tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59339273453333798542024-03-13T04:54:10.006-07:00GrandIR BlogThis blog aims to deal with all topics related to GrandIR activity: Open Access, Institutional Repositories, CRIS Systems, Research Output Assessment, Usage, Research Data and Interoperability to mention just a few. The main goal of the GrandIR blog is to foster dissemination and promote discussion on such issues among the OA community.Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-37010965025783711342014-04-27T18:22:00.000-07:002014-04-27T18:22:22.153-07:00JGIC'2014: Discussing Research Information Management in Catalonia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The third edition of the Workshop on Research Information Management (Jornades de Gestio de la Informacio Cientifica, <a href="http://blogs.iec.cat/observatori/jgic/jgic-2014/">JGIC'2014</a>) was held at the Institute for Catalan Studies (<a href="http://www.iec.cat/activitats/entrada.asp">IEC</a>) in Barcelona last Apr 24-25. The event brought together over 150 attendees from Catalan universities, research centres, funders and policymakers to discuss different areas in research information management such as research data management, research impact and evaluation, global standards for system interoperability and new features under implementation at institutional research information management systems at universities.
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OlkLrnDsLeY/U12s3BkxXjI/AAAAAAAAGfg/8in3uT4Zi3o/s1600/picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OlkLrnDsLeY/U12s3BkxXjI/AAAAAAAAGfg/8in3uT4Zi3o/s1600/picture.jpg" height="153" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br />Emphasis was made at JGIC'2014 on topics such as the need to find new models and indicators for research assessment, the emerging best practices in research data management at specific universities, the gradual uptake of ORCID through an intensive advocacy campaign at institutional level and the positive impact of international collaborations on the quality of the research performed in Catalonia. The new <a href="http://futur.upc.edu/language/en">Futur</a> institutional research portal developed at Polytechnical University of Catalonia (<a href="http://www.upc.edu/?set_language=en">UPC</a>) was presented. Futur, which has been modeled upon the Dutch <a href="http://dans.knaw.nl/en/content/services/scholarly-portal-narcis">Narcis</a> initiative, aims to to increase the online visibility and impact of UPC research results, raise the profile of the University’s researchers worldwide, and facilitate access to scientific communication.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Up-to-date information was also delivered at the event on the Catalan Research Portal (PRC) project, <a href="http://blogs.iec.cat/observatori/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/03/M.-Puig_L.-Anglada.pdf">which was first presented</a> last year at the previous JGIC edition . PRC is an initiative by the Consortium for University Services in Catalonia (CSUC) for aggregating research information from different Catalan universities by collecting the data from the institutional CRISs. Once a simplified CERIF-compliant datamodel has been defined, PRC is presently working for ensuring the appropriate mechanisms are made available for the various CRISs (none of which is CERIF-compliant at the moment) to provide a common CERIF-XML datastream into the Portal. PRC will thus become a Catalan CRIS with emphasis on people, publications and projects while providing the means at the same time for all institutional CRISs at Catalan universities to become able to export CERIF-compliant datasets.
</span></span></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-46743853752437215542014-02-19T08:14:00.000-08:002014-02-19T08:14:47.880-08:00Integrating ORCID iDs into repositories: two tips<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Emails keep arriving these days from </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">colleagues in different countries asking about the steps to follow in order to integrate ORCID identifiers into their institutional repositories. My regular answer to them is two-fold: <i>“please make sure you have all your institutional ORCID iDs available before moving onto the integration process”</i> and <i>“please be patient and wait for a standard for technical integration to arrive from institutions already working on this area”</i>. While the first recommendation seems quite straightforward, I am often asked to explain why I'm suggesting people to wait a bit instead of encouraging them to go ahead with their technical work. So here's the explanation:</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br />The questions I am regularly collecting will usually deal with the best way to code the ORCID iD into a repository metadata set (usually for DSpace). Colleagues accurately guess the ORCID iD will need to be linked to the author's name, but the ways they propose to actually do this are not always
identical. This would be no major issue if the objective were just featuring the ORCID iDs as an additional piece of data in the
repository items, but ORCID is able to offer much more than this repository-based functionality to institutions and their scholars. The real objective of the ORCID iD integration into repositories is achieving interoperability with the ORCID profiles for researchers, enabling a two-way syncing between both systems that will allow publications hosted in the repository to be automatically displayed on the author's ORCID profile and vice-versa. This way, researchers will be spared the tedious work of manually updating their “low-profile” publications (those which won't be automatically retrieved from Scopus, the WoS or CrossRef) by having them automatically delivered by the repository, where Open Access to the full-text will usually be offered from on top of that.<br /><br />In order to design and implement an effective ORCID-repository handshake, there should ideally be </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>one</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">integration standard for each main repository platform, and this
should be delivered by the repository platforms themselves – same way as if we're expecting to collect a feature to integrate ORCID iDs into Open Journal System, we would expect it to be delivered by PKP, not single institutions working independently from the system provider. This will make things much easier for ORCID – who will need to technically support just one integration process per platform and version – and also for institutions, who will be able to benefit from a tested integration mechanism already validated by colleagues at pioneering HEIs.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eMVeuen13OQ/UwTW66xDISI/AAAAAAAAGdU/PbPlJQ7Wkv8/s1600/BU_profiles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eMVeuen13OQ/UwTW66xDISI/AAAAAAAAGdU/PbPlJQ7Wkv8/s1600/BU_profiles.jpg" height="155" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">There
is an ongoing effort in this regard since a few months ago as a
result of the funding provided by the Sloan Foundation to <a href="http://orcid.org/content/adoption-and-integration-program">a set ofORCID integration projects in the US</a>, some of which are dealing with
the integration of ORCID iDs into DSpace repositories</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">.
As stated in the post, "grantees (...) will share a demo of
their prototype integration at the Spring 2014 ORCID Outreach Meeting
to be held in Chicago on May 21-22". It's then a matter of three
months to have the technical means freely available for integrating
ORCID iDs into repositories in a harmonised way. When replied from
the most innovative colleagues that three months is a long time, I
suggest them to directly contact the University of Missouri <a href="https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/pages/about">MOSpaceRepository</a> Team for more info – and especially to try to make sure
they'll have all their ORCID iDs ready when the technical solution
becomes available.</span></span></div>
<br><br>
</div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-82953029796626454182014-02-18T00:25:00.000-08:002014-02-18T00:25:02.337-08:00Building pioneering functionality around ORCID integration: FCT and Portugal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yUudPgmdCrc/UwMTyjyH78I/AAAAAAAAGco/hiSXvhdxLLQ/s1600/jornadasFCCN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yUudPgmdCrc/UwMTyjyH78I/AAAAAAAAGco/hiSXvhdxLLQ/s1600/jornadasFCCN.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Last week I was kindly invited by the the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (<a href="http://www.fct.pt/">FCT</a>) to deliver <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/pcastrom1/presentao-orcid-jornadas-fccn-2014">an ORCID presentation</a> at the annual workshop on technical issues FCT held in Évora for HEIs in Portugal, the <a href="http://jornadas.fccn.pt/">Jornadas FCT-FCCN</a>. The talk was scheduled within a PT-CRIS session dealing with the converging worklines in research information management (RIM) that FCT have in mind to build a strong national RIM infrastructure with a CERIF-compliant National Research Information System or PT-CRIS at the top and ORCID playing a key role for ensuring interoperability among the different systems involved.<br />
<br />
Save for the <a href="http://orcid.org/content/adoption-and-integration-program">Sloan-funded ORCID integration projects</a> being presently carried out in the U.S., Portugal is providing the most innovative approach to ORCID exploitation one is aware of to date. Once the research funder (FCT) has ensured a very significant ORCID uptake by researchers in a remarkably short time – collecting 40,000 registrations in three weeks – they are now planning the strategy to effectively put these identifiers to work by integrating them into the different RIM systems that are run at national level. These include National Open Access platforms such as <a href="http://www.rcaap.pt/">RCAAP</a>, with links to institutional repositories and OJS-managed Open Access journals – an area the Sloan-funded projects are also covering to some extent – but also national CV platforms like <a href="http://www.degois.pt/index.jsp?id=1">DeGóis</a> or systems like <a href="https://authenticus.up.pt/">Authenticus</a> for automatic publication retrieval for institutions and researchers in the whole country. And all of this on a shoestring budget which fits the difficult economic situation Southern European countries are presently undergoing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6fFtkxSZ_Vo/UwMXUGjsIOI/AAAAAAAAGdE/xu_BuZlMbRw/s1600/ORCIDimplementacao.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6fFtkxSZ_Vo/UwMXUGjsIOI/AAAAAAAAGdE/xu_BuZlMbRw/s1600/ORCIDimplementacao.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The ORCID presentation provided a brief analysis of the FCT-driven process for making researchers register with ORCID and some available examples for <a href="https://orcid.org/organizations/integrators/integration-chart">current ORCID integration projects</a> for funders, publishers and institutions. The work the FCT-driven Working Group will be carrying out during the next months will build on these best practices to develop pioneering functionality. At this point one cannot help but again praising the way some small countries seem regularly able to coordinate relevant RIM stakeholders at national level in an efficient fashion.<br />
<br /></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-62651207465303236312013-09-22T15:37:00.000-07:002013-09-25T16:12:50.132-07:00An attempt to provide new services to the repository network in the UK: the UK RepositoryNet+ Project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br>
A while ago I was asked to write a brief note on the RepNet project for a the <a href="http://www.thinkepi.net/notas-thinkepi/notas-thinkepi-2013">'ThinkEPI Notes'</a>, a Spanish series of short updates on recent developments on the area of libraries and technology. Since it's a rather long text with a significant number of hyperlinks in it, I have chosen to offer it online from this blog as well so that readers may find it easier to read than via a message in a mail list. The text below is in Spanish as a result – but I shall try to provide an English translation as soon as I'm able to.
<br><br>
<b>Un ensayo para el desarrollo de servicios para repositorios en el Reino Unido: el proyecto UK RepositoryNet+</b>
<br><br>
<i>El texto de esta nota está también disponible en la <a href="http://www.thinkepi.net/desarrollo-de-servicios-para-repositorios-en-el-reino-unido-el-proyecto-uk-repositorynet">web de ThinkEPI</a></i>.
<br><br>
Después de la ya tardía <a href="http://oaseminar.fecyt.es/Resources/Documentos/ADeclaration/AD_wd.pdf">Declaracion de la Alhambra</a> (mayo 2010), continúan llegando en estos días desde España noticias sobre <a href="http://www.consorciomadrono.es/info/web/blogs/blog_madro/174.php">nuevas declaraciones en apoyo del acceso abierto a nivel institucional</a>. Aunque no completamente desprovistas de utilidad –especialmente si redundan en una mejor dotación de medios técnicos y humanos para los equipos que tratan de implantar los objetivos citados en dichos textos– estas declaraciones carecen de sentido si se limitan a ser meras expresiones de apoyo a una iniciativa próxima a cumplir diez años desde su lanzamiento [1]. Una vez que como fruto del trabajo de muchos profesionales en las bibliotecas universitarias y de centros de investigación de todo el mundo se ha alcanzado un grado de consolidación de la red de repositorios de acceso abierto que no admite vuelta atrás, el siguiente paso es <i>aventurarse en el desarrollo de servicios sobre esa capa de infraestructura que atiendan a las necesidades de académicos e investigadores y de sus instituciones</i>. Este es el espíritu que ha guiado el devenir del proyecto <a href="http://repositorynet.ac.uk/">UK RepositoryNet+</a> en el Reino Unido [2], que se autodefine como "una iniciativa para la creación de una infraestructura socio-técnica que soporte el depósito, la curación y la difusión en acceso abierto de la literatura de investigación".
<br><br>
Mucho se ha hablado en este último año de la "errónea apuesta del Gobierno Británico por un modelo insostenible de acceso abierto 'dorado' (Gold Open Access) financiado mediante cuotas por procesamiento de artículos detraídas de los magros presupuestos disponibles para la investigación". Sin pretender que dicha afirmación sea completamente errónea, es preciso tener también en cuenta la cuantiosa inversión (con cifras de siete dígitos en libras esterlinas) realizada simultáneamente en una investigación sobre las vías de consolidación de la ruta verde y los repositorios de acceso abierto sin parangón en Europa [3] a través de este proyecto RepNet, apenas mencionado por contra en las acaloradas discusiones "Gold vs Green" que vienen teniendo lugar desde hace algún tiempo en las listas de distribucion de la disciplina.
<br><br>
Esto se debe principalmente al hecho de que, frente a la simplicidad de una política de acceso abierto concreta que es fácil juzgar y aprobar o condenar, el análisis de un proyecto tan complejo como RepNet requiere un conocimiento profundo de los retos técnicos que plantean los diferentes servicios para repositorios y de los enfoques adoptados para resolverlos por los equipos encargados de su desarrollo. De esta manera, aunque prácticamente ausente de las –frecuentemente bizantinas– discusiones entre los abogados del acceso abierto, RepNet ha sido por el contrario muy comentado y debatido por la comunidad de 'repository managers' en el Reino Unido, que es la encargada de implantar las a menudo cambiantes, cuando no contradictorias, políticas emanadas desde las distintas instancias administrativas a nivel institucional, regional o nacional.
<br><br>
Tal como se presenta en la página principal del proyecto, el desarrollo de servicios sobre la capa de repositorios se sustenta sobre un análisis previo de las necesidades de los diferentes actores implicados (instituciones, agencias de financiación, investigadores...) y sobre la definición de una serie de áreas de trabajo en las cuales es perentorio proporcionar nuevas funcionalidades para garantizar la continuidad de los repositorios de acceso abierto en un momento en el que las exigencias para cumplir con los requisitos de aportación de información científica que plantea el <a href="http://www.ref.ac.uk/">Research Excellence Framework</a> (REF) –el ejercicio de evaluación científica que se llevará a cabo en el Reino Unido en 2014– hacen que muchas instituciones hayan optado por adquirir e implantar sistemas CRIS que a menudo amenazan con reemplazar a los repositorios de acceso abierto, pese a basarse en un enfoque mucho más centrado en la gestión de información científica que en el acceso abierto como tal [4].
<br><br>
Las áreas de actividad de RepNet a nivel de identificación, diseño, desarrollo e implantación de servicios para repositorios son las siguientes:
<br><br>
<b>1. Agregación de Contenidos.</b> En este ámbito, RepNet propone la construcción de un <a href="http://core-project.kmi.open.ac.uk/">agregador de contenidos de toda la red de repositorios del país</a>. A diferencia de muchos otros países en los que esta funcionalidad existe desde hace tiempo, en el Reino Unido no se ha consolidado ninguna de las diferentes iniciativas que han desarrollado prototipos para la agregación de contenidos. Esta desventaja a nivel de infraestructura tiene la contrapartida de que una plataforma contruida en este momento puede ofrecer funcionalidades mucho más avanzadas que las que poseen las plataformas desarrolladas con anterioridad, tales como la minería de datos sobre los textos completos de los documentos archivados con asignación automática de descriptores, la detección e integración de duplicados a partir de una estrategia similar de análisis del texto completo de los contenidos y la detección de registros <i>metadata-only</i> (sin texto completo asociado) incluso aunque contengan un archivo PDF por defecto o <i>'default dummy file'</i> para indicar que el texto completo no está disponible. Teniendo en cuenta que la adopción de las directrices DRIVER ha sido muy escasa en el Reino Unido (lo que ha llevado a su vez a niveles de cumplimiento inusitadamente bajos de los estándares de OpenAIRE), una agregación puede ofrecer una novedosa funcionalidad de validación de esquemas de metadatos, aplicando criterios muy avanzados como los de detección de las versiones de los articulos archivados o la agregación de información de financiación de los trabajos.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DJ65c1WMaHI/Uj1hL02KtdI/AAAAAAAAFhY/cQFEn8phqw0/s1600/ITIL_application_to_RepNet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DJ65c1WMaHI/Uj1hL02KtdI/AAAAAAAAFhY/cQFEn8phqw0/s400/ITIL_application_to_RepNet.jpg" /></a></div>
Workflow ITIL para la incubación de servicios en RepNet
<br><br>
<b>2. Generación de Informes y Comparativa de Plataformas.</b> En el area de <i>'reporting'</i>, RepNet viene operando el proyecto <a href="http://irus.mimas.ac.uk/">IRUS-UK</a> [5] siguiendo un modelo común de incubación de servicios externalizados de acuerdo con la metodología ITIL [6]. IRUS-UK es un proyecto desarrollado en el Centro de Datos MIMAS de la Universidad de Manchester para recolectar estadísticas de uso de múltiples repositorios armonizadas de acuerdo con el estándar COUNTER. A mediados de septiembre de 2013, IRUS-UK <a href="http://www.irus.mimas.ac.uk/participants/">recoge y agrega datos de 40 repositorios institucionales</a> –lo que supone aproximadamente un tercio de la red nacional– y continúa extendiendo su cobertura, limitada por el momento a EPrints (29) y DSpace (11) en tanto el equipo de desarrollo trabaja en el módulo de intercambio de datos para Fedora y otras plataformas. Además de permitir la comparación para diferentes plataformas y tipos de documentos, el objetivo de IRUS-UK es obtener una estimación de las estadísticas de uso agregadas para toda la red, en la confianza de que los niveles de uso globales resultarán un argumento convincente para garantizar la utilización continuada de la misma por parte de autores e instituciones.
<br><br>
<b>3. Deposito Automático de Contenidos.</b> El proyecto <a href="http://edina.ac.uk/projects/rjb-root/index.html">Repository Junction Broker</a> (RJB) es una iniciativa desarrollada en el <a href="http://edina.ac.uk/projects/Open_Access_Repository_Junction_summary.html">EDINA National Data Centre</a> para la transferencia automatizada de contenidos a la red de repositorios a través del protocolo SWORD. Después de varios años de trabajo, el proyecto RJB se incluyó como parte de los servicios a prestar por parte de RepNet, y ha sido bajo este paraguas cuando <a href="http://bit.ly/16dsJmq">ha comenzado a funcionar como servicio en fase piloto</a> desde mediados de este año [7]. RJB pretende consolidar una base de proveedores de contenido, fundamentalmente a nivel de artículos de revista, que puedan ser distribuidos, bien como registros sólo de metadatos o como metadatos+texto completo, a los diversos repositorios institucionales correspondientes a las afiliaciones de los autores de cada artículo concreto. En un principio, el RJ Broker ha firmado acuerdos con el repositorio temático EuropePMC y con Nature Publishing Group para distribuir los contenidos de ambos proveedores como proyecto piloto (el primero de ellos según el modelo <i>'metadata-only'</i> y el segundo transfiriendo <i>metadata+full-text</i>, lo que requiere el compromiso expreso por parte de los repositorios receptores de no difundir los textos completos antes de la fecha de embargo). Un aspecto clave de la operación de este servicio es su naturaleza internacional por defecto: dado que los autores de los artículos son con frecuencia internacionales, basta con que los repositorios institucionales susceptibles de recibir información esten registrados con el servicio para que automáticamente puedan recibir los contenidos (previa instalación de SWORD) con independencia del país en el que esten ubicados.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zq5Z1SepV_Q/Uj1mdmLR2bI/AAAAAAAAFho/Xa4i74lVaEI/s1600/RJB_middleware_workflow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zq5Z1SepV_Q/Uj1mdmLR2bI/AAAAAAAAFho/Xa4i74lVaEI/s400/RJB_middleware_workflow.jpg" /></a></div>
Servicio RJB para la distribución automática de contenidos
<br><br>
<b>4. Enriquecimiento de Metadatos.</b> El area de Metadata Enhancement es posiblemente la más amplia de las que aborda el proyecto RepNet. Fruto de las investigaciones previas sobre necesidades de los diferentes ámbitos implicados, se puso de manifiesto la existencia de estrategias para la asignación de metadatos puestas en práctica por repositorios aislados (por ejemplo en el ámbito de la preservación de contenidos) que no se difundían al resto de la red. Vista la necesidad de armonizar el desarollo de toda la red al compás, se puso en marcha la iniciativa <a href="http://rioxx.net/">RIOXX</a> [8] para el desarrollo e implantacion de un 'application profile' que permitiera la <a href="http://rioxx.net/2013/01/29/approaches-to-handling-funders-and-projectids-in-a-rioxx-record/">incorporación conjunta de metadatos sobre financiación</a> (algo que ya abordaba OpenAIRE para los proyectos FP7), sobre aspectos específicos relativos al acceso y sobre identificadores como ORCID. Las <a href="http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/83882/">iniciativas preliminares</a> para la incorporación de estos metadatos avanzados a los repositorios han comenzado a difundirse recientemente [9] de modo que puedan gradualmente adoptarse de manera conjunta por parte de toda la red.
<br><br>
<b>5. Registro de Repositorios.</b> Los dos principales directorios de repositorios existentes en la actualidad, <a href="http://opendoar.org/">OpenDOAR</a> y <a href="http://roar.eprints.org/">ROAR</a>, mantenidos respectivamente por las universidades de Nottingham y Southampton, aportan una información más que aceptable sobre la red mundial de repositorios. Sin embargo, ninguno de ambos proporciona una cobertura completa de la red. Por este motivo, y también para actualizar el perfil que los directorios proporcionan sobre las plataformas que indexan, se ha puesto en marcha como parte de RepNet el proyecto Open Access Repository Registry (<a href="http://bit.ly/LeXGjp">OARR</a>) [10]. Este proyecto pretende actualizar la informacion de OpenDOAR cubriendo en mayor detalle las características de los repositorios, en un momento en que tanto la implantación generalizada de sistemas CRIS como el creciente numero de repositorios de datos de investigación estan introduciendo cambios significativos en el sector. El nuevo directorio, cuyo proyecto lidera el equipo <a href="http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk/index.php">CRC-SHERPA</a> en la Universidad de Nottingham, se alojará eventualmente en los servidores de RepNet junto a otros servicios proporcionados por SHERPA tales como RoMEO, JULIET o más recientemente, <a href="http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/fact/about.php?juliet_id=&funderlist=">FACT</a>. De hecho, una de las líneas para el diseño de nuevos servicios para repositorios pasa por explotar las sinergias entre estas aplicaciones gestionadas de manera integrada.
<br><br>
<b>6. Localización de la Información.</b> Una de las cuestiones más problemáticas de los repositorios hace referencia a la escasa visibilidad de sus contenidos en la red. Junto a la creación de esquemas de metadatos suficientemente comprensivos que puedan servir los propósitos de la <i>'discoverability'</i>, la línea de trabajo orientada a la mejora de la visibilidad de los contenidos pretende sobre todo optimizar los ratios de indexación de los materiales archivados en la red de repositorios del Reino Unido por parte de motores de búsqueda como Google Scholar o Microsoft Academic Search. Sea a través de la <a href="https://jira.duraspace.org/secure/attachment/13020/">identificación de buenas prácticas a nivel de repositorio individual</a> o bien a través de la indexación masiva de una agregación de contenidos [11], es preciso mejorar la visibilidad de los contenidos de los repositorios en la red, así como identificar su procedencia de modo que el usuario final de la información pueda conocer y valorar la labor realizada desde estas plataformas.
<br><br>
<b>7. Preservación/Continuidad de Acceso.</b> Sin entrar directamente en el área de la preservación digital, cubierta por otros programas y proyectos del Jisc como <a href="http://bit.ly/1aXY1Vd">SPRUCE</a> [12], el proyecto RepNet sí se planteó en cambio ofrecer alguna clase de servicio para la red de repositorios en el sentido de asegurar la continuidad de acceso a los contenidos archivados en la misma. Para ello, RepNet trabaja sobre la extensión a los materiales archivados en acceso abierto del modelo LOCKSS, ya empleado con éxito para la gestión de la continuidad en el acceso a materiales obtenidos a traves de suscripción por parte de las bibliotecas [13]. Este modelo se basa en el archivo periódico de los contenidos en una red de servidores distribuidos (las <i>'LOCKSS Boxes'</i>) gestionada por las instituciones.
<br><br>
<b>Servicios de nueva creación</b>
Además del énfasis en la integración y ulterior desarrollo de los servicios para repositorios ya existentes, el proyecto RepNet pretende también abordar el diseño, desarrollo e implantación de una serie de nuevos servicios. Para ello, RepNet adopta el modelo para la construcción de una infraestructura (de servicios) basada en datos o <a href="http://bit.ly/1a8SuXe">'data-driven infrastructure'</a> [14] que permita plantear la puesta en marcha de servicios de nueva creación largamente demandados por la comunidad, tales como herramientas para la monitorización del cumplimiento de mandatos de acceso abierto. La creación de nuevos servicios se lleva a cabo mediante el establecimiento de partnerships con instituciones concretas que permitan el ensayo y testeo de desarrollos piloto. Así, la iniciativa <a href="http://repositorynet.ac.uk/?q=content/outreach#stars">STARS</a> [15] llevada a cabo en colaboración con la Universidad de St Andrews y el Scottish Digital Library Consortium (<a href="http://www.sdlc.ed.ac.uk/services/institutionalrepositories.html">SDLC</a>) se ha planteado como una prueba piloto para la implantación del conjunto de servicios que una iniciativa como RepNet puede ofrecer a una institución y un repositorio específicos.
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<b>Referencias</b>
<br><br>
[1] La <a href="http://oa.mpg.de/files/2010/04/Berlin-I-2.pdf">Declaración de Berlín</a>, publicada por la Sociedad Max Planck en octubre de 2003, puede considerarse razonablemente como el pistoletazo de salida del movimiento del acceso abierto con la opción que ofrecía a organismos académicos y de investigación para suscribirla de manera institucional. De hecho, la Semana de Acceso Abierto se celebra anualmente en el mes de octubre como conmemoración de la publicación de esta Declaración.
<br><br>
[2] Proyecto UK RepositoryNet+ (comúnmente conocido como "RepNet"), <a href="http://repositorynet.ac.uk/">http://repositorynet.ac.uk/</a>
<br><br>
[3] Sólo el proyecto europeo <a href="http://www.openaire.eu/">OpenAIRE</a> plantea un nivel de objetivos de similar amplitud y ambición a los de RepNet a nivel de servicios a desarrollar sobre la red de repositorios de acceso abierto existente en la actualidad.
<br><br>
[4] En relación con el impacto sobre las instituciones del ejercicio de recopilación de información científica para el REF2014, véase la excelente presentación <a href="http://bit.ly/159PtW9">'I am turning enterprisey'</a> realizada por Chris Keene ('repository manager' en la Universidad de Sussex) en la reciente conferencia Repository Fringe 2013 celebrada en Edimburgo el pasado mes de agosto.
<br><br>
[5] Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (IRUS-UK), <a href="http://irus.mimas.ac.uk/">http://irus.mimas.ac.uk/</a>
<br><br>
[6] Ver referencia a ITIL en la sección de preguntas frecuentes de RepNet, <a href="http://www.repositorynet.ac.uk/?q=content/faq">http://www.repositorynet.ac.uk/?q=content/faq</a>
<br><br>
[7] “RJ Broker delivers its first test transfers”, <a href="http://bit.ly/16dsJmq">http://bit.ly/16dsJmq</a>
<br><br>
[8] "RIOXX: Developing Repository Metadata Guidelines", <a href="http://bit.ly/18hlzQW">http://bit.ly/18hlzQW</a>
<br><br>
[9] Nixon, W.J., Ashworth, S., and McCutcheon, V. (2013) “Enlighten: Research and APC funding workflows at the University of Glasgow”. Insights: the UKSG journal, 26 (2). pp. 159-167. ISSN 2048-7754 (doi:10.1629/2048-7754.80), <a href="http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/83882/">http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/83882/</a>
<br><br>
[10] Open Access Repository Registry (OARR), <a href="http://bit.ly/LeXGjp">http://bit.ly/LeXGjp</a>
<br><br>
[11] Kenning Arlitsch, Patrick S. O'Brien, (2012) <a href="https://jira.duraspace.org/secure/attachment/13020/">"Invisible institutional repositories: Addressing the low indexing ratios of IRs in Google Scholar"</a>, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 30 Iss: 1 pp. 60-81, DOI: 10.1108/07378831211213210
<br><br>
[12] Sustainable Preservation Using Community Engagement (SPRUCE), <a href="http://bit.ly/1aXY1Vd">http://bit.ly/1aXY1Vd</a>
<br><br>
[13] UK LOCKSS Alliance Case Studies Now Available, <a href="http://bit.ly/18Gkw9j">http://bit.ly/18Gkw9j</a>
<br><br>
[14] Informe “Preparing for Data-driven Infrastructure”, <a href="http://bit.ly/1a8SuXe">http://bit.ly/1a8SuXe</a>
<br><br>
[15] Pablo de Castro, Jackie Proven, “The STARS Shared Initiative: Delivering Repository Services in an Advanced CRIS/IR Environment”. Presentación en el RepositoryFringe 2013, <a href="http://slidesha.re/1eXH2nI">http://slidesha.re/1eXH2nI</a>
<br><br>
<br/></div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-73007642423327184402013-06-03T23:06:00.000-07:002013-06-03T23:06:55.442-07:00Badly-coded affiliations: a too long-standing curse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> A <a href="http://www.rsp.ac.uk/help/publications/#webinars">webinar</a> on the <a href="http://edina.ac.uk/projects/RJB_summary.html">Repository Junction Broker (RJB) Project</a> being presently carried out at EDINA National Data Centre in Edinburgh was delivered last week by Muriel Mewissen, RJ Broker Project manager. The RJ Broker is a SWORD-based tool for automated content delivery into institutional repositories which will identify target IRs by associating the co-authors' affiliations to their institution's platform (where available).
<br><br>
In the course of this <a href="http://www.rsp.ac.uk/">RSP</a>-organised event, Muriel shared some slides with an analysis of the preliminary content transfers the RJ Broker has performed so far. The <a href="http://www.repositorynet.ac.uk/2013/03/27/rj-broker-delivers-its-first-test-transfers/">first RJB-mediated transfer test</a> involved processing in excess of 60,000 Europe PubMed Central articles and delivering them into the (mock) worldwide repository network.
<br><br>
<a href="http://europepmc.org/">EuropePMC</a> is a solid disciplinary platform for the biosciences, whose content is often delivered straight from publishers. The platform's contents do usually feature good-quality metadata as a result, and EuropePMC provides thus a good example for testing research article transfer. Moreover, the specific EuropePMC article set selected for this test was remarkably modern. However, the statistical figures Muriel presented for the RJ Broker's ability to resolve author's affiliations in EuropePMC articles were simply astonishing (see figure below): <b>author's affiliations were badly coded for over half the transferred articles' metadata</b>.
<br><br>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-trZu3qpG3-4/Ua190GZyznI/AAAAAAAAEn8/Kzo1EYeo9XI/s1600/EuropePMC_trial_in_numbers.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-trZu3qpG3-4/Ua190GZyznI/AAAAAAAAEn8/Kzo1EYeo9XI/s320/EuropePMC_trial_in_numbers.jpg" /></a>
<br><br>
This is a well-known issue the <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/">PEER project</a> also had to deal with at the time. Institutions have been telling their authors since ages to try to harmonise their affiliation when signing their papers, but it's still very frequent to find affiliations such as Department of Psychology, Compton Rd or Radiology Unit, Hearts Lane which are literally impossible to process by the RJ Broker since they lack their main affiliation node.
<br><br>
A large collective effort needs to be done in order to provide the means for somehow tackling this long-standing issue once and for all, and <a href="http://orcid.org/">ORCID</a> looks a very promising initiative in this regard. If it were somehow possible to have author's affiliations coded into their ORCID iDs – something ORCID is actually aiming to do – the rate of miscoded affiliations could be expected to rapidly drop as a result.
<br><br>
Very much like the author identification, this is of course a huge challenge no-one has so far been able to tackle, and ORCID faces a lot of hard work in order to find a way to attack the miscoded affiliation issue. But there is currently much talk in the community about organisational IDs and having some system put in place that will hopefully provide the means to start solving this seemingly unsolvable difficulty. The research information management community badly needs ORCID to succeed in this challenge if it is to be able to ever start building the eagerly awaited service layer on top of the infrastructure one.
<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5znzAV4K-1w/Ua2CuELLGoI/AAAAAAAAEoM/LXb27v7O4zs/s1600/ORCID_roadmap_2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5znzAV4K-1w/Ua2CuELLGoI/AAAAAAAAEoM/LXb27v7O4zs/s320/ORCID_roadmap_2013.jpg" /></a>
<br><br>
<br /></div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-60579896953052808362013-05-24T03:33:00.000-07:002013-05-24T15:39:24.157-07:00It takes two to tango: a few post-ORCID Outreach meeting reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> After listening to the presentations delivered at the <a href="http://orcid.org/orcid-outreach-meeting-symposium-and-codefest-may-2013">ORCID Outreach meeting</a> held yesterday at St Anne's College in Oxford, the impression remains that this promising initiative resembles a ball game played by publishers (and <a href="http://orcid.org/about/community/members?">the like</a>) on one side of the pitch and researchers and institutions on the other one. In order to enjoy a reasonably amusing game, you need the two sides to be sufficiently balanced. But this is not the case for ORCID - or at least it's not the case so far.
<br><br>
The 'publisher side' - for simplicity purposes - features not just publishers, but also large commercial stakeholders such as Thomson Reuters, CRIS vendors and a wide range of third-party companies. This side is delivering an excellent performance so far by solving all the (otherwise not too complicated) technical challenges posed by the use of ORCID for populating <a href="http://orcid.org/sites/about.orcid.org/files/files/Wynne_ORCID_Outreach_May2012.ppt">submission systems</a> or <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ORCIDSlides/avedas-orcid-outreachmeeting20130523?">CRISes</a>. However, the other side is not doing so well at the moment. One could expect an ORCID deluge to arrive from researchers and institutions interested in becoming ORCID members for providing iDs to all their staff. But this is not happening, or at least not as quickly as the other side is progressing. Which leaves us with fully prepared technical systems and no incoming stream of ORCID iDs to test them and prove their benefits to the research community.
<br><br>
It is true that there are <b>over 140,000 registered authors</b> in the ORCID database as of today. How many of those registered themselves and proceeded to populate their publications into their ORCID account it is impossible to know thus far. But after listening to <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ORCIDSlides/hindawi-orcid">Paul Peters's presentation</a> on the huge advocacy campaign carried out by a 10-strong team at Hindawi HQs, it's easy to see that many ORCIDs out there are the result of the 'publisher side' work too (oh but wait, we may have some approximate stats on the provenance of ORCID accounts based on the highly-correlated number of visits to the ORCID website).
<br><br>
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X9kqEoJbEgI/UZ8l69nqA-I/AAAAAAAAEeA/8jF_sRLBOvo/s1600/ORCID_provenance.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-X9kqEoJbEgI/UZ8l69nqA-I/AAAAAAAAEeA/8jF_sRLBOvo/s320/ORCID_provenance.jpg" /></a>
<br><br>
The argument held by patient observers (which one shares to some extent) says the game re-balancing will eventually happen, but institutions need more time to react - and once they start, the contribution from their side will become unstoppable. Institutions need to figure out their business models and their mechanisms for involving their researchers and all their relevant units in the process for creating and populating ORCID accounts.
<br><br>
Other critical observers -the institutions themselves- seem however not to completely share this approach. In their view, ORCID
should be made available as a free service to them, since they're the ones expected to do the hard work anyway. A significant
number of stakeholders argue that ORCID needn't become an overcomplicated platform aiming to achieve too many goals at the same
time, but rather focus on the basic functionality, namely providing a unique identifier for researchers. Then again, it may not be that simple at all: features like researcher affiliation pose a huge challenge themselves that must be dealt with for offering really useful information from the ORCID iDs.
<br><br>
It becomes evident at some point that <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ORCIDSlides/boston-univ-oxford-orcid-outreach">best practices</a> are badly needed in ORCID implementation at institutional level so that the advantages of having their ORCID iDs institutionally created (and even maintained) can start to be perceived by researchers. So it's just about getting a critical mass of member institutions in different countries that will pioneer the adoption process - and hopefully receive some credit for it from the community, as they are dealing with the issues in a much harder early adopting way than those institutions that will follow suit.
<br><br>
<br /></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-15242705796124258972013-05-09T14:32:00.000-07:002013-05-09T14:32:31.971-07:00Are publishers "the enemy"?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> This interesting issue came up (again) at the Author ID Tutorial delivered within the <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/community/events/annual-meeting-2013/program/">4th COAR Annual Meeting</a> in Istanbul - and it might be useful to devote a couple of reflections to it here. This Author ID Tutorial was jointly delivered on May 8th by Titia van der Werf from OCLC and myself as part of an attractive set of four tutorials at the COAR event - with the selected topics for the tutorials being as good a hint on the way things are evolving around repositories as the workshops themselves.
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ORCIDSlides/haak-orcid-uksg20130408-18413591">ORCID</a> was big on the Author ID tutorial, to the extent that the timeschedule for the activity had to be updated on the spot in order to make room for the large number of questions and reflections prompted by the ORCID presentation. I'd like to address one of these questions more thoroughly here, namely the reluctant attitude some very qualified colleagues show towards ORCID due to the fact that the initiative seems very much publisher-driven - this making it probably not that interesting for the scholarly community.
<br><br>
This is again about the antagonism between publishers and the academia, and about whether both communities may at some point overcome such antagonism - real or perceived, it does not make much difference - in order to jointly work for pursuing a common benefit. This discussion is certainly interesting since it goes to the heart of a critical issue that has traditionally prevented a deeper implementation of Open Access, namely the fact that both publishers and Open Access community see each other as "the enemy". Mike Taylor - to mention just one inspiring example - <a href="http://svpow.com/2013/04/29/predatory-publishers-a-real-problem/">regularly writes</a> in an eloquent fashion about the reasons why the scholarly community may consider publishers to be the enemy of knowledge dissemination. However, same way as a certain degree of (informal) agreement was reached at the COAR event that the fight between advocates of Green and Gold OA is a pointless diversion of energy and will only harm their common objective, it could very much be argued that making emphasis on the differences and the misbehaviours over the good practices in collaboration may result in blocking win-win cooperation opportunities.
<br><br>
It is true that publishers such as Elsevier and databases such as the TR Web of Science or Scopus are a big driver behind ORCID - although the fact that over 130,000 researchers worldwide have chosen to individually register their ORCIDs as of May 3rd should not be overlooked either. It is evident too that a widely implemented successful persistent author identifier scheme will benefit publishers very much - but it will benefit institutions <i>and especially authors</i> even more. There was again an agreement at the author ID tutorial that this is something that needs to be done, and when examining the wide range of previous attempts to achieve the goal of author and work identification and disambiguation, it becomes clear that having publishers involved in the initiative provides it a significantly larger chance of succeeding.
<br><br>
I have repeatedly written here about the encouraging effort the EC-funded <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/">PEER project</a> did in bringing together publishers and Open Access repositories and how advisable it would be to try to further explore opportunities for collaboration - some of which are indeed being exploited, see for instance Wiley's direct involvement in the JISC-funded <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/di_researchmanagement/managingresearchdata/research-data-publication/preparde.aspx">PREPARDE</a> project for research data publishing. ORCID is certainly one of these opportunities and with all due respect to constructive dissent, it would be an exercise in shortsightedness to let it slip away.
<br><br>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CIKTxFH5zbI/UYwTY755FjI/AAAAAAAAEQY/3Lbej6leyeI/s1600/ORCID_figures.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CIKTxFH5zbI/UYwTY755FjI/AAAAAAAAEQY/3Lbej6leyeI/s320/ORCID_figures.jpg" /></a>
<br><br>
<br /></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-60178667383234916142013-03-31T05:47:00.000-07:002013-03-31T05:50:18.775-07:00Could the so-called Gold Rush result in Green reinforcement? (II)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> A <a href="http://ukcorr.org/2012/12/17/could-the-so-called-gold-rush-actually-result-in-green-reinforcement/" target="_blank">post</a> was published last December at the UKCoRR blog examining the question of whether Green Open Access could become mainstream at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as a result of the policies resulting from the Finch report and aiming to drive the scholarly communication model towards a Gold OA-based one. Buiding on the discusions held at the <a href="http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/the-role-of-institutional-repositories-after-the-finch-report/" target="_blank">webinar</a> "The Role of Institutional Repositories after the Finch Report" organised by the <a href="http://www.rsp.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Repositories Support Project</a> earlier that month, the post highlighted the role IR managers were to play in explaining the different options for policy compliance at HEIs and the relevant role deposit into institutional repositories would acquire as a result of the economic impossibility to make the whole institutional research output available via Gold Open Access.
<br><br>
A few months later, at a time when the <a href="http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2013news/Pages/130305.aspx" target="_blank">RCUK Open Access policy</a> is about to come into effect, preliminary strategies for ensuring compliance are being designed at HEIs. Driven by the RCUK policy statement that "The RCUK OA Block Grant is principally to support the payment of APCs. <i>However, Research Organisations have the flexibility to use the block grant in the manner they consider will best deliver the RCUK Policy on Open Access, as long as the primary purpose to support the payment of APCs is fulfilled</i>", institutions are wisely investing part of the Block Grant funding on enhancing their Green Open Access infrastructure (including human resources) and making sure their institutional repository will be ready to provide support for Open Access dissemination purposes to all researchers whose publications are not awarded Gold OA funding.
<br><br>
In an even more inspiring realisation of this leveraging policy, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) released last week the
<a href="http://bibliotecas.csic.es/publicacion-en-acceso-abierto" target="_blank">requirements it will apply for authors to be eligible for Gold Open Access funding</a> (Spanish only). With the caveat that "due to limited resources, just one article per author will be allowed per year", these include the need to deposit the author's research outputs published in the last three years into the <a href="http://digital.csic.es/?locale=en" target="_blank">Digital.CSIC</a> institutional repository in three months time since the funding for the payment of APCs has been awarded.
<br><br>
Compliance monitorisation is becoming a key concern at HEIs as a result of these policies and attempts at having pilot systems in
place for ensuring the reporting tools for policy compliance are available will shortly be carried out at pioneering institutions.
In the meantime the whole move towards Gold and Green Open Access remains a daring experiment whose outcome -including the way
researchers in different domains are willing to follow the policy guidelines- will be very interesting to follow in upcoming months. The <a href="http://www.globalresearchcouncil.org/meetings/2013-meeting" target="_blank">Global Research Council meeting</a> in Berlin next May 2013 will provide a good opportunity to agree on an international action plan for implementing Open Access to Publications – Open Access implementation is one of only two items on the agenda.
<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_U5A4thl2iY/UVgtwUF0WyI/AAAAAAAADyw/UVSShCfFpH0/s1600/DC_chart_20130330.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_U5A4thl2iY/UVgtwUF0WyI/AAAAAAAADyw/UVSShCfFpH0/s320/DC_chart_20130330.jpg" border="0"><a/>
<br><br/></div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-18534234524778564962013-03-26T12:54:00.000-07:002013-04-17T14:42:32.406-07:00Primer proceso de creación automática de ORCIDs a nivel institucional<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Con fecha 25 de marzo se ha realizado desde la <a href="http://www.uniovi.es/" type="_blank">Universidad de Oviedo</a> (UniOvi) el primer ensayo exitoso de creación automática de <a href="http://about.orcid.org/" type="_blank">ORCIDs</a> para autores institucionales desde la Biblioteca. El proceso consistió en la ingestión de una modesta primera tanda de 10 ficheros XML de autores UniOvi en la API de ORCID en producción. Como resultado de este proceso se crearon 9 perfiles ORCID, y un décimo fue identificado como un potencial duplicado y se reportó como tal al administrador. A continuación se ofrece una breve descripción del proceso que condujo a este resultado. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i5OpTylwyXw/UVH7ruPEy0I/AAAAAAAADpw/RfjlL-8KNYU/s1600/ORCID_profiles_uniovi.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i5OpTylwyXw/UVH7ruPEy0I/AAAAAAAADpw/RfjlL-8KNYU/s320/ORCID_profiles_uniovi.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<b>El proceso</b><br />
<br />
Tras un intenso esfuerzo de difusión de ORCID en el país, la Universidad de Oviedo devino el pasado mes de diciembre el primer miembro institucional de ORCID en España. Una vez firmado el acuerdo con ORCID, UniOvi decidió que serían la Biblioteca y su Jefe del Servicio de Información Bibliográfica <b>María Luisa Alvarez de Toledo</b> las responsables de la adopción institucional de ORCID en la Universidad. Además de apoyarse en el servicio de soporte técnico de ORCID – muchas gracias a <b>Catalina Oyler</b> en este sentido – la Biblioteca UniOvi decidió contar también con el apoyo de <a href="http://www.grandir.com/es" type="_blank">GrandIR</a> para este propósito. GrandIR había organizado la <a href="http://www.grandir.com/en/tecnical-session/technical-session-on-author-id-and-orcid" type="_blank">sesión técnica sobre ORCID</a> el anterior mes de septiembre y estaba muy involucrada en la difusión y la adopción de ORCID, de modo que esta colaboración se perfilaba como una buena oportunidad para poner a trabajar los conocimientos adquiridos en el proceso. <br />
<br />
El primer paso en el camino hacia la adopción institucional de ORCID por parte de UniOvi fue definir una estrategia para la creación institucional de ORCIDs y su implantación en los sistemas de gestión de la información científica de la Universidad. La Biblioteca UniOvi mantiene un registro de todos los autores institucionales en una tabla en la que figuran también sus firmas más frecuentes e identificadores tales como <a href="http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/tools/authoridentifier" type="_blank">ScopusID</a> o <a href="http://www.researcherid.com/" type="_blank">ResearcherID</a> – que con frecuencia son asimismo gestionados directamente desde la Biblioteca. Esta tabla se empleó para generar ficheros XML de los autores UniOvi listos para introducir en la API de ORCID. <br />
<br />
A continuación se realizó una etapa de testeo: a partir de los ficheros XML se generó una serie de perfiles ORCID de prueba desde la línea de comandos del entorno de pruebas <a href="https://developers.google.com/oauthplayground/" type="_blank">OAuth</a> de ORCID. Estos ensayos fueron exitosos y permitieron testear la configuración particular de los XMLs en aspectos tales como la codificación de caracteres o el uso de caracteres especiales característicos de la lengua española. Sin embargo, la necesidad de operar desde la línea de comandos hacia que la creación de los perfiles ORCID resultara un proceso muy lento, que podía valer para crear ORCIDs para unos pocos autores, pero no para la generación de perfiles para el conjunto de autores de la institución. Se decidió entonces desarrollar una aplicación que permitiera crear ORCIDs de manera automática para un gran número de autores, tarea que se encomendó a GrandIR. Unas semanas después el primer prototipo estaba disponible para realizar pruebas 'en real' sobre el entorno de producción de ORCID. Estas pruebas arrojaron como resultado la introducción de 10 ficheros XML de autores UniOvi en la API de ORCID y la creación automática de 9 nuevos perfiles ORCID. La mayor parte de estos perfiles se encuentra aún pendiente de ser reclamada por los autores - y de hecho el ritmo de reclamación de los perfiles es uno de los aspectos que la Biblioteca está monitorizando antes de planificar ulteriores estrategias de difusión de ORCID a nivel interno. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yzZgNGpl-x0/UVH8ADY5c8I/AAAAAAAADp0/mGJQk8_oNY4/s1600/pending_claim.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yzZgNGpl-x0/UVH8ADY5c8I/AAAAAAAADp0/mGJQk8_oNY4/s320/pending_claim.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
<b>Los retos</b><br />
<br />
A lo largo del proceso que ha llevado a la creación automática de ORCIDs se ha resuelto toda una serie de retos. El principal entre ellos se deriva de ser la Universidad de Oviedo la primera institución en el mundo que ha realizado la mayor parte de los procesos, desde solicitar y utilizar sus credenciales de usuario hasta aprender a manejar las APIs de ORCID. El hecho de que ORCID se encuentre aun en un estado relativamente temprano de desarrollo también supuso una dificultad en algunos momentos, dado que ocasionalmente implicaba colaborar directamente con ORCID en la definición del procedimiento para realizar determinados procesos. Finalmente, la necesidad de apoyarse en un único servicio de soporte técnico de ORCID con su horario temporal específico fue asimismo una de las consecuencias del papel pionero adoptado por la Universidad. <br />
<br />
Uno de los grandes retos que afronto la Biblioteca UniOvi – uno que sera además relativamente frecuente en otras instituciones – fue la falta de soporte técnico interno específico para la tarea. Esta dificultad se pudo superar no obstante gracias al apoyo proporcionado tanto por ORCID como por GrandIR. <br />
<br />
Dos son los ámbitos adicionales en los que existen aún retos por resolver antes de lograr una adopción amplia de ORCID en la Universidad. El primero de estos ámbitos es cultural, y conlleva implicar a los autores en el proceso de reclamación, alimentación y utilización de sus ORCIDs. Esto debería basarse en buena medida en la definición y difusión de bunas prácticas. El otro ámbito en el que quedan retos por resolver es el técnico: en primer lugar hace falta un <i>procedimiento para identificar con garantías los potenciales duplicados</i> y posiblemente para fusionar perfiles ORCID creados sobre direcciones de correo diferentes de un mismo autor. Además de esto, la Biblioteca desearía contar con los <i>permisos necesarios para poder mantener los perfiles ORCID de nueva creación</i> y para ser capaz por ejemplo de reclamar publicaciones en nombre de los autores. Estas son áreas en las que ORCID está desarrollando su trabajo en este momento, y a medio plazo se podrá contar con las funcionalidades necesarias para abordar estos retos. <br />
<br />
<b>El resultado</b><br />
<br />
El principal resultado del proceso hasta ahora ha sido el intento, tan exitoso como modesto, de crear automáticamente perfiles ORCID para unos pocos autores UniOvi desde la Biblioteca. Sin embargo, una vez que se han creado los primeros ORCIDs, extender su cobertura hasta abarcar la totalidad de los autores UniOvi no supone grandes retos técnicos. Además de esto, el éxito preliminar en la identificación de duplicados por parte de la aplicación para la creación automática de ORCIDs supone un primer paso en la definición de criterios que permitan asegurar la detección de potenciales duplicados como parte del proceso de creación automática de ORCIDs. La Biblioteca tiene ahora la oportunidad de examinar el proceso de reclamación de ORCIDs por parte de los autores – junto a la ocasión de proporcionar feedback durante el proceso, por ejemplo sugiriendo la posibilidad de permitir una personalización del mensaje de bienvenida por parte de la institución miembro a través de un panel de opciones que permita seleccionar el idioma en que se recibe el mensaje de bienvenida. Por otro lado la Biblioteca está ya diseñando estrategias institucionales de difusión, incluyendo una breve <a href="http://buo.uniovi.es/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=f33f9df7-2610-4dae-8459-6d3f249b7c52&groupId=34466">Guía de Reclamación de ORCIDs</a> para los autores y un sitio web institucional que ofrezca una introducción a ORCID y un resumen de sus principales beneficios para los autores y para la Universidad. Todos estos contenidos deberían ser en buena medida reutilizables por las instituciones que se unan a ORCID de ahora en adelante. <br />
<br />
<b>El camino pendiente</b><br />
<br />
Los siguientes pasos a dar para completar el trabajo son en primer lugar extender este desarrollo piloto hasta proporcionar cobertura a todos los autores UniOvi. Una vez que se logre esto, debe desarrollarse una estrategia para implantar los nuevos ORCIDs en los sistemas institucionales, comenzando con el <a href="http://dspace.sheol.uniovi.es/dspace/">repositorio institucional RUO</a>. La implantación de ORCID en el repositorio debería suponer un medio para atraer a los autores hacia él y asegurarse de que aquellos autores que aún no han depositado ningún trabajo en el repositorio se percaten de los servicios de valor añadido que éste puede proporcionarles. <br />
<br />
Finalmente, una buena parte de las tareas pendientes pertenece al <a href="http://buo.uniovi.es/servicios/necesitasayuda/orcid">ámbito de la difusión</a>: desde la Biblioteca se pretende promover una serie de buenas prácticas para el uso de los ORCIDs por parte de los autores institucionales. Además de esto, una vez que se complete el proceso, la Biblioteca está también interesada en difundir las buenas prácticas para la adopción institucional de ORCID a través de un canal más riguroso que un mero post, por lo demás el medio más rápido para dar a conocer y compartir los progresos realizados. <br />
<br /></div>
Mariano Navarrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01999115932818991885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-64324982081528073282013-03-26T12:21:00.000-07:002013-03-27T03:22:53.760-07:00First successful automated ORCID creation at institutional level<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
On March 25th a first successful attempt was made at <a href="http://www.uniovi.es/en/inicio" type="_blank">Universidad de Oviedo</a> (UniOvi) for an automated <a href="http://about.orcid.org/" type="_blank">ORCID</a> creation process for institutional authors. A modest first batch with 10 XML UniOvi author files was fed into the production ORCID API and 9 ORCID profiles were successfully created – with the 10th being identified as a potential duplicate and subsequently reported. A brief description of the process that lead to this result is provided below. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mYWB2zzZUdo/UVH0JDBsLnI/AAAAAAAADpg/f7XeFR7ZlU0/s1600/ORCID_profiles_uniovi.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mYWB2zzZUdo/UVH0JDBsLnI/AAAAAAAADpg/f7XeFR7ZlU0/s320/ORCID_profiles_uniovi.jpg" /></a> <br />
<br />
<b>The process</b> <br />
<br />
Following extensive ORCID outreach activities in the country, Universidad de Oviedo became the first institutional ORCID member in Spain last December. Once the membership was signed, the decision was made for <b>UniOvi Library</b> and its Bibliographic Information Service Manager <b>Maria Luisa Alvarez de Toledo</b> to become responsible for ORCID adoption at UniOvi. Besides relying on the ORCID technical support service -a big thanks to <b>Catalina Oyler</b> here- UniOvi decided to also contact <a href="http://www.grandir.com/en" type="_blank">GrandIR</a> for the purpose. GrandIR had organised the <a href="http://www.grandir.com/en/tecnical-session/technical-session-on-author-id-and-orcid" type="_blank">ORCID technical session</a> earlier in September and was very much involved into ORCID dissemination and adoption, so it looked like a good opportunity to put this knowledge to use. <br />
<br />
The first step towards ORCID adoption at UniOvi was to define a strategy for institutional ORCID creation and implementation into UniOvi research information management systems. The Library keeps a registry for all UniOvi authors, together with their most frequent signatures and identifiers such as <a href="http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/tools/authoridentifier">ScopusID</a> or <a href="http://www.researcherid.com/">ResearcherID</a> - which are often managed from the Library too. The process involved XML UniOvi author file generation so that these could be fed into the ORCID API. <br />
<br />
A testing stage followed: a number of mock ORCID profiles were generated on ORCID <a href="https://developers.google.com/oauthplayground/" type="_blank">OAuth Playground</a> testing environment via the command line. These were successful and allowed to test specific XML configuration with regard to character coding and special characters often found in Spanish names. However, the need to operate from the command line made the ORCID generation process quite a slow one, which would suit the purpose of creating ORCIDs for a few authors, but certainly not for all UniOvi scholars. The decision was then made to develop an application that would allow automated ORCID creation for a large number of authors, and GrandIR took on the challenge. A few weeks later, a first prototype was available for live testing on ORCD production environment. These first tests resulted in 10 XML author files fed to the ORCID API and 9 new ORCID profiles created. Most of these new ORCIDs are still pending claim by authors - and in fact the claiming rate by authors is one of the aspects the Library is looking at before planning further internal outreach strategies. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c95osWzIokM/UVH0hthbqyI/AAAAAAAADpo/_CcnEt1ceOY/s1600/pending_claim.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c95osWzIokM/UVH0hthbqyI/AAAAAAAADpo/_CcnEt1ceOY/s320/pending_claim.jpg" /></a> <br />
<br />
<b>The challenges</b> <br />
<br />
A number of challenges have already been tackled along the way to automated ORCID creation. The main one among these is a consequence of UniOvi being the very first institution to carry out most of the procedures, from requesting and using its credentials to learning how to operate the ORCID APIs. The fact that working together with ORCID was occasionally required to define how specific processes should be carried out was sometimes a bit challenging – but certainly fun as well. Finally, the need to rely on a single-point ORCID technical support service (running on a specific time zone) was also one of the consequences of the pioneering role UniOvi took that will presumably be improved in the future. <br />
<br />
One of the big challenges that the UniOvi Library faced – and this will probably be quite frequent at other institutions – was the lack of specific internal technical support for the task. However, this issue could be overcome thanks to the support provided both by ORCID and GrandIR – and it should by no means discourage institutions interested in becoming ORCID adopters, since from now on there will be a growing network of supporting colleagues and institutions available to help. <br />
<br />
There are two additional strands in which challenges remain before a far-reaching ORCID adoption is achieved at the University. The first one is cultural, and involves engaging authors into the process of claiming, completing and using their ORCIDs. This should very much be based on a best practice definition and dissemination. The other domain where challenges are still to be tackled is the technical area: first, there is a need for <i>a reliable identification of potential duplicates</i> and possibly for merging ORCID profiles created on different author email addresses, and then, the Library would also wish to have <i>privileges for maintaining the newly-created ORCID accounts</i> and be able for instance to claim publications on behalf of the authors. These are areas where current ORCID work is taking place, and new features will be available in the mid-term that will enable this functionality. <br />
<br />
<b>The outcome</b> <br />
<br />
The main process outcome has so far been a successful (if humble) attempt for automatically creating ORCID profiles for a few UniOvi authors from the Library. However, once the first ORCIDs were created, extending the coverage to the remaining UniOvi authors poses no major technical challenge. Furthermore, the successful identification by the application for automated ORCID generation of a previously existing ORCID for one of these 10 authors was a first step in putting together a set of criteria that will ensure detection of candidates for duplicated entries at ORCID creation time. <br />
<br />
The Library has now the opportunity to test the process for ORCID claiming by authors - together with the opportunity to provide useful feedback along the process, for instance by suggesting that it might be useful to allow the welcome message to be customised by the member institution through an option panel that would allow to choose things such as the language the welcome message is written in. Institutional outreach strategies are already being designed, including a brief guide on ORCID claiming for authors and an institutional ORCID website providing an introduction to ORCID and explaining what its benefits are both for authors and the institution itself. All these contents should very much be re-usable by institutions which join ORCID from now on. <br />
<br />
<b>The way ahead</b> <br />
<br />
The next steps for completing the work are in the first place extending the pilot to cover the whole set of UniOvi scholars. Once this is achieved, strategies are to be designed for implementing the new ORCIDs on institutional systems, starting with the DSpace-based institutional repository RUO. Ideally, ORCID implementation on the repository will provide a means to engage authors with it and ensure that those authors who have not deposited anything yet in the repository will realise some of the value-added services it may provide them. <br />
<br />
Finally, a great deal of the remaining tasks fall into the outreach domain: best practices for ORCID use by institutional authors are to be promoted from the Library as part of an awareness raising campaign about ORCID. Besides this, once the process has been completed, the Library has the intention to disseminate best practices in ORCID adoption at institutional level through a somewhat more rigorous channel than a blog post. <br />
<br /></div>
Mariano Navarrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01999115932818991885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-41314456433447621172013-03-22T06:36:00.000-07:002013-03-26T09:34:53.033-07:00Preaching to the converted...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> Sometimes when you try to argue on controversial issues - say for instance you consider that the coverage of sex abuse in the media is biased and lacks objectivity - you'll be accused of not being interested in figting sex abuse. Regardless of how frequently found around the place these days, it's the sort of argumentation that will drive you mad, since its sole purpose seems to be to avoid discussing the issue itself.
<br><br>
Open Access is no exception in this regard. I do not think my personally being pro-Open Access or anti-Open Access should be part of the discussion here, but you may check posts below should this paragraphs raise any doubt about it. Incidentally I happen to be a physicist and have had the opportunity during my extensive Open Access dissemination activities (and have taken great pleasure in it) to discuss it with dozens of researchers from all fields, possibly hundreds of them, many of them Open Access-friendly, some of them reluctant, nearly all of them interested in a sensible dialogue on the future of scholarly communication.
<br><br>
As a result of these experiences, plus again lots of work for implementing OA at institutional and cross-institutional level, there are two relevant points I would like to make in this post:
<br><br>
1) Librarians ('shambrarians' would probably be more accurate) should refrain from going too far in telling researchers how to perform their professional activity. Librarians/shambrarians usually do not know enough about research and scholars can easily perceive that out of a five minute conversation. This is possibly the main reason for the huge divide among both communities - and the one that does actually explain why repositories are nearly empty. Underpopulated repositories is by no means just a 'keystroke issue' I'm afraid (although solving the 'keystroke issue' will help of course). Asking for strong mandates has lately become a mantra from the 'shambrarian' community, but when you listen to researchers' thoughts about this many of them are far from being convinced this is the right way to deal with Open Access implementation.
<br><br>
2) Open Access success is mainly a technology issue and not a policy one (or not to such extent anyway). Ideally the technology and policy strands should work in parallel, but technology can do without policy, whereas the opposite is not true. If you try to sell researchers an Open Access mandate for depositing their papers on the equivalent of a shack in architectural terms, they will very likely laugh in your face (this is the story of the last 20 years Stevan Harnad often talks about). You need to have a solid technical foundation with solid added-value services for talking researchers into Green Open Access. And that is presently far from being a fact. Regrettably far, I feel obliged to add. Not only that, it is kept far from being a possibility by the regular advocates ignoring most about technology and making emphasis on what they do know about: dialectics. I will not mention particular examples here, since it's not the goal of this post to get personal, but if Open Access is to succeed, the debate should clearly become more technical and less political.
<br><br>
No offence meant in any of this, I should warn. I read as much as I can of what gets published on OA, especially blogposts, and there's not too much I like out there I must say. But I do usually keep my opinions to myself since I believe there may be many different ways for OA to succeed - and fights between passionate Green OA supporters and their critical friends is certainly not one of them.
<br><br/></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-38190210704798963912013-03-22T06:15:00.000-07:002013-03-22T07:29:53.432-07:00... and preaching to the non converted<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br>
After quite a long time away from this blog due to various circumstances – with work overload probably being the most convincing one – I will try to catch up with various threads in the next day ot two – and I shall start the attempt with an answer to this request for explaining what Open Access is and what its aims are I was delivered from the interesting <a href="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/03/12/whoops-are-some-current-open-access-mandates-backfiring-on-the-intended-beneficiaries/#comments">comments section</a> of this <a href="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/03/12/whoops-are-some-current-open-access-mandates-backfiring-on-the-intended-beneficiaries/">“Whoops! Are Some Current Open Access Mandates Backfiring on the Intended Beneficiaries?”</a> post by Kent Anderson at <a href="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/">The Scholarly Kitchen</a> blog. This is my answer – I tried to keep it as concise as possible, apologies if it may still be a bit long.
<br><br><br>
I am probably too busy trying to overcome the <a href="http://svpow.com/2013/03/02/can-repositories-solve-the-access-problem/">numerous challenges</a> that stand in the way of Open Access implementation myself to provide a too detailed and accurate description of what Open Access is and what its aims are, but I'll give it a go. Let me start by quoting the <a href="http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/">Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities</a> (2002):
<br><br>
"The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access".
<br><br>
According to this, Open Access means ensuring this possibility is realised, and worldwide dissemination of research outputs should indeed be a shared goal for institutions (and its libraries) and for publishers. It means that any researcher anywhere in the world may have the opportunity for the first time in history to freely share her research results (and this includes research data) with the whole research community and beyond. Whether this is achieved through the so-called Gold route (Open Access or hybrid journals) or via Open Access repositories (the Green route) is secondary to some extent - although not of course if business models are our sole concern here.
<br><br>
Open Access deals with the have and the have-nots (which does not just mean developed vs developing countries, but rather privileged vs underprivileged researchers in terms of having or not an institutional coverage for accessing the research information they require for carrying out their own research). And Open Access deals with whether a freely available author's final peer-reviewed manuscript might provide a useful alternative to the much-preferable version of record for those underprivileged researchers who can't or won't afford paying the fees required to read the papers that will allow them keep up-to-date with advances in their own research area.
<br><br>
Research funders are well aware of the challenge, especially those in the area of biomedical research, and Open Access mandates are their attempt to tackle the access issue in an area where many institutions both in rich and poor countries lack the (quite substantial) budgets required to provide their reseachers a comprehensive access to publications in toll-access journals.
What about publishers? They are indeed adapting their business models to fit the Gold route by taking Article Processing Charges from authors as a prerequisite to making research papers available Open Access so they can meet the funders' mandates – which is fine. But this adaption to Open Access has not at all improved their image in the eyes of institutions (and many researchers in them), who suspect some not-so-subtle form of double-dipping is taking place since they still need to pay for their journal subscriptions on top of the APCs.
<br><br>
What could publishers then do to stop the fight?
<br><br>
The European <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/">PEER Project</a> was a 3-yr STM Publisher Association-lead attempt to assess the impact of Open Access repositories on the 'European Research ecosystem'. This was technically carried out by delivering a large amount of final peer-reviewed author manuscripts into a cross-European institutional Open Access repository network.
<br><br>
Publisher participation ensured the right research article version was deposited, and the whole exercise was also useful for them: not only they were able to become aware of the relevance of sufficient metadata (a concept that <a href="http://crossref.org/">CrossRef</a> has later extended among the wider publisher community), but also to harmonise their interoperability standards through the use of the <a href="http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/">NLM DTD</a>. Furthermore, the conclusions of the <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/presentations/PEER_CIBER_Brussels.pdf">PEER project assessment</a> carried out by <a href="http://ciber-research.eu/">CIBER Research Ltd</a> was that <i>not only publishers were not harmed by Open Access repositories, but rather on the contrary the paper download figures from journal pages at publisher websites were much improved by their availability as final manuscripts at repositories</i> (since it's the version of record any researcher will prefer to read and cite unless of course they have no means to accessing it).
<br><br>
PEER was a one-time exercise, but it also delivered a <b>proof of concept for cooperation between publishers and institutions</b> in order to provide researchers the service they require for meeting the funders' mandates they are subject to. And in fact some sensible publishers are still interested – and taking subsequent steps in this direction – in delivering their authors the deposit service they require to meet the mandates. The way these sensible publishers see it, <i>this is a means to offer researchers competitive advantages at journal selection time</i> and will ensure a steady number of submissions in an increasingly competitive market framework for journals.
<br><br>
In the meantime the institutional Open Access community (which reached a critical mass quite a long time ago) is taking steps to ensure the repository systems become fit for purpose in order to meet funder requirements in terms of offering OA to the outputs of research projects funded by them. There are indeed technical as well as cultural/political challenges, in fact quite a number of them, but there is also a sustained and persistent effort to figure out the best ways to gradually address them. Institutional Research Committees are suddenly becoming aware (and this is the concern comment #2 addresses) that <a href="http://ukcorr.org/2012/12/17/could-the-so-called-gold-rush-actually-result-in-green-reinforcement/">institutional research publishing budgets won't reach for providing Gold Open Access via payment of APCs for the whole institutional research output</a>, so they're instead turning their eyes to their institutional Open Access repositories and wondering whether it could be the way of meeting funder mandates in a much cheaper fashion. At the same time, some funders are starting to rule hybrid journals out of their mandates for compliance purposes on order to avid the abovementioned risk of double-dipping.
<br><br>
The landscape keeps hastily evolving and it seems further adaption will be required both from publishers and institutions. This could ideally happen through cooperation and not through struggle, but there seem to be too many prejudices and too little efforts out there for a constructive dialogue to take place in a sustainable way.
<br><br><br/></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-16297284142859627872013-01-01T12:04:00.000-08:002013-01-01T12:04:57.154-08:00ORCID en los países de habla hispana<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> Se leía el otro dia <a href="http://twitter.com/@ORCID_Org">en un tweet</a> que ORCID como iniciativa de identificacion de autores <a href="http://whatisaplunk.com/tag/orcid/">beneficiaría sobre todo a las mujeres</a>, en una referencia a la acendrada costumbre en muchos países de que las mujeres cambien de apellido con el matrimonio.
<br><br>
Dado que esta costumbre no está tan arraigada en el mundo hispanohablante, será tal vez por ello que, con la excepción de España, no se encuentra ningún otro país hispanohablante en la lista de los 25 en los que ORCID está arraigando con más fuerza. Teniendo en cuenta que el <a href="https://orcid.org/register">registro en ORCID</a> es gratuito para los autores y considerando asimismo el elevado número de excelentes comunicadores en el ámbito de la gestión de información científica que pueblan la <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/LLAAR">lista LLAAR</a> sobre Acceso Abierto y Repositorios, esto no deja no obstante de constituir una considerable sorpresa.
<br><br>
En el día en que tradicionalmente se formulan los propósitos de año nuevo, hacer un esfuerzo por incorporar a los países hispanohablantes a próximas ediciones de este listado internacional podría ser una sugerencia interesante...
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G7C6jz3jFQE/UOM9Z-zM0jI/AAAAAAAADOs/D16roli38No/s1600/orcid_adoption_worldmap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="236" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G7C6jz3jFQE/UOM9Z-zM0jI/AAAAAAAADOs/D16roli38No/s400/orcid_adoption_worldmap.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tPK8zWqKKmA/UOM9huKpdRI/AAAAAAAADO8/74h5q_oGHu8/s1600/top20_contries_orcid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="385" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tPK8zWqKKmA/UOM9huKpdRI/AAAAAAAADO8/74h5q_oGHu8/s400/top20_contries_orcid.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1RSmQOIyWZk/UOM9rimOEoI/AAAAAAAADPI/yrQKejNy2tM/s1600/top25_contries_orcid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="92" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1RSmQOIyWZk/UOM9rimOEoI/AAAAAAAADPI/yrQKejNy2tM/s400/top25_contries_orcid.jpg" /></a></div>
<br><br>
Por supuesto, la auténtica razón para la ausencia de los países hispanohablantes de este listado no es la que se apunta más arriba, sino la que se deduce de este otro tweet de fecha 28 de diciembre:
<br><br>
<i>"ORCID now has 42,918 researchers registered, a third via manuscript systems or linking with other IDs"</i>
<br><br>
<br /></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-85188658898406646042012-12-24T00:17:00.000-08:002012-12-26T01:35:14.663-08:002012: el año de ORCID<font size="1"><a href="http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6300-1033">0000-0001-6300-1033</a>, ORCID Outreach WG member</font>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/orcid" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="153" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-68Dt_Q-5IEo/UNrEe8sByRI/AAAAAAAADNs/l8RnfCrbzOA/s400/ORCID_a_Bibliotecnica.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
Estas fechas en las que tradicionalmente se echa la vista atrás para recordar los principales acontecimientos del año son también un buen momento para recapitular novedades y examinar tendencias de futuro en el ámbito de la comunicación científica. En este sentido es fácil aventurar que dentro de diez años 2012 será recordado -entre otras cosas- como <b>el año en que entró en servicio la iniciativa <a href="http://about.orcid.org/">Open Researcher and Contributor ID</a></b>, el identificador ORCID que finalmente facilitaría la solución a los hasta entonces perpetuos problemas de asignación de las publicaciones científicas a sus autores y de desambiguación de los nombres de éstos.
<br><br>
ORCID <a href="http://about.orcid.org/content/orcid-outreach-meeting-october-2012">se lanzó como servicio</a> a mediados de octubre de 2012, después de un sostenido sprint final por parte del <a href="http://about.orcid.org/about/team">reducido equipo de profesionales</a> que está sacando adelante esta iniciativa sin ánimo de lucro. Poco más de dos meses después de su puesta en servicio, <b>más de 30,000 autores del mundo entero</b> han registrado ya de manera gratuita su identificador desde el formulario de registro en el sitio web de ORCID.
<br><br>
Al mismo tiempo que progresa la adopción individual del estándar a través del boca a boca -con las redes sociales y <a href="http://twitter.com/@ORCID_Org">twitter</a> en particular como un poderoso instrumento de difusión- ORCID continúa la consolidación de su plataforma y de los servicios de integración con editores y bases de datos que desde ella se ofrecen (ver figura más abajo). Para garantizar la sostenibilidad de estos desarrollos y de la iniciativa en su conjunto será precisa la generalización de un modelo colaborativo de suscripción institucional que haga recaer la responsabilidad de la sostenibilidad del servicio en las organizaciones que se benefician del mismo, sean universidades, centros de investigación o editores. Este modelo de implicación institucional colectiva en la provisión de un servicio no es ajeno al mundo de la comunicación científica, donde ejemplos como el <a href="http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2010/01/21/cornell-establishes-collaborative-business-model-for-arxiv-repository/">nuevo modelo de financiación del repositorio arXiv</a> en la Universidad de Cornell o la <a href="http://scoap3.org/faq.html">iniciativa SCOAP3</a> del CERN para ofrecer acceso abierto a todo un conjunto de revistas científicas en el campo de la física de altas energías demuestran que es una alternativa viable e incluso preferible a modelos de financiación más restringidos por organizaciones o países.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QUDCxRAePR8/UNf2-tZcjkI/AAAAAAAADNY/293ZNbUpUO4/s1600/Int%2BJ%2BQuantum%2BChem_ORCID.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="134" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QUDCxRAePR8/UNf2-tZcjkI/AAAAAAAADNY/293ZNbUpUO4/s400/Int%2BJ%2BQuantum%2BChem_ORCID.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
A medida que avanza el desarrollo de nuevos servicios de integración -que irán consolidando a lo largo del próximo año- el gran reto para el éxito de ORCID reside cada vez más en la comunicación del avance en su implantación, de sus ventajas y de sus procesos de trabajo. En un momento en que comienzan a producirse registros institucionales para la adopción temprana del nuevo estándar de identificación, será fundamental dar a conocer los procedimientos y las estrategias de implantación seguidas por las primeras instituciones en integrar ORCID en sus sistemas de gestión de la información científica, de manera que sean reutilizables por las instituciones que se incorporen a la iniciativa de manera más tardía.
<br><br>
El papel de los servicios institucionales de información (bibliotecas o centros de documentación) resultará también crítico para el éxito de ORCID: será tarea suya poner a disposición de los autores la información necesaria para que ellos puedan registrarse gratuitamente y pasar a formar parte de una iniciativa que cobrará cada vez más fuerza con su adopción por parte de editores, agencias de finaciación y bases de datos internacionales.
<br><br>
Cabe destacar como un ejemplo de buenas prácticas en este sentido la iniciativa de Consol García, <a href="http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8085-0088">0000-0001-8085-0088</a>, y de sus compañeras de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (<a href="http://www.upc.edu/">UPC</a>), para crear una <b>página web dedicada a ORCID</b> -inicialmente <a href="http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/orcid">en catalán</a>, ahora también <a href="http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/es/content/open-researcher-and-contributor-id-orcid-0">en castellano</a>- como parte del sitio web de <a href="http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/">Bibliotècnica</a>, la Biblioteca Digital UPC. La UPC no se ha registrado por el momento como miembro de ORCID, pero esto no es óbice para que desde su Servicio de Biblioteca se haya percibido como una línea importante de trabajo la comunicación de información sobre el identificador universal de autor para los académicos e investigadores de la institución. Una adecuada difusión de la existencia de esta página a través de los canales de comunicación institucionales y la extensión de este tipo de iniciativa a otras universidades suponen un impulso decisivo para la consolidación de un estándar que goza por lo demás (ver mapa en la figura inferior) de muy buena salud en España a pesar de la delicada situación económica de muchas de sus instituciones de educación superior.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xR182AU-s0Y/UNf2YuuTWwI/AAAAAAAADNM/vsbyB1mRirg/s1600/orcid_adoption_worldmap_20121207.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="204" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xR182AU-s0Y/UNf2YuuTWwI/AAAAAAAADNM/vsbyB1mRirg/s400/orcid_adoption_worldmap_20121207.jpg" /></a></div>
<br><br>
<br/></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-22724440892519887672012-09-18T13:55:00.000-07:002012-12-23T23:01:41.118-08:00Discussing ORCID... and the Gold vs Green controversy<br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KyIu--_gl_A/UFjZRryGNUI/AAAAAAAAC0k/MQIQZzF085E/s1600/DSC_0017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KyIu--_gl_A/UFjZRryGNUI/AAAAAAAAC0k/MQIQZzF085E/s400/DSC_0017.jpg" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A new <a href="http://www.grandir.com/en/tecnical-session">GrandIR technical session</a> was held on Sep 6th at the Open University of Catalonia (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, <a href="http://www.uoc.edu/portal/en/index.html">UOC</a>) in Barcelona. This new workshop was devoted to Author IDs and <a href="http://about.orcid.org/">ORCID</a> (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) and brought together representatives from the various stakeholders concerned by the launch of the ORCID service, to take place next Oct 15th. The event programme included ORCID themselves (Martin Fenner, Chair of the <a href="http://about.orcid.org/owg">ORCID Outreach Working Group</a>), National author ID initiatives (Amanda Hill, <a href="http://names.mimas.ac.uk/">Names Project UK</a>), funders (Gerry Lawson, Natural Environment Research Council, <a href="http://www.nerc.ac.uk/">NERC</a>), National Research Offices (David Arellano, Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, <a href="http://www.fecyt.es/fecyt/seleccionarMenu2.do?strRutaNivel2=;recursos32cient237ficos;recolecta&strRutaNivel1=;recursos32cient237ficos&tc=areas_trabajo">FECYT</a>) and publishers/vendors (Philip Purnell, <a href="http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/academic/">Thomson Reuters</a>). Each of the speakers delivered a presentation (files are downloadable from the <a href="http://www.grandir.com/en/tecnical-session/technical-session-on-author-id-and-orcid/programme">session programme</a>) and a round table was held afterwards in order to discuss the requirements for an universal author identifier as well as its implications and challenges.
<br><br>
A summary of the session discussions follows:
<li>
<ul>- ORCID service is set to be launched Oct 15th. Martin Fenner provided an up-to-date view of the ORCID interface as it stands right now, although -he mentioned- it keeps evolving every day.</ul>
<ul>- ORCID business model is currently being established along the following lines: the service will be free for individual authors/researchers, and there will be a fee for institutions, to be classified as small or large. Charge for small ones will be $4,000 per year. Overlay services will gradually be made available.</ul>
<ul>- ORCID will run different strategies for buiding up an author database: (free) individual registration for authors, collective registration for institutions (for a fee), collection & upgrade from other existing author IDs - such as ThomsonReuters <a href="http://www.researcherid.com/">ResearcherID</a>, <a href="http://libraryconnectarchive.elsevier.com/lcn/0404/LCN040415.html">Scopus Author Identifier</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/help/author_identifiers">arXiv</a>, etc.</ul>
<ul>- ORCID duplication may result from overlapping registration strategies - some dissambiguation work should be required to clear those. ORCID won't be providing this service (at least not at launchtime, although possibly later on), so this might be a potential role for National Author ID projects (such as Names, <a href="http://www.surf.nl/en/themas/openonderzoek/infrastructuur/pages/digitalauthoridentifierdai.aspx">DAI</a> or <a href="http://lattes.cnpq.br/">Lattes</a>) which lie closer to the authors.</ul>
<ul>- Two main workflows have been designed so far for promoting ORCID use: (i) Publisher Workflow, meaning publishers will request ORCIDs to authors at manuscript submission time, and (ii) Funder Workflow, by which funders will request ORCIDs to researchers at grant bid submission time. Several publishers are already working to enable ORCID collection, and research funders are happy to be able to work with a non-profit initiative instead of commercial providers.</ul>
</li>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JkvaUPhrCtU/UFjVzChnvAI/AAAAAAAAC0M/eWINCOoebUE/s1600/ORCID_publisher_workflow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="277" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JkvaUPhrCtU/UFjVzChnvAI/AAAAAAAAC0M/eWINCOoebUE/s400/ORCID_publisher_workflow.jpg" /></a></div>
<li>
<ul>- Institutions running a CRIS system will be better positioned for ORCID implementation, once the required datamodel updates are performed (euroCRIS CERIF TG is currently working on <a href="http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=CERIF-1.5&t=1">CERIF datamodel enhancement</a> in order to bring persistent identifiers into the system). For those HEIs not running CRIS Systems (for which CERIF is incidentally not a requirement), Institutional Repositories may as well play a key role for ORCID implementation purposes.</ul>
<ul>- There are a number of author ID-related services that ORCID will not aim to provide. Among these, organisation IDs, citations, usage or other value-added services. ORCID actually aims to provide a basic feature (namely author identifier plus attached publications) on top of which other stakeholders are expected to build value-added services. ThomsonReuters ResearcherID (as well as other commercial or national author ID services) is therefore not planned to be superseded by ORCID, but they will co-exist instead.</ul>
<ul>- One month away from service launch, there are several important factors that remain unclear, such as the service takeup by authors, the project timeschedule or the level of duplication that may result from overlapping registration strategies. Strategies for service dissemination among the research community remain also to be defined to some extent. However, meetings like the one held in Barcelona or <a href="http://www.dini.de/veranstaltungen/workshops/autorenidentifikation/">the upcoming one at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin</a> will certainly support awareness-raising among the research community.</ul>
</li>
<br>Finally, the meeting in Barcelona also offered the opportunity to discuss with Gerry Lawson, UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), whether the RCUK policy for promoting Gold OA as a default option for complying with their Open Access policy turned the Research Council into "traitors" to the Open Access movement. When offered the opportunity to discuss their view, he said the Coucils were by no means opposed to Green OA - only after ten years work, repositories were still not complying the funders' requirements for tracking Open Access outputs and payments.
<br><br>
Discussions on the default Gold OA direction the UK has taken following the release of the Finch Report should also account for this current reporting shortcomings in Green OA infrastructures. At the same time, <a href="http://digital-research.oerc.ox.ac.uk/programme/tues-am-keynote">requests</a> for turning the RCUK OA Policy a more balanced supporting tool for both Gold and Green OA seem indeed reasonable enough.
<br><br>
In summary, the session was very useful for disseminating the current state of the ORCID initiative on the verge of its being released and for discussing its implications and challenges for organisations and initiatives potentially involved in its roll out as a service to researchers and the wider community. Some additional session outcomes are starting to surface as requests for further ORCID dissemination at given universities in Spain - more information on this will be provided in due time. The ORCID Service launch meeting in Berlin next October will also provide new insights on the service that will be dutily reported.
<br><br>
Video recordings of the interventions will shortly be made available at the UOC <a href="http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/?locale=en">O2 Institutional Repository</a>.
A useful session summary in Spanish has also been published by Elvira Santamaria at the <a href="http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/notas/sesion-tecnica-sobre-identificadores-de-autor-y-orcid/">EPI Blog</a>.
<br><br/></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-11182929637049236592012-09-13T19:53:00.000-07:002012-12-23T23:02:19.503-08:00Steady progress of Open Access at Kenyatta University and beyond<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--LlbKIRJW2E/UFKXEvtw6bI/AAAAAAAACyQ/nOcsxFphFQw/s1600/training_session.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:0m; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--LlbKIRJW2E/UFKXEvtw6bI/AAAAAAAACyQ/nOcsxFphFQw/s400/training_session.jpg" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
As shown in the <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xx2in2Rz4Ng/UDfk-H6o53I/AAAAAAAACwI/bkWxPtjfSmU/s400/OAW2010_activities_in_Kenya.jpg">Open Access trend worldmap</a> in the previous post, Kenya may well be the country where a strongest impulse towards Open Access implementation in a coordinated, cross-institutional way is currently under way. A high number of Kenyan universities are taking steps to issue Open Access policies and to set up their institutional repositories. These include <a href="http://www.maseno.ac.ke/">Maseno University</a>, which has recently become the first <a href="http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/berlin-prozess/signatoren/">signatory of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access</a> in Kenya, <a href="http://www.ku.ac.ke/">Kenyatta University</a>, which is about to adopt an institutional Open Access policy and is already running its own <a href="http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/ir">IR</a>, Moi University, University of Nairobi and JKUAT, which has recently issued a <a href="http://www.jkuat.ac.ke/?wpdmact=process&did=NjguaG90bGluaw==">Digital Repository Policy document</a> so well drafted that it may become a source of inspiration for many other institutions in the continent.
<br><br>
Efforts during the Open Access activity week at KU were aimed to train the Kenyatta University IR and ICT staff and KU researchers and Management Board on Open Access and on how to deal with the <a href="http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/ir">new institutional repository</a> which is being developed by the University Library. The 2-day seminar held at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies (<a href="http://www.ksms.or.ke/">KSMS</a>) -organised by Reuben Njuguna, KU Dept. of Business Administration- provided the summit in the OA advocacy sessions held during the week. The first day of this event was devoted to introducing Open Access and its current worklines to the KU Management board, with talks by Gitau George Njoroge, Director of KU Library, Iryna Kuchma, <a href="http://www.eifl.net/">EIFL</a> Open Access Programme manager, William Nixon, Digital Library manager at the <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/">University of Glasgow</a> and Brian Hole, manager of the <a href="http://www.ubiquitypress.com/">Ubiquity Press</a> Open Access publisher. The second day a round of group discussions was held among the KU VCs and professors in order to establish the guidelines for a draft Open Access policy for KU, which is now under review by the KU Law Department in order to make it final.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WuNSFWtmbDw/UFKagVqYukI/AAAAAAAACyk/XeE4Job483Q/s1600/roundtable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:0em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WuNSFWtmbDw/UFKagVqYukI/AAAAAAAACyk/XeE4Job483Q/s400/roundtable.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
In the meantime KU legacy dissertations are starting to be digitised in order to provide full-text files to the metadata-only items that presently constitute the largest part of the KU IR. Metadata sets associated with different document types are also undergoing an update so they'll fit the requirements for providing a thorough description of the KU research output. Once this processes reach an advanced state, an advocacy campaign for further dissemination of the advantages the IR provides the KU community will be carried out at KU Schools. Ideally this should result in KU researchers and professors having the opportunity to offer their online research profiles and publications in the same way as Dr. Erik Nordman, a <a href="http://www.gvsu.edu/">GVSU</a> researcher in environmental economics who is currently spending a sabbatical year at KU School of Environmental Studies and whose publications are easy to track at his home <a href="http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/">ScholarWorks@GVSU repository</a>.
<br><br>
The setting up of the KU IR will not only provide visibility for the KU scholarly output, but will also help introducing better description procedures for the Faculty members' publications. Once it gets consolidated as a fully operational reporting tool, the IR will also become the default platform for collecting the KU research output, including the journals internally published by KU Schools and Departments which are currently impossible to track online. If the IR Project at KU is able to keep its cruise speed and meet its strategic goals, the Kenyatta University Library should in the mid-term develop a research information management system as inspirating as its actual building.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z3AekHrnTZQ/UFKbk3ryJaI/AAAAAAAACyw/6Rqfn2YGwXI/s1600/PML_building.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:0em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z3AekHrnTZQ/UFKbk3ryJaI/AAAAAAAACyw/6Rqfn2YGwXI/s400/PML_building.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
With the ongoing EIFL-funded Project “Knowledge without boundaries: Advocacy campaign in Kenya for OA and institutional repositories” providing a solid platform for promoting Open Access and IRs in the country through the Kenyan Library and Information Services Consortium (<a href="http://www.klisc.org/">KLISC</a>), a national network of well-populated institutional repositories could soon become a reality, showing the way ahead to other East African countries.
<br><br>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-68820399929803455372012-08-24T13:45:00.002-07:002012-08-24T22:58:11.255-07:00[Open Access] Spotlight on Nairobi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> Next week a couple of interesting Open Access-related events will take place in Nairobi - making the Open Access spotlight (partly) shift away from Europe, North America and the developed countries into Kenya. It's not the first time interesting Open Access-related events happen in Kenya - a very successful BioMed Central-organised <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/developingcountries/events/openaccessafrica2010">1st Open Access Africa (OAA) Conference</a> took place in Nairobi in Nov 2010.
<br>
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xx2in2Rz4Ng/UDfk-H6o53I/AAAAAAAACwI/bkWxPtjfSmU/s1600/OAW2010_activities_in_Kenya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="235" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xx2in2Rz4Ng/UDfk-H6o53I/AAAAAAAACwI/bkWxPtjfSmU/s400/OAW2010_activities_in_Kenya.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
Prior to briefly describing these activities, it may be useful for introductory purposes to have a look at this interesting map featured above - courtesy of Benjamin Hennig and his <a href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/sasi/">Social and Spatial Inequalities Research Group</a> at the University of Sheffield, UK, based upon data kindly supplied by <a href="http://www.arl.org/sparc/about/index.shtml">SPARC</a>. The map shows a ponderated image of the world countries according to the number of Open Access dissemination activities they organised during the Open Access Week event in 2010 (the picture actually remained very much the same for OAW2011). When we look at the current geographical distribution of Open Access repositories worlwide at the OpenDOAR directory, there is a massive bias towards the developed world. However, when we check which countries are doing better in terms of promoting Open Access and establishing their own repository networks, we see both India and Kenya at the top three. In physics terminology, in order to properly describe a situation, you should both account for the actual value <i>and the gradient</i> of such value, gradient meaning its rate of change. So even if values may presently not look too encouraging, they will eventually change as a result of persistent efforts to drive such change.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XeGBAhchxQ4/UDflXlyID7I/AAAAAAAACwU/idyFgjloLqw/s1600/IRs_in_Kenya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XeGBAhchxQ4/UDflXlyID7I/AAAAAAAACwU/idyFgjloLqw/s400/IRs_in_Kenya.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
The abovementioned Open Access activities to be held next week at two Kenyan universities in Nairobi are two good examples for those drivers for change. Kenyatta University will be hosting an <a href="http://www.ku.ac.ke/index.php/component/content/article/5-corporate-structure/780-workshop-to-sensitize-kenyatta-university-management-board-umb-on-open-access-and-institutional-repository">Open Access workshop</a> for raising institutional awareness of its Open Access Repository Project. This will be achieved by running different sessions along the 1-week Open Access advocacy seminar for all involved stakeholders within the University: Library and ICT Staff, Researchers from various disciplines and the Kenyatta University Management Board. Also next week, the University of Nairobi will be holding a <a href="http://www.eifl.net/events/oair-policy-discussion-university-nairobi-k">one day workshop</a> for the University Management Board on Open Access and institutional repositories, paying especial attention to the policy strand. This event is part of the <a href="http://www.eifl.net/openaccess">EIFL</a>-funded Project “Knowledge without boundaries: Advocacy campaign in Kenya for OA and institutional repositories”.
<br><br>
Maybe a bit more attention could be paid to Open Access advances in developing countries (even if stakeholders such as BMC and OKFN are already doing it, as well as UNESCO, IFLA and of course EIFL), since it may best serve those countries where severe restrictions to research information apply. Internet connectivity conditions permitting -still a pending issue in most African contries despite recent improvement- there will be some further reporting next week from Nairobi.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ungTtv6ZBc/UDfl9V38bvI/AAAAAAAACwg/QYVsTq9E3Tk/s1600/African_internet_connectivity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="299" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ungTtv6ZBc/UDfl9V38bvI/AAAAAAAACwg/QYVsTq9E3Tk/s400/African_internet_connectivity.jpg" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-40787110679954447402012-08-05T11:48:00.000-07:002012-08-05T11:59:13.181-07:00Interesting times for Open Access<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/uk-jpg-7.4973?article=1.10846" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="377" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hta-3reAXRc/UB7CT4V4hLI/AAAAAAAACvw/TUUTQ3L0N_g/s400/OA_UK_Nature.jpg" /></a></div>
<br> Quite a heated discussion in Open Access circles has followed the recent release of the <a href="http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/finch/">Finch Report</a> on expanding access to published research findings in the UK and the <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=420573&c=1">endorsement by the UK Govenment and funders</a> of its recommendation for making Gold Open Access the default standard for future scientific communication. The day after the UK Government announced it was assuming all but one Finch Report recommendations, the EC also adopted the Communication <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/era-communication-towards-better-access-to-scientific-information_en.pdf">"Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research"</a>, in which a wider implementation of Open Access -both Gold and Green- to research publications and data was set as a goal for present FP7 and future Horizon2020 European research programmes.
<br><br>
Although usually welcoming its implicit support of Open Access to research outputs, the Finch Report has been heavily criticized within the Open Access movement for <a href="http://sparceurope.org/sparc-europe-response-to-the-finch-report/">not acknowledging the opportunities</a> the available OA repository network and Green OA in general offer to achieve extended access to research publications. The cost of the proposed transition to a Gold OA model was claimed to be disproportionate and most fervid critics dubbed the Finch Report a result of sheer publisher lobbying, while moderate ones pointed out the proposed transition model was unfit for international adoption, <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/the-finch-report-and-its-implications.html">especially in developing countries</a>.
<br><br>
However, proposing Gold OA as a default model for extending access to research is hardly a new argument. A couple of months ago at the <a href="http://grandirblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/peer-end-of-project-conference-few.html">PEER End-of-Project conference</a> in Brussels -which incidentally had a wide number of publishers in the audience while practically no representatives of repository projects attended the event despite PEER involving both communities- the project managers highlighted one of PEER's main conclusions being that Green OA was not sufficiently popular among research authors and could therefore not be considered the best way for making research outputs widely available. Even if this conclusion may be considered biased and has also been extensively discussed, it is a fact that many researchers from various disciplines do not like open access repositories.
<br><br>
Some of the most conspicuous voices within the Open Access movement do however seem to favour [otherwise perfectly justified] protest against Green OA not being accounted for over self-criticism and analysis of what the reasons are for researchers' frequent preference for open access journals instead of repositories and what steps could be taken in order to overcome such repository shortcomings. Besides criticism of the very expensive alternatives, a clearer lobbying effort would also be desirable for explaining evidence-based advantages of Green OA and the lines the repository community is currently working at in order to improve the user experience. There are very ambitious indeed repository-related projects going on at the moment -such as the <a href="http://www.repositorynet.ac.uk/blog/">UK RepositoryNet+</a> or <a href="http://www.openaire.eu/">OpenAIRE</a> in the EU- aiming to enhance currently existing repository networks so they'll best suit researchers' needs by building upon already large previous experience.
<br><br>
Having had the chance to extensively discuss with researchers what they do and what they don't like about repositories, there seem to be evident issues in the way these platforms have been developed that justify current distrust of them as sound research information sources by a significant numer of authors. Two of the main among these are the lack of metadata harmonisation and the lack of information about work versions filed in the repositories. Although their number is growing and various efforts are under way to improve this, still very few repositories are presently offering harmonised information about funding agencies and projects associated to specific papers or about the version of such papers that is filed in the repository. Other than that, insufficient information is available on the funder policy compliance rates and a significant effort remains to be done in the field of repository usage, where testing repository vs publisher usage for a given work could be quite revealing. All these lines are currently being dealt with by the abovementioned projects, and there will be interesting breakthroughs in coming months around repositories and Green OA.
<br><br>
As for Gold OA, its strong backing by funders and the Government in the UK -as well as implicitly by publishers- opens the door for a gradual transition process (to be mainly <a href="https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/MbT8B6YwL9b#109377556796183035206/posts/MbT8B6YwL9b">but not only</a> tested in the UK as for now) from a subscription-based model to another one relying on Author Processing Charges (APCs), to be increasingly dealt with at institutional level. Two main shortly-arriving outcomes of this transition process should be: (i) new publishing business models for institutional funding of access to research papers -with the <a href="http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2012/gold-for-gold-rsc-open-access.asp">RSC 'Gold for Gold' initiative</a> showing the way ahead- and (ii) some standard way of dealing with APCs at institutional level being proposed - with the <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2012/07/goldoa.aspx">JISC/Wellcome Trust call for proposals</a> regarding a role in managing payment of Open Access APCs being a first step along that line and initiatives such as <a href="http://www.openaccesskey.com/">Open Access Key</a> (OAK) starting to offer such required services.
<br><br>
These are undoubtedly very interesting times for following Open Access evolution -and the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research">increasing impact of OA-related news in general-purpose media</a> is a good evidence for that- and from a look at the <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/uk-jpg-7.4973?article=1.10846">detailed picture of Open Access in the UK recently provided by Nature</a> it's not hard to conclude that Green OA and repositories are here to stay and that the transition process to a Gold OA-based publishing model is set to be a long and winding road.
<br><br>
</div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-28138272969805549712012-06-17T05:36:00.001-07:002012-06-17T05:38:52.075-07:00Addendum: la conferencia CRIS2012 y los sistemas CRIS en España<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> Desde el punto de vista nacional, la conferencia <a href="http://www.cris2012.org/">CRIS2012</a> arroja algunos resultados positivos: la presencia de representantes de instituciones españolas se ha quintuplicado desde la anterior conferencia <a href="http://sonexworkgroup.blogspot.com.es/2010/06/cris2010-aalborg-brief-report.html">CRIS2010 de Aalborg</a>, incluyendo en esta ocasión a la FECYT, así como centros de investigación y universidades en proceso de integración CRIS/repositorio institucional. Entre los avances pendientes, resta aún inaugurar el casillero de presentaciones en conferencias CRIS procedentes de instituciones españolas, estando la aportación nacional restringida por el momento a los euroCRIS membership meetings, donde el año pasado tanto OCU como Sigma realizaron ponencias sobre sus proyectos de desarrollo. Pese a que tanto la duración como el coste de la asistencia a estas conferencias CRIS justifican que no haya habido una presencia mayor este año, algunos de los proyectos presentados en la <a href="http://www.grandir.com/es/sesiones-tecnicas">Jornada GrandIR sobre CRIS y repositorios</a> celebrada el pasado noviembre en Barcelona habría podido perfectamente ser parte del programa de este CRIS2012. Esta situación de infrarrepresentación se equilibrará en todo caso en el próximo <a href="http://eurocris.grandir.com/">euroCRIS membership meeting de otoño</a> a celebrar en Madrid el próximo mes de noviembre, en el que se mostrarán toda una serie de proyectos CRIS de instituciones y organismos en España.
<br><br>
En relación con las cuestiones técnicas debatidas en el programa del evento, cabe mencionar que España como país sigue un camino algo diverso del resto: un proyecto puntero que despierta mucha curiosidad en otros países como el CV Normalizado (<a href="https://cvn.fecyt.es/">CVN</a>) basado en la transferencia de datos desde los CRIS institucionales coexiste con un nivel de implementación de CRIS aún relativamente limitado. Por un lado comienzan a menudear los proyectos de integración CRIS/repositorio para los modelos más consolidados de CRIS (GREC, DRAC, Universitas XXI), y al mismo tiempo la <a href="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/rim/documents/Introduction_to_CERIF_1.0.pdf">implantación del estándar CERIF</a> en dichos sistemas no ha comenzado aún a producirse en el país.
<br><br>
No es que CERIF sea un estándar imprescindible para el desarrollo de CRIS eficientes -Italia por ejemplo tiene un indice muy elevado de implantación de CRIS institucionales y no están como norma basados en CERIF- pero a efectos de garantizar la interoperabilidad internacional y de incorporar los avances que vienen teniendo lugar en el diseño del modelo de datos de este <i>Common European Research Information Format</i> (incluyendo desarrollos para <a href="http://mice.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/">modelar el impacto social</a> de una investigación o para codificar elementos adicionales de información tales como datos de investigación o <i>research facilities</i> o instalaciones de investigación disponibles), sería muy recomendable contar con al menos algún proyecto de ámbito nacional dedicado al análisis de requisitos para la migración de los modelos de datos actuales a CERIF.
<br><br>
El próximo encuentro de otoño de miembros euroCRIS puede constituir una buena oportunidad para debatir si cabría plantearse una estrategia nacional de implantación de sistemas CRIS institucionales como proveedores normalizados de información sobre producción científica a efectos de su evaluación por parte del Ministerio, de manera similar a como se planifica este proceso en otros países europeos. Funcionalidades añadidas de interés general tales como el <a href="http://about.orcid.org/blog">estándar ORCID de identificación persistente de autores</a> podrían de hecho integrarse de modo natural en una estrategia de transferencia de información científica de ámbito nacional. Sería interesante en todo caso que alguna universidad o centro de investigación en España reaccionara a la oferta del consorcio ORCID para localizar instituciones interesadas en la implantación temprana de dicho estándar como parte del proceso de consolidación del mismo. En el euroCRIS membership meeting de Madrid habrá asimismo una sesión dedicada al debate sobre identificadores que puede ser el foro ideal para debatir esta materia, dado que se prevé que para el mes de noviembre ORCID se encuentre ya en servicio.
<br><br>
</div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-4772049845168319022012-06-15T20:47:00.000-07:002012-06-21T01:38:54.985-07:00CRIS2012 Conference in Prague: Consolidating CRIS Infrastructure in Europe and the way beyond<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br> A very successful 11th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems (<a href="http://www.cris2012.org/">CRIS2012</a>) was recently held in Prague (June 6-9th, 2012) under the motto “e-Infrastructures for Research and Innovation: Linking
Information Systems to Improve Scientific Knowledge Production”. A record 154 representatives from 26 countries attended the most crowded euroCRIS biennial conference ever, and the number of submissions for the conference was also the highest so far (with the UK having the largest number of representatives at CRIS2012 and Norway the best rate of submission acceptance). The usual mix of very different professional profiles (researchers, funders, research managers, research office representatives, institutional repository managers, IT managers, developers...) that makes CRIS conferences so special was even further enriched at CRIS2012 by the large number of colleagues who were attending a CRIS conference for the first time.
<br>
<br>
This event has indeed meant the maturity milestone for <a href="http://www.eurocris.org/">euroCRIS</a>, the European Organisation for International Research Information that holds the CRIS conferences every two years (see <a href="http://sonexworkgroup.blogspot.com.es/2010/06/cris2010-aalborg-brief-report.html">report for CRIS2010 conference</a> in Aalborg, Denmark at the SONEX blog). euroCRIS has just turned 10 years old as custodian of the Common European Research Information Format (<a href="http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=featuresCERIF&t=1">CERIF</a>) standard and as a key stakeholder in the promotion of CRIS Systems for an efficient Research Information Management in Europe and beyond. <br>
<br>
If the UK is known to be the most advanced European country in terms of CERIF-based CRIS implementation in HEIs (see recent <a href="http://isc.ukoln.ac.uk/2012/03/15/adoption-of-cerif-in-uk-heis-report-just-published/">report</a> from Rosemary Russell, UKOLN), holding the CRIS2012 conference in an Eastern European contry offered the opportunity to realize how the highest momentum in National CRIS System development in Europe is shifting eastwards, with running or completed projects in <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=SK+CRIS+zendulkov%C3%A1+NISPEZ&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CE0QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnispez.cvtisr.sk%2Fuserfiles%2Ffile%2FAktivita%25204.1%2FZasadnutie%2520PS%2520CERIF%25208_2011%2FSK%2520CRIS_20110818.ppt&ei=rPDbT9bTLMi00QWG35HECg&usg=AFQjCNERvxMwsOPuZHKmJlZW1deucut7CQ">Slovakia</a>, <a href="http://erawatch.jrc.ec.europa.eu/erawatch/opencms/information/country_pages/si/informationsource/infosource_mig_0004">Slovenia</a> and the <a href="http://www.vyzkum.cz/FrontClanek.aspx?idsekce=633">Czech Republic</a> itself <b>*</b>.
<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YE_7ZC-DCLw/T9wBksiBG5I/AAAAAAAACtg/RVjmMeLRfF8/s1600/welcome_speech_20120606.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YE_7ZC-DCLw/T9wBksiBG5I/AAAAAAAACtg/RVjmMeLRfF8/s400/welcome_speech_20120606.jpg" /></a>
<br>
Official support to the CRIS2012 conference from the <a href="http://www.vyzkum.cz/Default.aspx?lang=en">Research, Development and Innovation Council</a> of the Czech Republic was in fact one of the key factors for the event being so successful, including a welcome address by the Czech Prime Minister (and President of the Research Council) at the euroCRIS membership meeting reception at <a href="http://www.vlada.cz/en/urad-vlady/dalsi-objekty/lichtenstejnsky-liechtenstein-palace-21437/">Liechstenstein Palace</a> in Prague. Last but not least, a real key contribution to a successful CRIS2012 was the brilliant event organisation provided by Jan Dvořák (<a href="http://www.infoscience.cz/">InfoScience Praha s.r.o.</a>) and his team.
<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_kB_rI7tAo4/T9v9xNrQUZI/AAAAAAAACs8/LH7BD-Wl5T0/s1600/DRIS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="201" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_kB_rI7tAo4/T9v9xNrQUZI/AAAAAAAACs8/LH7BD-Wl5T0/s400/DRIS.jpg" /></a>
<br>
One of the main outcomes of the 4-day conference was in fact the announcement of the ongoing development of a DRIS or <i>Directory of Research Information Systems</i> which will collect information on running or in-progress CERIF-based CRIS Systems all around the world along with their features and best practices at their implementation and management. This DRIS should serve starting projects to check out for the best solutions and find institutions they may be interested in contacting for the purpose of developing and implementing their own CRIS. CRIS implementation time is a particularly interesting area, since there are large differences among institutions where CRISs are set up, and best practices and guidelines on institutional data collection could be very useful for those universities starting up with the process.
<br><br>
A brief summary of the talks held along the week-long event should include (at least) three main strands as well as a reference to the evolving <a href="http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=CERIFreleases&t=1">CERIF data model</a>, currently at version 1.3 with in-progress work at 1.4 as presented by euroCRIS CERIF Task Group leader Brigitte Jörg. These three main strands are <b>(i)</b> added-value services on CRIS Systems, <b>(ii)</b> CRIS functionality extension to research data management and Linked Open Data and <b>(iii)</b> persistent identifier definition and implementation into the CERIF data model.
<br><br>
<b>1. Added-value services on CRISs</b>
<br>
As the number of both national and institutional CERIF-based CRIS steadily grows accross Europe, vendors and institutional IT services team up in order to identify new services the system could provide to researchers and institutions. Some of the proposals for enhanced CRIS interoperability and coverage were presented at CRIS2012, such as the JISC-funded <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/projects/cerify.aspx">CERIFy project</a> for enabling a two-way CERIF-based data exchange between CRISs and Thomson Reuters <a href="http://researchanalytics.thomsonreuters.com/incites/">InCites</a> service or the 'Next-Generation CRIS' currently being developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (<a href="http://www.kit.edu/english/">KIT</a>). This project aims to extend CRIS functionality by providing Social Media features, access via mobile devices and advanced Business Intelligence tools for "making numbers talk" to research managers. Finally, semantics was often mentioned too as a relevant enhancement to CRIS systems at several CRIS2012 presentations.
<br><br>
<b>2. CRIS coverage extension to research data and LOD</b>
<br>
Research Data Management (RDM) is one of the areas where CRISs could be most useful to the international research community by enabling a systematic management of institutional research data outputs. In order to do so, the CERIF data model must however be previously extended so it's able to cover research data description and management. The <a href="http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/research/ceriffordatasets/">CERIF for Datasets</a> (C4D) Project funded by the <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/mrd.aspx">JISC MRD Programme</a> and led by the University of Sunderland in the UK is working to CERIFy research data and to enable its subsequent codification into CRISs, using marine sciences datasets and an enhanced version of the <a href="http://www.oceannet.org/about_us/">MEDIN</a> metadata standard as a basis. Required metadata for data description were also analysed at the "Towards the integration of datasets in the CRIS environment" presentation by Italian <a href="http://www.irpps.cnr.it/">IRPPS-CNR</a>, which provided an overview of data archives featured in <a href="http://opendoar.org/">OpenDOAR</a> that offer information about projects. The <a href="http://www.engage-project.eu/engage/wp/">ENGAGE</a> Project and its CERIF-based metadata approach for a Public Sector Information data infrastructure were introduced by Nikos Houssos, while CRIS enhancement through Linked Open Data features has been recently acknowledged as a relevant workline by euroCRIS through the creation of a specific <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=new+eurocris+LOD+task+group&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CFUQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eurocris.org%2FUploads%2FWeb%2520pages%2Fmembers_meetings%2F201202%2520-%2520Bath%2C%2520United%2520Kingdom%2FIntro_LOD_TG.pptx&ei=xvjbT9zqI8-S0QXN0qjDCg&usg=AFQjCNHTypPV-5ccSbfXwh-4tXW91Bh-xg">LOD Task Group</a>.
<br><br>
<b>3. Persistent identifier implementation into CERIF data model</b>
<br>
<i>"The need for identifiers beyond systems is a global requirement but also relevant within organization boundaries spanning multiple systems. Various identifier initiatives and systems have started in the scientific domain and beyond. However, they have not yet achieved the required interoperability"</i>.<br>This quotation from the presentation <a href="http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/17176">"Entities and Identities in Research Information Systems"</a> delivered by Brigitte Jörg summarizes the much discussed need to integrate author, organisation and project persistent identifiers into CERIF in order to enable LOD-based approaches to succeed. After a first attempt at UUID-based persistent identifier codification was performed last February at the <a href="http://isc.ukoln.ac.uk/2012/01/09/cerif-and-eurocris-meetings-to-be-hosted-by-ukoln/">euroCRIS Task Group meeting in Bath</a>, CRIS2012 featured a specific 'IDs, Disambiguation, Interoperation' session where ID implementation requirements were further discussed.
<br><br>
<a href="http://about.orcid.org/content/orcid-appoints-laure-haak-executive-director">Recently appointed</a> ORCID Executive Director Laurel L. Haak was attending CRIS2012 and had the chance to describe <a href="http://about.orcid.org/blog">the road ahead for ORCID implementation</a> along the event. Once ORCID released its API earlier this year, its service will be launched along the 4th Quarter of 2012. Researchers will be able to create, manage and share their ORCID record for free at launch time, and ORCID is currently working with interested universities and research centres for signing agreements for early implementation at institutional level.
<br><br>
An updated presentation of the ORCID initiative -as well as an insight on CERIF enhancement for integrating persistent identifiers- will be featured at the 'Topic session' devoted to Identifiers along the forthcoming Autumn 2012 euroCRIS membership meeting to be held in Madrid next November. A <a href="http://eurocris.grandir.com/programme">preliminary programme</a> for the event is already available and free registration will soon be opened once CRIS2012 is over.
<br><br>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eHrf1AN-v3A/T9wApRYuY1I/AAAAAAAACtU/arlymSiJYq4/s1600/2012-06-09%2B16.48.38.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eHrf1AN-v3A/T9wApRYuY1I/AAAAAAAACtU/arlymSiJYq4/s400/2012-06-09%2B16.48.38.jpg" /></a>
<br>
CRIS2012 Prague closed with an outstanding social programme - including a boat cruise along the Vltava and the chance to attend various events at Museum Night Prague. Before that, IRPPS-CNR in Rome had been announced as the next host to the CRIS conference in 2014 and euroCRIS President Keith Jeffery delivered an inspired closing speech on the future of CRISs, CERIF and Research Information Management.
<br><br>
Links to the slides of all presentations mentioned in this post will be offered as soon as they are made available online.
<br><br><br><br>
<b>*</b> as well as northwards, with Sweden also implementing a National CRIS and Norway already operating <a href="http://www.irpps.cnr.it/it/system/files/Asserson.pdf">CRIStin</a>, while in Southern Europe, Italy has already used widely implemented institutional CRISs to collect the national research output earlier this year.
<br><br>
</div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-27997990853017395872012-06-01T02:20:00.000-07:002013-04-05T20:43:19.767-07:00PEER End of Project Conference: a few reflections<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XkcTSDYQMJk/T8h_Jb8nbKI/AAAAAAAACqE/JkUG4EiTkmw/s1600/2012-05-29%2B12.05.05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XkcTSDYQMJk/T8h_Jb8nbKI/AAAAAAAACqE/JkUG4EiTkmw/s400/2012-05-29%2B12.05.05.jpg" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br>
The fact that the <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/">PEER European Project</a> (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) has managed to establish a fruitful communication channel between publishers and repositories was repeatedly highlighted along the <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/peer-end-of-project-conference-29th-may-2012/">PEER End of Project Conference</a> held last Tue May 29th in Brussels. This <b>ability for fostering a successful collaboration between stakeholders initially at conflicting positions</b> is undoubtedly one of the main PEER outcomes and it would be good news for the Open Access movement as a whole if these communication channels could remain open in the future. As <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/presentations/PEER-Executive_Partners_Statements_29_May_2012.pdf">Norbert Lossau put it</a>, favouring pragmatism over ideology could be very useful for jointly outlining evolving business models.
<br><br>
The second most important achievement of the PEER project was being able to <b>establish a tested publisher-repository transfer infrastructure which can be deployed beyond the project</b>. A good number of PEER components and technical findings -such as the <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/presentations/PEER-Observatory_29_May_2012-2.pdf">PEER Depot</a> dark archive, adoption of the <a href="http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/65/98/56/PDF/PEER_metadata_profile.pdf">TEI format</a> as an unique metadata interchange standard or <a href="http://swordapp.org/">SWORD</a> as standard transfer protocol, the way usage is dealt with or the use of the <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1812875">GROBID</a> component for automatic metadata extraction- are potentially re-usable for other ongoing or future publisher-driven transfer initiatives and especially valuable for automatic item transfer into repositories within an hegemonic Gold Open Access scenario that was also frequently predicted along the meeting.
<br><br>
Additional publisher-driven deposit initiatives such as Japanese <a href="http://drf.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/drf/index.php?Zoological%20Science%20meets%20Institutional%20Repositories">'Zoological Science meets Institutional Repositories'</a> were mentioned along the conference as well as <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/working-groups/repository-interoperability/coar-interoperability-project/">COAR involvement in the interoperability strand</a> pottentially offering opportunities for follow-up work. Besides that, the JISC-funded <a href="http://sonexworkgroup.blogspot.com.es/">SONEX Group</a> has repeatedly underlined along its analysis of deposit use-case scenarios the <a href="http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/handle/10016/9257">strong workflow similarities</a> between PEER and the JISC Open Access Repository Junction (<a href="http://edina.ac.uk/projects/oa-rj/index.html">OA-RJ</a>) Project carried out at <a href="http://edina.ac.uk/">EDINA</a> in Edinburgh. The <a href="http://edina.ac.uk/projects/RJB_summary.html">RJ Broker</a> feature -which performs a very similar role to the PEER Depot <i>'moulinette'</i>- is currently being enhanced and will shortly be offered as a service through the <a href="http://www.repositorynet.ac.uk/blog/">UK RepositoryNet+ Project</a>.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bvi5vwzjcPM/T8iIbVZvu0I/AAAAAAAACqk/UifjOuV_VOQ/s1600/PEER_workflow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="281" width="380" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bvi5vwzjcPM/T8iIbVZvu0I/AAAAAAAACqk/UifjOuV_VOQ/s400/PEER_workflow.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
The figures associated to the PEER project are certainly impressive: 53,000 stage-two manuscripts (aka post-prints in <a href="http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/">SHERPA RoMEO</a> terminology) from 241 journals published by 12 mainstream publishers were processed by the PEER Depot resulting in 22,500 EU manuscript deposits (including embargoed papers) released into six different IRs plus into a long-term preservation archive at the KB in The Hague. Two submission routes were designed: automatic publisher-driven deposit and 11,800 invitations to authors for self-archiving their papers, the latter one resulting in just 170 author deposits (or 0.2% of total PEER deposits).
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uN3arildrjA/T8iECX4SO4I/AAAAAAAACqU/peaY0elcThw/s1600/PEER_deposit_cake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="360" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uN3arildrjA/T8iECX4SO4I/AAAAAAAACqU/peaY0elcThw/s400/PEER_deposit_cake.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
The large difference between deposit figures associated to the two deposit routes led PEER researchers to conclude that authors sympathise with OA but don't see self-archiving as their task, therefore "Green OA not being the key road to optimal scholar information systems". The <a href="http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/presentations/PEER_CIBER_Brussels.pdf">PEER Usage research</a> -one of the three research team projects within the PEER Research strand along with Behavioural and Economics research- proved also that although current findings reflect the position of a relatively early stage in PEER development, <b>Open Access repositories are not really a threat to publishers</b> (thus confirming the so-called <i>"no effect" publisher hypothesis</i>). In fact, making pre-prints visible in PEER repositories actually generates more traffic to publisher sites, although the ever growing rates of publisher downloads make it hard to supply an accurate measurement of the impact on publishers of post-print availability in repositories. Ian Rowlands from <a href="http://ciber-research.eu/">CIBER Research Ltd</a> estimated that publisher full-text downloads increased by 11.4% as a result of earlier version of papers being available at the IR.
<br><br>
<b>Gold vs Green OA</b>
<br><br>
While testing Green Open Access and its economic consequences for the publishing ecosystem in Europe was the main PEER goal and Green OA was the preferred workline when the Project started back in Sep 2008, the Gold Open Access route seems nowadays to be winning hearts and minds of those trying to promote access to research output on a wide basis. PEER has produced quite a number of evidences on the fact that Green OA does not harm journals nor publishers, but in the meantime attention has shifted to Gold Open Access and hybrid journals as a way to ensure that final publisher/PDF versions of the papers are made available.
<br><br>
This is probably the strongest argument in favour of Gold OA, but there are also very good ones that support Green OA. As a result, a lively debate is taking place these days inside the Open Access community on which OA model should receive main support from the government bodies. Many voices argue as well that both models should co-exist, as the research output coverage will be wider as a consequence. And there is finally an important fact to be accounted for after watching PEER result of 99.8 vs 0.2% automatic vs author-driven deposit: author self-archiving rates should not be systematically used as reliable indicators of the strength of Green OA, since there is nowadays a wealth of alternative ways to populate repositories that do not imply self-archiving obligations for authors. In fact CRIS systems, their integration with IRs and the resulting alternative workflows for content ingest into repositories were not mentioned at all last Tuesday despite having already been proved effective by a <a href="http://isc.ukoln.ac.uk/2012/03/15/adoption-of-cerif-in-uk-heis-report-just-published/">recently released UKOLN report</a>. When trying to offer a fair estimation of Green OA relevance based on the wider deposit picture, the contribution to repository population from these alternative workflows should also be considered.
</div>
<br>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-28716389164497991342012-05-28T04:13:00.000-07:002012-05-28T04:24:44.594-07:00Conclusiones 5as Jornadas OS Repositorios (Bilbao, Mayo 23-25, 2012)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-luqlC9ORnDI/T8NP3PjyumI/AAAAAAAACoA/WnMZeMV4NDI/s1600/OSR5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:0em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="110" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-luqlC9ORnDI/T8NP3PjyumI/AAAAAAAACoA/WnMZeMV4NDI/s400/OSR5.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
Los pasados días 23 a 25 de mayo se celebró en la Escuela de Ingenieros de Bilbao de la Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (<a href="http://www.ehu.es/">UPV/EHU</a>) una nueva edición de las <a href="http://e-spacio.uned.es/ocs/index.php/osrepositoriosBilbao/motricidad">Jornadas OS Repositorios</a>, el evento de ámbito nacional más importante de la comunidad de acceso abierto y repositorios en España. En un momento en el que la infraestructura de repositorios de acceso abierto en España puede considerarse bastante consolidada, y en una situación económica que exige racionalizar costes e inversiones, esta quinta edición de las Jornadas, organizada conjuntamente por la UPV/EHU, la UNED y el <a href="http://www.accesoabierto.net/">Grupo Acceso Abierto</a> liderado por Reme Melero, ha resultado más interesante aún si cabe que anteriores ediciones de las mismas. Se ofrecen a continuación algunas reflexiones sobre el evento a modo de conclusiones personales resultado de las conversaciones con compañeros de GrandIR, UPC, UPV/EHU, CSIC, UNED, UA y otra serie de instituciones.
<br><br>
Aunque siguen presentándose en las jornadas repositorios institucionales de acceso abierto de nueva creación –tal como el Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación (<a href="https://addi.ehu.es/">ADDI</a>) de la UPV/EHU que presentó su responsable Alcira Macías– son cada vez más abundantes las reflexiones del tipo <i>"ya tenemos un repositorio consolidado: ¿qué hacemos a continuación?"</i>. Este fue el caso de Javier Gómez Castaño, manager del repositorio RUA de la Universidad de Alicante en su presentación "Facilitando el autoarchivo en el repositorio institucional: el caso de la Universidad de Alicante".
<br><br>
Esta edición de las Jornadas, titulada "la motricidad de los repositorios de acceso abierto", ha ofrecido un buen número de respuestas a la pregunta de <i>"y ahora, ¿qué hacemos?"</i>. Cabría sintetizar en tres grandes grupos las propuestas de avance debatidas a lo largo de las sesiones de estas 5as Jornadas:
<ul>
<li>Integración CRIS/IR e implementación de CERIF</li>
<li>Funcionalidades adicionales para los repositorios</li>
<li>Linked Open Data (LOD) & Research Data Management (RDM)</li>
</ul>
<br><b>1.</b> La conferencia inaugural de Keith Jeffery, presidente de <a href="http://eurocris.org/">euroCRIS</a>, estuvo dedicada en exclusiva a la <b>integración de los repositorios de acceso abierto</b> con los <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Research_Information_System">sistemas CRIS</a> (Current Research Information Systems o Sistemas de Gestión de la Información Científica) y a la paulatina adopción de <a href="http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=featuresCERIF&t=1">CERIF</a> como estándar de descripción. En ella se describió la situación en el Reino Unido, <a href="http://isc.ukoln.ac.uk/2012/03/15/adoption-of-cerif-in-uk-heis-report-just-published/">el país europeo más avanzado en la implementación de CERIF</a> y de los sistemas CRIS como consecuencia de su utilidad para el cumplimiento del ejercicio de evaluación de la actividad científica Research Excellence Framework (<a href="http://www.ref.ac.uk/">REF</a>) que tendrá lugar en 2014.
<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ryvtrEvMgWk/T8NVoAbsJ8I/AAAAAAAACoQ/qJwIxQXMMnM/s1600/clip_image004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:0em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="284" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ryvtrEvMgWk/T8NVoAbsJ8I/AAAAAAAACoQ/qJwIxQXMMnM/s400/clip_image004.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
Keith habló de la integración de los sistemas CRIS, los repositorios de publicaciones y los repositorios de datos y software como modelo de desarrollo de la infraestructura institucional que puede prestar un servicio más completo a los investigadores, y proporcionó una serie de justificaciones sobre por qué CERIF es más apropiado como estándar de descripción de objetos que DublinCore, mencionando entre otros la ambigüedad entre autor e institución en dc.creator, las relaciones insuficientemente precisas a nivel general y la semántica y la sintaxis poco evolucionadas.
<br><br>
Asimismo Keith describió el modelo Gold Open Access al que parece tender el mercado como económicamente insostenible para las bibliotecas de las instituciones con elevado volumen de publicaciones y abogó en su lugar por un alejamiento del modelo basado en los artículos de revista para volver hacia "algo similar al modelo <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society">Philosophical Transactions</a>", con comunicaciones más en la línea de blogs y "conversaciones científicas".
<br><br>
A lo largo del <i>keynote speech</i> se describió también cómo los modelos más avanzados de sistemas CRIS en el Reino Unido están incorporando las funcionalidades de los repositorios institucionales hasta hacerlos redundantes y <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/17bfgIyMWay_knudImXUg3EzuqMkvQgLi9JG58e3AQ0k/edit">llegar eventualmente a plantearse su retirada de servicio</a>. Finalmente, el take-home message de la conferencia inaugural fue que para el usuario final lo fundamental es la prestación del servicio que necesita, y no tanto el modo en que se configura la arquitectura de las plataformas de datos que hacen posible dicho servicio.
<br><br>
Todos estos temas volverán a tratarse de manera más amplia a principios de junio en la próxima conferencia <a href="http://www.cris2012.org/">CRIS2012</a> en Praga y en el <a href="http://eurocris.grandir.com/">Autumn 2012 euroCRIS membership meeting</a> en Madrid el próximo mes de noviembre, en la que se abordará asimismo el nivel de avance de la implementación de sistemas CRIS en España.
<br><br><br>
<b>2. Funcionalidades adicionales para los repositorios.</b> Una vez consolidados los repositorios como sistemas de gestión y difusión de la producción científica, cabe plantearse su utilización como puerta de entrada de funcionalidades novedosas a los sistemas institucionales de gestión de la información científica. Entre estos nuevos servicios cabe citar la introducción de esquemas internacionales de identificación persistente de autores e instituciones como <a href="http://about.orcid.org/">ORCID</a> (abordada en la presentación de la Fundación DIALNET por Eduardo Bergasa), la normalización de las estadísticas de uso a nivel nacional e internacional, el progreso de la incorporación de contenidos <a href="http://www.openaire.eu/">OpenAIRE</a> a los múltiples repositorios que cumplen ya sus directrices en España (ambos aspectos mencionados por Pedro Príncipe, <a href="http://www.uminho.pt/">Universidade do Minho</a>, y por Cristina González Copeiro, <a href="http://www.fecyt.es/">FECYT</a>) o el desarrollo de vocabularios controlados que puedan facilitar la alineación de los contenidos en torno a directrices temáticas tal como explicó Leticia Barrionuevo, gestora del repositorio <a href="https://buleria.unileon.es/">Bulería</a> de la Universidad de León.
<br><br>
Diversas ponencias a lo largo de las jornadas hicieron énfasis también en la conveniencia de desarrollar funcionalidades de redes sociales sobre los repositorios de acceso abierto, en la línea de soluciones como <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/">ResearchGate</a> que permite la implantación de alertas temáticas y de grupos de discusión científica en torno a aspectos concretos.
<br><br><br>
<b>3. Linked Open Data (LOD)/Research Data Management (RDM).</b> Estos dos temas, y más en general la cuestión de la gestión de los datos de investigación por parte de las instituciones fueron repetidamente abordados por diversos ponentes en las Jornadas. Aunque no hubo consenso respecto a la conveniencia de poner en marcha iniciativas RDM a nivel institucional en tanto no se obtengan garantías de una financiación específica y sostenida de las mismas, hubo un amplio debate sobre las políticas y la infraestructura a desarrollar en este ámbito.
<br><br>
Entre las presentaciones que abordaron la gestión de los datos cabe destacar la de Alvaro Rodríguez Miranda, del Laboratorio de Documentación Geométrica del Patrimonio (<a href="http://www.ehu.es/docarq/">LDGP</a>) de la UPV/EHU en Vitoria, que presentó una iniciativa pionera de <a href="https://addi.ehu.es/handle/10810/7029/browse?type=title&submit_browse=T%C3%ADtulo">archivo de datos de patrimonio en el repositorio institucional ADDI</a> y la de Alicia García, Universidad Católica de Valencia, que presentó el portal <a href="http://odisea.ciepi.org/">ODiSEA</a>, un directorio internacional de repositorios de datos. Tanto Pedro Príncipe como Cristina González Copeiro hablaron de <a href="http://www.openaire.eu/es/component/content/article/326-openaireplus-press-release">OpenAIREplus</a>, el proyecto-continuación de la Comisión Europea para extender OpenAIRE al ámbito de la RDM siguiendo el modelo <a href="http://www.surf.nl/en/themas/openonderzoek/verrijktepublicaties/Pages/default.aspx">‘Enhanced publications’</a>, y Jordi Serrano (<a href="http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/">SBD-UPC</a>) y Ricard de la Vega (<a href="http://www.cesca.cat/es/">CESCA</a>), miembros ambos del <a href="http://www.grandir.com/es/descargas?download=48%3Aqel-grupo-de-trabajo-fecytrecolecta-de-repositorios-de-datosq-jordi-serrano-sbd-upc">Grupo de Trabajo FECYT/Recolecta sobre Repositorios de Datos</a>, estuvieron particularmente activos en el debate sobre gestión de datos de investigación.
<br><br>
Por su parte, Tránsito Ferreras, repository manager del repositorio <a href="http://gredos.usal.es/jspui/">Gredos</a> de la Universidad de Salamanca, presentó la ponencia "Influencia de Linked Open Data sobre repositorios Open Access: Un caso práctico", en la que introdujo las iniciativas LOD que está poniendo en marcha el equipo de Gredos para adoptar el modelo de datos de Europeana (<a href="http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/149-doerr-es.pdf">EDM</a>). También Alicia López Medina, UNED y Directora Ejecutiva de COAR, mencionó varias veces a lo largo de sus intervenciones que los contenidos de los repositorios deben exponerse a los proveedores de servicios como un conjunto de objetos digitales complejos con enlaces internos entre sí que dichos proveedores puedan emplear como base para sus desarrollos.
<br><br>
Reseñar por último como momentos destacados de estas 5as Jornadas la presentación retrospectiva de la historia del evento OS Repositorios desde su arranque en <a href="http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/noticia?codigo=108">diciembre de 2006 en Zaragoza</a> por parte de Reme Melero y la iniciativa pionera de programar presentaciones pecha kucha en la sesión de intervenciones breves. A este respecto, nos atrevemos a hacer desde aquí dos sugerencias: primera, la <b>creación de un sitio web permanente de las Jornadas OS Repositorios</b> en la que se recopilen materiales tales como un histórico de presentaciones cada vez más difíciles de rastrear en Internet. Y segunda, la <b>creación de un premio a la mejor presentación <i>pecha kucha</i></b> –que GrandIR estaría por su parte encantada de patrocinar– que fijaría por un lado la atención de la audiencia que ha de seleccionar la mejor presentación, y estimularía también el espíritu competitivo de los ponentes.
</div>
<br>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-56638594787171155132012-05-22T19:25:00.000-07:002012-05-23T10:30:12.942-07:00EIFL Workshop on Open Archives in Monastir<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e-I9X7l0Ae0/T7xLNuLQQ3I/AAAAAAAACnk/XtVadI7uecI/s1600/istemag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="80" width="360" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e-I9X7l0Ae0/T7xLNuLQQ3I/AAAAAAAACnk/XtVadI7uecI/s400/istemag.jpg" /></a></div>
<br> GrandIR has just taken part in the <a href="http://www.eifl.net/events/eifl-conducting-latelier-sur-les-archives-o">'Atélier sur les archives ouvertes'</a> organised last week (May 14-15) in Monastir, Tunisia, by EIFL for promotion and dissemination of Open Access and Open Archives in the Maghreb countries. This workshop was held in the framework of the European Tempus <a href="http://istemag.org/">ISTeMag Project</a> for improving access to Scientific and Technical Information in the Maghreb universities. Led by the Université Libre de Bruxelles, this project features <a href="http://istemag.org/?page_id=6">twelve universities and research centres</a> in Tunisie, Algeria and Morocco among its partners. As a consequence, the Open Archives workshop in Monastir was well attended by over 30 Maghrebi librarians, developers, research officers, project coordinators and policymakers from all three countries.
<br><br>Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, designed a comprehensive <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B06GK2MWz8hSTlpDRS1LV1ZnZFU/edit?pli=1">programme</a> for the event along with the Tempus project coordinators. The programme covered all aspects of Open Archives, from its benefits to research activity to the obstacles faced for seting them up, from the strategies to develop a repository to copyright, marketing, policies and best practices. In order to provide the expertise, EIFL recruited a few European colleagues who delivered presentations and acted as facilitators for the group debates. Among these experts were Jean-François Lutz, Head of Digital Library at the Université de Lorraine and Pablo de Castro, Director of GrandIR.
<br><br>There were several group sessions along the 2-day event, in which representatives of various professional profiles from different institutions -and often different countries- engaged in a lively debate and discussed their complementary approaches to specific aspects of Open Access policies, content gathering or marketing activities. Since ISTeMag has already held previous meetings to examine the different aspects of access to scientific and technical information (<a href="http://istemag.org/?page_id=284">the most recent one</a> took place last November in Algiers), workgroups discussions were in some sense a follow-up to a more general debate on access.
<br><br>A Moroccan colleague kindly shared a ranking of universities in the Maghreb countries along the event - featured below. It's interesting to see that there are six Tunisian universities in the top ten, and that three of these top ten-ranked universities are partners in the Tempus ISTeMag Project (two Tunisian, Sfax and Monastir, and one Moroccan one, Marrakesh-Cadi Ayyad). It's also worth mentioning that having an open archive or institutional repository in place will significantly improve the position of a university in these rankings (see also in this regard the <a href="http://www.webometrics.info/top100_continent.asp?cont=africa">Top Africa section</a> in the Web Ranking of World Universities released every six months by the CCHS-CSIC Cybermetrics Lab in Madrid, in which Maghreb universities could probably do better in a global African context).
<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-URs86lSN6sU/T7xIWgNa8FI/AAAAAAAACnM/z4tF9WZSpTQ/s1600/classement_maghreb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="211" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-URs86lSN6sU/T7xIWgNa8FI/AAAAAAAACnM/z4tF9WZSpTQ/s400/classement_maghreb.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>There are already a few running Open Access repositories in Maghreb countries, with many more in project or in pre-production stages, but there is still a long way to go until the region reaches the level of infrastructure available in other countries in the continent such as Egypt, Ghana or Kenya. The main effort in terms of research output Open Access dissemination is currently being made on theses and dissertations. In fact the three national coordination organisations, the <a href="http://www.imist.ma/">IMIST</a> (Institut marocaine de l'information scientific et technique) in Morocco, the <a href="http://www.cerist.dz/">CERIST</a> (Centre de Recherche en Information Scientifique et Technique) in Algeria, and the <a href="http://www.cnudst.rnrt.tn/">CNUDST</a> (Centre National Universitaire de Documentation Scientifique et Technique) in Tunisia have already started building their national platforms for dissertations: <a href="http://toubkal.imist.ma/">Toubk@l</a> in Morocco and in-progress platforms for Tunisia and Algeria. This policy of focusing on theses has similarly been aplied at European universities, but then repository managers should keep in mind they're aiming to collect research papers and other high-value institutional research outputs as well, so their visibility will be enhanced as a result. Dissertations being intellectual property of the universities and not always requiring to ask researchers for their permission for offering them online, part of the challenges of Open Access dissemination are rather easily tackled, but then there is no Open Access advocacy carried out and it won't be so easy to extend content gathering to the materials most valued by researchers everywhere.
<br><br>Efforts like the Tunisian <a href="http://pf-mh.uvt.rnu.tn/">E-doc Université Virtuelle de Tunis (UVT)</a> EPrints-based repository or the Algerian <a href="http://193.194.83.98/jspui/">Dépot Numérique de l'Université d'Alger</a> DSpace-based archive are pioneering IR initiatives that are also being mirrored in many other institutions in the Maghreb. As a consequence of the work of this ISTeMag Group on Open Archives, a network of institutional repositories in the Maghreb universities could soon be available.
<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LuM1L0Kd-lQ/T7xNUfDlCGI/AAAAAAAACnw/alWS0JF1UkY/s1600/P5150293.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LuM1L0Kd-lQ/T7xNUfDlCGI/AAAAAAAACnw/alWS0JF1UkY/s400/P5150293.JPG" /></a></div>
<br></div>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com1Monastir, Túnez35.77718 10.826135.7514155 10.786618 35.8029445 10.865582tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-5812454378687053792012-03-30T16:21:00.008-07:002012-12-23T23:02:59.316-08:00Raising visibility of repository contents for internet users<br> Nowadays it has become commonplace to criticize institutional repositories for their lack of content specificity: you can't tell what version of the document is being made available, there is a lot of materials of insufficient quality in there, everything's mixed up, etc. When one has devoted a good part of one's professional career to develop such useful resources, this criticism is a bit painful to take. It's true IRs have weaknesses, even lots of weaknesses, but there is quite a number of people across the world working to solve them and to improve IR content quality and description. And IRs do have a decent collection of advantages alright - that should also be acknowledged to be fair. I shall now highlight one of those advantages, incidentally not even the most important one.<br /><br />This morning I was looking for some bibliography on research data management performed via institutional repositories for a report I'm currently working at. So I googled <em>research data management institutional repositories</em> and this is what I got:<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QI63C_iqx2Q/T3ZA1Z61e6I/AAAAAAAACl0/-AnyPkjFi4c/s1600/RDM_in_IRs_google_screenshot.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QI63C_iqx2Q/T3ZA1Z61e6I/AAAAAAAACl0/-AnyPkjFi4c/s400/RDM_in_IRs_google_screenshot.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5725835262483069858" /></a><br />The reference that caught my attention was of course the one with the red square around it: seems to be called Institutional Repositories and Research Data and seems to be coming from Purdue University Library in the US, although the exact source is difficult to tell from the URL there: docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...research. <br /><br />When I opened it I was simply delighted to find this <em>"Institutional Repositories and Research Data Curation in a Distributed Environment"</em> report by Michael Witt and I was also quite amazed to see its publication date - there are clearly several speeds out there in research data management implementation.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WZ-bFmdb358/T3ZBTqNX4gI/AAAAAAAACmA/NcaF-XfyjEQ/s1600/RDM_in_IRs_purdue_doc.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 178px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WZ-bFmdb358/T3ZBTqNX4gI/AAAAAAAACmA/NcaF-XfyjEQ/s400/RDM_in_IRs_purdue_doc.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5725835782251864578" /></a><br />When trying to figure out how to cite this report I suddenly became aware of the document head: Purdue University, Purdue ePubs, Libraries research Publications, Purdue Libraries. Had this document by any chance been retrieved from an Institutional Repository? So I checked the footnote: "This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information". I was simply ecstatic.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIlrkoRDBBw/T3ZBtxeckGI/AAAAAAAACmM/E-bJsWCHWSU/s1600/RDM_in_IRs_purdue_footnote.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 104px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIlrkoRDBBw/T3ZBtxeckGI/AAAAAAAACmM/E-bJsWCHWSU/s400/RDM_in_IRs_purdue_footnote.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5725836230879121506" /></a><br />I remember having had this discussion about inserting document covers into repository contents more than once when I worked as IR manager. The arguments for not doing it were always the same: we do have too many documents in the repository by now to start re-processing them all and we should instead focus on getting even more of them filed into the IR. These are quite good arguments indeed, but it's the kind of argument that lead to the issues we're now bitterly complaining about. It's a fact that IRs can be properly managed, that a great improvement in description standards has taken place and that there is a still a long way to go until we reach a consensus on a description standard that can please researchers. But not too many IRs that I know of have implemented this rather simple strategy of providing their documents a cover so that users will be able to identify their source and subsequently give it some credit. Of course there are lots of exceptions to this -if you're in the UK or the US you will say that's something every average repository has already cared for, see for instance <a href="eprints.gla.ac.uk/47858/1/ID47858.pdf">this example from Enlighten repository in Glasgow</a> or <a href="eprints.lse.ac.uk/33826/1/GreeSE_No45.pdf">this other one from the LSE repo in London</a>- but I'd say most IRs, even top-ranked ones, lack this small but very useful feature - since given the joint Open Access repository content figures nowadays, the repository+google/googlescholar combination is pretty much unbeatable. I would even dare to suggest <strong>some kind of harmonised international seal for identifying reliable research content coming from an institutional repository</strong> from their very cover - so that the user will be able to give credit where credit is due.<br /><br />Let me finish this piece of advocacy with a recommendation to read the abovementioned <a href="http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/104">Purdue University Library report</a> to any colleague interested in potential opportunities for starting out research data management initiatives from the University Library.<br /><br>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5933927345333379854.post-51900366989629794372012-03-22T05:13:00.006-07:002012-03-31T03:17:44.580-07:00Alicia López Medina appointed as new COAR Executive Director<br> The International <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/">Confederation of Open Access Repositories</a> (COAR) was <a href="http://www.driver-support.eu/documents/COAR%20Press%20release%20271009%20_2_%20_2_.pdf">launched</a> last October 2009 in Ghent with the aim of providing the framework for a global repository organisation. After the <a href="http://www.driver-repository.eu/">DRIVER</a> European project succeeded in building up a network of European scientific Open Access repositories, COAR took over the challenge of extending such network to other continents. With an increasing number of <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/member-and-partnership/members-and-partners-by-country/">members and partners</a> across the world, COAR is gradually and steadily spreading its network through Asia and Latin America, as well as signing cooperation agreements with international organisations such as <a href="http://www.arl.org/sparc/repositories/coar.shtml">SPARC</a> or <a href="http://www.libereurope.eu/committee/scholarly-communication/wg-open-access">LIBER</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ate_pRecraM/T2sYnwW73uI/AAAAAAAACk4/g1GGNDH7P44/s1600/coar_launch.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 144px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ate_pRecraM/T2sYnwW73uI/AAAAAAAACk4/g1GGNDH7P44/s400/coar_launch.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5722694822779412194" /></a><br />The recently published <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/files/COAR_Newsletter_02_March_2012.pdf">COAR Newsletter No. 2</a> (Mar 2012) announced COAR Executive Board decision to appoint Alicia López Medina (Universidad Española de Educación a Distancia, UNED) as the new Executive Director of COAR.<br /><br />An opportunity showed up recently to talk to Alicia -whom we warmly congratulate for her new position- on her new duties and responsibilities as Head of COAR. A brief summary of the conversation follows:<br /><br /><em>What are the most relevant COAR short-term goals as of today?</em><br /><br />There are several worklines COAR will focus on in upcoming months. We want to keep on spreading the organization member and partner network throughout the world as successfully as we have done so far. Partnerships will allow COAR to engage with other international organisations for extending and enhancing joint coordination activities. Besides that, COAR Working Groups are progressing with their tasks for supporting OA repositories in various ways – with repository interoperability as a particularly relevant objective. Finally, as a truly international organization, we consider the contents COAR produces should be available in the languages of the participanting geographical areas, so we will make a strong effort to ensure that.<br /><br /><em>The Research Information Management community seems to be increasingly relying on non-profit consortia for its development- with organisations such as COAR, euroCRIS or, more recently, ORCID. A common challenge to these organisations is their sustainability and their ability to find a specific business model that ensures it. How is COAR planning to operate in this regard?</em><br /><br />Regarding COAR business model -which I’d rather call sustainable operational model- the <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/about-coar/organistation/general-assembly-2012/program/">COAR Annual Meeting and General Assembly 2012</a>, to be held next May in Uppsala, will extensively deal with this issue. We consider that it should be based on both an enlargement of the membership basis and on signing of agreements with relevant international partners. The output from COAR Working Group activities may play a relevant role as well.<br /><br /><em>COAR is developing its network in a particularly effective way in Latin America. Why is it that a region where the implementation of an Open Access repository network is a rather recent initiative is engaging so strongly with COAR?</em><br /><br />COAR has been making a strong and persistent effort to engage with the dynamic Latin American Open Access repository community. As a result of this effort, a <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/news/building-up-coar-latin-america-%E2%80%93-clara-colabora-and-coar-join-forces-to-develop-collaboration-of-open-access-repositories/">Memorandum of Understanding</a> was signed last May 2011 with RedClara and Colabora regional networks.<br /><br />There are multiple reasons for this synergy between COAR and the Latin American OA Repository Network - see the interview with my colleague Dr. Norbert Lossau [Chair of COAR Executive Board] at the Dec 2011 edition of the <a href="http://www.redclara.net/doc/DeCLARA/DeCLARA_en_29.pdf">DeCLARA Newsletter</a> [p. 13] for a comprehensive account of them. Among these I’d highlight the <a href="http://www.redclara.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=533&Itemid=368">RedClara BID-BPR Project</a> <em>'Regional Strategy and Interoperability and Management Frameworks for a Latin American Federated Scientific Institutional Repository Network'</em> which was recently awarded funding by the <a href="http://www.iadb.org/en/topics/regional-integration/what-is-the-regional-public-goods-program,2803.html?">Regional Public Goods Fund</a> of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and which currently makes Latin America the most active region in the world in terms of repository network building. This project represents a very good opportunity for applying repository coordination and interoperability guidelines right from the start of the network development. Besides that, I would also like to acknowledge the effort carried out by the Latin American repository community, whose representatives were keen to join forces with COAR for pursuing common objectives. <br /><br /><em>COAR is currently carrying out its activity through three Working Groups: WG1 Repository content, WG2 Repository interoperability and WG3 Repository and Repository Network support and training. Do you think COAR could become as successful as DRIVER was in implementing common working strategies in these areas?</em><br /><br />COAR is actually a DRIVER follow-up initiative, and at the same time a more sustainable organization than DRIVER –a two-phase European Project– ever was. If the DRIVER guidelines were very successful in building up an Open Access scientific repository network in Europe, COAR is aiming to extend that network across the world. COAR objectives do also cover aspects that were not directly addressed by DRIVER, such as repository interoperability. <br /><br />In this regard, the <a href="http://www.coar-repositories.org/working-groups/repository-interoperability/coar-interoperability-project/">COAR Interoperability Project</a>, which aims to provide a high-level overview of interoperability of Open Access repositories, identify the major issues and challenges that need to be addressed, stimulate the engagement of the repository community and launch a process that will lead to the establishment of a COAR roadmap for repository interoperability, is presently our main technical workline.<br /><br />Finally, to answer your question, we’d certainly be very happy indeed if the various COAR initiatives could match DRIVER success and we aim to work hard to achieve that goal.<br /><br>Pablo de Castrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08507478327613019011noreply@blogger.com0