these tasks myself. It’s the process of discovering that not only can I do it, but I can do it without a lot of scaffolding, that has been really really empowering."
Another benefit of flipped learning is in the longevity of materials. Having an online home for a course can provide a space like this one for participants to refer back to and update themselves for continuing professional development in the truest sense.
Harry Wheatcroft talks about the impact and benefits of introducing online health and safety training for staff at Loughborough College
Apart from keeping people happy, Martin Compton argues that teaching using flipped learning is “a no-brainer because it’s so much easier than other forms of training”. If shared openly, the resources only have to be created once, and can then be used across different training providers. The flipped approach is starting to become more and more integral to the second year PGCE course that Martin runs, especially in modules on curriculum development for inclusive practice, which he maintains on Blendspace, an online platform for sharing different kinds of media.
“You could do flipped learning without technology but they go hand in hand. Cloud-based technology is the perfect flipping tool.” In some colleges like Uxbridge, the virtual learning environment is beginning to be replaced by a series of cloud resources. Martin says, “It’s also possible to massively decrease the photocopying budget; you could use a QR code to allow staff quick access to relevant resources.” Expensive projectors and screens, which can cost up to £5,000 per classroom, are replaced by instant access to the technology online. The face to face sessions tend to be lighter on the tech and more focused on peer and trainer interaction.
But it’s not all plain sailing. Doing things differently and taking staff out of the classroom and on to their computers for the presentation part of their learning, can raise eyebrows, at least initially. Martin says, “People panic – managers panic, even the people doing the courses panic. It’s so counter to the norms. It’s requiring them to be independent. They like classrooms and registers.”
But when it comes to actually doing the courses, Martin has been surprised. He says, “I can’t believe how positive everyone is. What we are doing is to do is showing that you can release people to have the confidence to do this.”
If learning providers want to promote this kind of upside-down thinking then they need to empower people at the grassroots, Martin argues.
“The most effective change happens through the pressure of individuals. My desire to share has been supported by an information learning technology, or ILT, strategy.”
That support drives a critical mass of people to become involved, which helps to drive change.
Follow Martin Compton on Twitter @eteachingx3
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Paul Bailey, senior co-design manager, Jisc tells us about the Summer of Student Innovation, a co-design competition to come up with technology ideas to improve education, research and student life.
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This week, Paul Richardson, account manager for Jisc Wales, attended OER15. In this podcast Paul talks to us about some of the learnings from the event, and how Jisc is helping institutions to make best use of open educational resources, touching on our work with Bangor University.
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This year’s Summer of Student Innovation is underway with a new approach to engage a broader range of students and produce new technology that is more likely to lead to wide scale adoption.
Ideas are already being submitted for this year’s competition, offering further education, higher education (FE and HE) and work based learning students the chance to create solutions that could change the education landscape forever.
Now in its third year, the Summer of Student Innovation is a Jisc co-design competition to enable students to realise their big ideas for using technology to improve education, research and student life for themselves and for their fellow students. This year’s competition is open to students in higher and further education and those in work-based learning.
Successful entrants will be announced in June and receive a grant from Jisc. The funding will help students develop their ideas into apps and tools, support successful products to be piloted by universities, colleges and learning providers, and promote all ideas to other interested parties through sustainable routes.
To take part students are asked to submit a short video pitch on the Jisc Elevator website, alongside a short summary and a 300-500 word description of their idea detailing the benefits and how it will impact upon research and education. The four categories this year are:
Those entering the competition must submit their applications by Monday 18 May 2015.
Andy McGregor, deputy chief innovation officer at Jisc says:
The exciting thing about the summer of student innovation competition is that it enables students to use technology to address the problems that they experience on a day to day basis. This leads to new technologies that should benefit universities and colleges and allow them to improve the student experience.
This year we have learned from the past two years and are running the competition differently. This year we are aiming to reach a broader range of students and to work with them to develop killer apps that are sustainable, scalable and easy to adopt.
Lukas Ondrej, an A-level student at Sussex Downs College and winner of last year’s competition says:
“Jisc's Summer of Student Innovation competition was an unforgettable experience that allowed us to not only greatly improve our performance, presentational and interpersonal skills but also to make valuable new business contacts and expand our horizons.”
One of the people who has helped shape the Summer of Student Innovation is John Shemilt, director of IT at Imperial College London, who commented:
“It may sound like an obvious answer, but those most likely to know what students want are students themselves.
Giving our bright generation of young people full credit for their ideas and an ongoing role in their development will improve student satisfaction and engagement and potentially uncover the entrepreneurs of the future.”
The 20 winning ideas teams will be showcased later this year in a ‘Dragons' Den’ style pitching event on 26 August in London.
This year’s Summer of Student Innovation is run in partnership with:
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Professor David Maguire, vice-chancellor at the University of Greenwich, has been appointed into the role of Jisc chair.
David is currently a Jisc trustee and in the past year has served as a member of the board of Jisc trustees, working alongside other senior leaders in promoting information and communications technology to enhance learning, teaching and research within the UK.
He follows in the immensely successful footsteps of Professor Sir Tim O’Shea and more recently Professor Martin Hall and brings with him a wealth of experience in both the US and UK, spanning the education and IT sectors. In his new role, David will play a key part in shaping the organisation’s future strategic planning and will oversee its charitable objectives.
David is an accomplished leader in the private sector as well as in higher education. An acknowledged expert in the computer mapping and geographic information systems, he has previously served as chief scientist and director of products at Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.), a global software company with headquarters in California.
In addition to being vice-chancellor at the University of Greenwich, he is a member of several other prestigious boards, including London Higher, Health Education Kent, Surrey and Sussex – NHS governing body, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the Universities UK Treasurer’s Committee.
The handover period between Martin Hall and David Maguire will take place during May.
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Networkshop43 - our annual technical event - came to an end last Thursday. In this podcast we hear about the highlights from Chris Whitwood, network manager from Falmouth University, and Yu-King Lau, network support administrator from UCL Institute of Education, who have both won an iPad thanks to Networkshop43 sponsors Infinity.
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Networkshop43 - our annual technical event - continues this week, with day two another busy one. In this podcast, Steve Kennett, head of operational services at Jisc, discusses some of his highlights and feedback from delegates.
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This week is Networkshop43, our annual technical event for network managers and technical staff. Tim Kidd, executive director Jisc technologies, reports back on day one.
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Springer Science+Business Media and Jisc have agreed on a new arrangement which takes into account UK scientists’ need to comply with multiple funders’ open access policies and to have access to the vast library of scientific articles published by Springer, while containing the combined costs of article processing charges and subscriptions.
The proposed agreement will cap the amount paid by UK higher education (HE) institutions to subscribe and maintain full access to Springer’s high quality subscription journals and to make their researchers’ articles open access in those journals, the latter being in compliance with the requirements of HEFCE’s Research Excellence Framework, RCUK’s open access policy and other major funders such as the Charity Open Access Fund.
It is intended that the agreement will significantly reduce the cost and administration barriers to hybrid open access publishing for UK academic institutions, while supporting the transition to open access in a transparent and sustainable way.
Jisc and Springer first entered into negotiations in response to changes to the UK’s open access requirements in early 2014. Jisc supports education and research through digital services, and approached Springer with a clear mandate and objectives to contain the costs to UK institutions. Springer is committed to recognising and accommodating the needs of libraries, funders, universities and researchers.
Extensive discussions have been necessary to understand the needs and requirements of all stakeholders and to prepare a framework that could form the basis for a sustainable model of publishing in, and giving access to, Springer’s subscription journals. As a transformative model, the two organisations will engage in ongoing co-operation and assessment so that they can ensure the arrangement continues to meet UK HE institutions’ compliance needs as open access requirements evolve. Both parties have worked together in a constructive way, echoing the process and intention of the Finch Group.
Roné Robbetze, VP Sales Northwestern Europe and Africa, said:
“Springer is proud to work so closely with Jisc on this new direction in science publishing. The UK has taken a major step in further developing open access and we are happy to be the first to have such a far-reaching arrangement here.”
Lorraine Estelle, executive director of digital resources and divisional CEO of Jisc Collections, added:
“Jisc sees the development of these models as essential in order to contain the total cost of ownership of scholarly communication. Springer has shown a deep understanding of the issue and contributed proactively in finding a model that addresses the needs of UK higher education institutions as they lead in the transition to open access.”
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Education and research institutions in the UK will be able to access improved digital certification thanks to a new agreement between QuoVadis Online Security Limited and Jisc, which provides the Janet network.
QuoVadis will provide a variety of digital certificate types via the Janet certificate service, a centralised purchasing service for institutions that allows them to manage all of their online certification needs in one place.
QuoVadis’ offer includes Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates for web encryption as well as certificates for authentication, secure email, and digital signatures.
New features of the service include:
“QuoVadis is pleased to support Jisc and its community across the UK,”
said Simon Knight, QuoVadis managing director.
“QuoVadis has significant experience serving similar research and education communities in Europe and Oceania, and will leverage our international expertise in certificate authority operations to provide UK-based service and support to Jisc and its customers.”
Tim Kidd, executive director, Jisc technologies said:
“Cyber security is high on the agenda in this digital age, so being able to provide high assurance certification – and ensuring that these certificates can be purchased quickly, seamlessly, and without huge costs – is paramount.
The new QuoVadis service will streamline the process of obtaining certificates, saving institutions time and money, and increase the use of extended validation certificates at no extra cost.”
Founded in 1999, QuoVadis is a commercial certificate authority with operations in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Bermuda. In addition to being a leading provider of SSL/TLS certificates for the web, QuoVadis is a Qualified Certification Service Provider for legally-valid digital signatures in the EU, and is accredited by the EUGridPMA, which coordinates the trust fabric for e-Infrastructure for research in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
For more information or to apply visit the certificate service webpage.
via Jisc news
Heart of Worcestershire College – 2014’s Association of Colleges Beacon Award winner for effective use of technology in further education – will tomorrow be hosting ‘Fast track to FELTAG’, an event designed to help colleges adopt a complete blended learning model and meet the FELTAG recommendations.
The event will feature a number of expert speakers, including Paul McKean, Jisc FE and skills customer advocate. Here, he talks to Gemma Ellis about how Jisc is supporting this move towards a blended offer and how colleges can take advantage of Jisc services.
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A new service enabling researchers to access their digital resources and applications through a single, federated sign-on is launching today thanks to Jisc.
A world-first, Assent, provided by Jisc, enables simplified, seamless and secure access to the broad range of web and non-web services that researchers commonly need – from cloud, email and file storage services, through to desktop login, high performance computing (HPC) facilities and secure data communications.
Assent uses the same open standards and open source software that underpin the two leading federated access services in global education and research: eduroam, the world-wide single sign-on roaming service, and the UK Access Management Federation, which provides web-only single sign on. It works by combining these technologies to provide a powerful and flexible access management solution appropriate to the needs of research.
There are significant benefits in adopting Assent for both institutions and their researchers.
Institutions benefit by reducing the number of credentials issued to each user, greatly reducing the administrative burden and cost. User identities are managed by the users’ home institutions, reducing the need to issue credentials to users from partner organisations.
For researchers, using Assent means they are able to seamlessly access the digital resources and applications they need to do their jobs, wherever it has been made available by a participating organisation.
Josh Howlett, head of trust and identity at Jisc said:
“Many institutions will already be using federated access in some form. Assent extends the use of this approach to a greater range of digital resources and applications, allowing them to consume a federated identity at minimal cost and effort.
“We know this to be of significant interest to research-intensive institutions, who will often be working across various applications and data sources, and regularly collaborating with others to improve research outcomes. We have already received a number of enquiries from organisations hoping to implement Assent in their own operations.”
A number of leading research-intensive institutions and HPC facilities were involved in the pilot of Assent – which went under the name of Moonshot – including the University of Glasgow and University of Cambridge, multi-disciplinary research organisation Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC), and UK synchrotron Diamond Light Source. Feedback has been extremely positive.
Dr Jens Jensen, data services leader, from STFC's scientific computing department said:
“STFC holds tens of petabytes of science data. To make the most of this, researchers need to combine their own resources with those of other data centres and research facilities.
“Single sign-on is an important aspect underpinning this. As well as making it easier for end users to take advantage of the services we provide, it enables us to manage data permissions and to track the use and impact of publicly-funded data. Assent promises to provide an enhanced flexible and interoperable infrastructure, based on open standards, that will support STFC’s work with national and global partners. We look forward to exploring these new opportunities with Jisc and other participating organisations.”
Jisc is also advising other national research and education networks to explore the use of this technology globally, and is collaborating with its European partners to develop the geographical footprint required by our research communities.
If you are interested in adopting Assent, please contact assent@jisc.ac.uk.
via Jisc news
Today Research Councils UK (RCUK) released a review of the implementation of their open access (OA) policy just 16 months after its introduction.
RCUK’s OA policy prefers researchers to use a gold OA model, asking for payment of an article processing charges (APC) at or soon after the point of acceptance.
Neil Jacobs, head of scholarly communications support, and part of the review panel comments:
“Jisc welcomes this review. As it comes at an early stage in the implementation of the OA policy there is currently only a limited amount of evidence, but it’s clear that Jisc is doing the right things to enable the sector to meet changing requirements.
The RCUK OA policy implies a huge change to the workflows associated with the journal supply chain and it will take time for universities, publishers, and others to embed them. The review tells us there are clear signs that this adaption is taking place, but also clear signs that considerable administrative burden remains on universities.
Nevertheless, I believe the answer is not for the Research Councils to turn away from universities as partners in the implementation of the policy, but to engage with them to get the infrastructure and workflows in place to make them work.”
As well as administrative burden the policy has caused to universities the review also mentions the impact on them of the absolute costs of paying APCs (the costs incurred when publishing an article). It states “further transparency on what is being paid in APCs by institutions to publishers will be crucial in helping to change behaviours and ease the transition towards open access”.
At Jisc we have been supporting this process through a standard data template, and many universities are now sharing data on their APC payments openly. Once this information is gathered together we will be able to provide reports on these payments across education and research, giving a level of transparency never previously seen in this market.
Other Jisc work that supports implementation of this policy includes:
The report highlights that RCUK's open access policy is being implemented alongside the Research Excellence Framework OA policy, which states that articles should be deposited into a repository at the point of acceptance by a journal.
This dual establishment of policies has created both challenges and opportunities, the different approaches seeming to require researchers to establish multiple workflows. What they have in common, however, is that they demonstrate the importance of the point at which an article is accepted for publication by a journal – both policies encourage that this is now properly managed with universities.
However, the review did find that there is some confusion around these polices and what is required; Jisc is undertaking work to standardise the language used by research funders, universities and publishers in describing their OA policies.
We see this review as a positive step on the road to an OA world and looks forward to continuing to work with all stakeholders, including the new higher education institution practitioner group recommended by the report.
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We’ve been notified by the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) that at least one institution has been the victim of a type of 'phone hacking', whereby fraudsters make use of weaknesses in internet-connected phone systems to take control of them, and then make large numbers of outgoing calls to premium-rate phone numbers, in which the fraudsters have a financial stake.
There’s the potential for universities to lose a large amount of money (maybe in the hundreds of thousands) in a very short space of time if it is not discovered promptly. You can read more information about how this works in this New York Times article.
UCISA have sent out a communication asking universities to be extra vigilant over the next few days in case universities are targeted next.
They advise that it may also be worth looking back through phone logs for unusual (and expensive) activity and ask that universities also consider how they might combat this fraud if it was to occur overnight, or on the weekends.
At Jisc we offer a telephony purchasing service that enables customers to purchase a range of telephony services from pre-qualified suppliers for use over the Janet network. We essentially act as a broker, meaning that contracts are between customer and supplier.
We have contacted suppliers on the telephony purchasing service to inform them of this activity to make sure they are aware of the issue and are able to provide support.
Our advice for universities would be to ensure that any software on telephone services is up to date as this helps to reduce the security risk.
If hacking or unusual activity takes place we advise universities to contact our computer security incident response team (CSIRT) helpline, 0300 999 2340, where our experts would be able to offer them advice.
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Researchers from across the country are set to benefit from the development of new services which look to overcome the biggest challenges facing the research community, through our research data spring.
Research data spring is an initiative to create innovative partnerships between researchers, librarians, publishers and developers to develop new solutions to common research problems. Such problems include data being difficult to find and therefore re-use, and different data management systems being poorly integrated, making it difficult for researchers to work with one another.
Rachel Bruce, deputy chief innovation officer at Jisc, said:
“While the new Research Councils UK policies and the Horizon 2020 data pilot are laying the foundations for research data management (RDM) to be part and parcel of what researchers do, there is still a need to make access and re-use of data as painless and as rewarding as possible. By inviting those working in the sector to contribute their ideas we hope to foster innovative partnerships.
Our aim is to develop new solutions and protocols that will make it much easier for everyone to find, share and retrieve research data across different subject areas and disciplines.”
When the project launched 70 ideas for solutions were submitted. 44 were shortlisted for further consideration at a workshop in late February. Following discussions and collaborative development work, some projects merged leaving 27 pitches. Subsequently, 17 strong ideas were selected for funding by a panel of judges.
The projects include:
Over the next three months the successful project teams will work on their ideas, bringing news of their progress to another workshop in summer, when they will decide the next steps and pitch for further funding.
Following this, more funding will be released for selected projects enabling continued development of prototypes ready for a final showcase event in summer 2016.
To find out which projects have been selected for funding, and for updates on progress between now and next year’s showcase, please visit the research data management blog and research data spring project page on our website.
via Jisc news
Research data spring is a project aiming to find new technical tools, software and service solutions to improve researchers’ workflows and the use and management of their data. In February we held a sandpit workshop at Aston University, where selected ideas were explored and developed. In this podcast we hear from project lead Daniela Duca and a number of the participants.
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Lorraine Estelle, executive director of Jisc digital resources and divisional CEO of Jisc Collections, has announced she will be leaving the charity next month to pursue new opportunities.
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Lorraine EstelleAll rights reserved
After 12 years at Jisc, Lorraine has decided to take up a position with Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER), an international initiative that sets the standard for the recording and reporting of online usage statistics. She has supported the organisation since its launch in 2002, and will replace outgoing project director Peter Shepherd when he retires this summer.
Lorraine will be a very hard act to follow; and that daunting task will be taken forward very ably by Keith Cole as the new executive director for Jisc digital resources. Reflecting the crucial importance within digital resources of the library consortium, Liam Earney will support Keith as director of the Jisc Collections division.
Keith, who is the current deputy director of Jisc digital resources and former director of Mimas, said:
“Our sector is undeniably going through a significant period of change. Important steps have already been taken by Jisc to widen access to digital resources to further and higher education, but there is more to be done before we can claim a fairer landscape for all.
I look forward to taking over leadership of Jisc digital resources at such an exciting time and extending the positive impact of this vital work to the whole community.”
Martyn Harrow, chief executive, Jisc, added:
“I would like to thank Lorraine for the significant time and effort she has given to Jisc over the years. Her work has been absolutely invaluable for Jisc and for our communities UK-wide. She leaves Jisc very well positioned, as Keith says, to take this important agenda further forward. I wish her all the best in her new venture.”
via Jisc news
Teachers, IT managers, librarians, lecturers and research managers from across the UK were given the chance to discuss the positive impact of technology on further and higher education and discover new tools and approaches to its use at this year’s Jisc Digital Festival.
Held in Birmingham on 9-10 March, the largest Digital Festival yet presented the best digital talent under the theme of ‘connect more’. And featured a diverse line-up of digital innovators and leading technology organisations, including internet giant Google.
During his keynote speech on day one, Simon Nelson, chief executive of the UK MOOC platform FutureLearn, announced that the platform will be making some units from its courses available openly online – without the need to register.
Carole Goble, professor in the school of computer science at the University of Manchester called for research to be reusable and shareable during her talk on day two. Carole highlighted the 'research object' work she is doing to ensure research can be created faster and is replicable.
Bob Harrison, chair of the Teaching Schools New Technology Advisory Board, called for a significant shift in the culture of the further education sector to not only survive but to thrive in this technology driven era. He said that the further education model is no longer fit for purpose.
Martyn Harrow, chief executive at Jisc, said:
“How we connect technology and education is a journey that we’ve only just started. The Digital Festival has demonstrated just how important this is to institutions and has really celebrated all the great digital developments that are happening in the sector.
We’re looking forward to continuing to develop ideas and help institutions to use the best technology in the most effective way, now and in the future. This will all help the UK retain its position as the world’s most digitally advanced education and research nation.”
Other sessions throughout the two-day event included how to effectively use augmented reality in the classroom, how to implement BYOD (bring your own device) policies, internet safety and why open access research data is important.
Stats about the event:
via Jisc news
Hear from delegates and Jisc staff as we end the second and final day of our annual digital festival.
via Jisc news