Beagrie.com

The Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) project has produced a widely used KRDS Activity Model for costing digital preservation of research data. KRDS has developed from relatively small-scale incremental projects and we recognise that there were still significant areas for future work such as the recently published (Dec 2010) KRDS User Guide. The KRDS2 final report published earlier last year outlined a number of key recommendations for future development including:

• “Examine further development of the pre-archive phase of the KRDS2 activity model and produce versions of the model from a researcher’s perspective.”

This suggested work has now been addressed by one of the outputs from the Infrastructure for Integration in Structural Sciences (I2S2) Project funded under the Research Data Management Infrastructure strand of the JISC’s Managing Research Data Programme.

I2S2 has been using KRDS as a basis for costing and benefits analysis. One of the outputs has been an “Idealised Scientific Research Data Lifecycle Model”, which seeks to extend and adapt from a “researcher perspective”, the Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) Activity Model, providing a model which reflects “research data management” or the digital preservation lifecycle in its broadest interpretation. It adapts KRDS from an archive-centric to a researcher-centric view by:

• Defining and emphasising more of the activities in the research (KRDS “Pre-Archive” ) phase where research data is created;
• Adding a “Publication” set of activities;
• Concatenating the KRDS “Archive” phase activities in the centre of the model for simplification and presentational purposes;
• Adding some specific local research administration activities;
• In addition for the purposes of the project, it adds some selective detail of information flows and information objects between the activities.

This is the current version (Dec 2010) of the I2S2 Idealised Model.

Note this is an idealised model and several activities such as peer review or conduct experiment may have multiple instances or repetitions. “Documentation, Metadata, and Storage” may also  be undertaken as researcher activities independent of the archive in other instances and in the KRDS activity model. It also represents a project view as of December 2010 and may be subject to further changes.

A PPT version of the I2S2 model incorporating relevant notes is available on the I2S2 project website.

The I2S2 project aims to understand and identify the requirements for a data-driven research infrastructure in the Structural Sciences.  The work is focused on the exemplar domain of Chemistry, but with a view towards inter-disciplinary application. Current work inter alia includes developing a set of tools and approaches to identify and provide indicators and metrics for the benefits arising from I2S2. This will extend work and the tools available for implementing the KRDS Benefits Taxonomy.

The partners in I2S2 are UKOLN (University of Bath), the Digital Curation Centre, University of Southampton, University of Cambridge, Science & Technology Facilities Council, and Charles Beagrie Ltd.

I am pleased to announce the release of a new User Guide from the Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) project on the costs and benefits of digital preservation of research data. This is the second and final work of synthesis from the project. The User Guide is available for download as a PDF from here.

The KRDS User Guide has been developed to support easier assimilation of the combined work of the KRDS1 and KRDS2 projects by those wishing to implement the tools or key findings.

KRDS is a cost framework that can be used to develop and apply local cost models for research data management and long-term preservation. In addition, it includes a Benefits Taxonomy and discussion of benefits which provides a valuable starting point and framework for assessing the impact and benefits of research data management and preservation activities. Finally, KRDS has been a significant research project establishing many key “rules of thumb” for digital preservation costs and approaches to sustaining digital research data. Even those who do not wish to or cannot allocate the resources to develop local models based on KRDS are likely to benefit from its key findings and exemplars, covered in later sections of the Guide.

The Use Guide consists of 39 A4 pages with 15 illustrations (many created specifically for this Guide) and covers the following major areas:

The KRDS Costs Framework;

A Brief “How To” Guide For Life-Cycle Cost Analysis;

KRDS Benefits Analysis;

KRDS Case Studies, Costs Survey, and Factsheet;

Future Development of KRDS.

We hope the User Guide will be of value to the digital preservation and research data communities. In addition to the User Guide we have created the new KRDS webpage which provides a single point of access for the key outputs of both the KRDS1 and KRDS2 projects (including the two recent works of synthesis the KRDS User Guide and the KRDS Factsheet).

The Keeping Research Data Safe studies have been conducted by a partnership of the following institutions: Charles Beagrie Ltd, OCLC Research, the UK Data Archive, the Archaeology Data Service, the University of London Computer Centre, and the universities of Cambridge, King’s College London, Oxford and Southampton. The creation of the Guide has been funded by the JISC Managing Research Data Programme.

We welcome feedback from users of the Guide which will help enhance and update future editions.

The Report from the Research Excellence Framework (REF) institutional pilots of impact assessment were published recently by HEFCE.

There was also some discussion in Times Higher with articles  on the general implications and the other on specific implications for the humanities.

Having read the report, I think the REF Impact assessment is highly relevant and important for many UK research data projects and probably of interest to others internationally.  For me the main points of interest were:

• The introduction of the Impact component of REF can support the business case for research data infrastructure as that infrastructure could help institutions promote/record impact;
• The REF timeline 2011-2014;

• The pilot exercise affirmed the use of case studies as the best approach for REF;
• Use of “reach” and “significance” to assess impact in REF and the initial draft list of impact indicators in Appendix G (draft ‘common menu’ of impact indicators) from the REF draft guidelines;
• The KRDS Benefits Taxonomy has a good fit to a lot of its discussion with dimension 1 (direct/indirect), dimension 2 near-term/long term, and dimension 3 private/public – although for REF only non-academic stakeholders are in scope;
• The “Best Practice” (section 7) and “Bad Practice” (section 8 ) of the report provide good generic guidance on completing impact case studies.

The Pilot report notes that the impact element in the REF has the potential to create a number of positive incentives, including:

• Encouraging collaboration between HE and industry, the public sector and third sector.
• Encouraging institutions to support their researchers in more fully realising the wider benefits of the research they undertake. This should include support for realising the benefits from ‘pure’ or ‘basic’ research, as well as supporting research with more immediate potential application.

On 16 September 2010 a rather unique meeting sponsored by NCDD/DEN/and the KB took place in The Hague: the experts from five past and present projects on cost modelling for digital preservation came together to exchange information and discuss future possibilities for international cooperation.

The conference report by Inge Angevaare of this meeting with photographs and a summary of existing costing models is now available. Those who know Inge well will be aware that a camera is never very far away so the report is beautifully illustrated, concise and well worth reading.

The projects discussed included Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS, UK), CMDP (Denmark),LIFE3 (UK), DANS (Netherlands), National Archives Testbed (Netherlands). For those wanting to see more detail of individual presentations they are available here.

Libraries are facing increasing space pressures and funding constraints. There is a growing interest in wherever possible moving more rapidly to e-only provision of academic journals to help alleviate these pressures as well as to provide new electronic services to users.

One of the most cited barriers and concerns both from library and faculty staff to moving to e-only has been sustaining and assuring long-term access to electronic content.

Today JISC has released a consultation draft of a White Paper on e-Journal Archiving for UK Higher Education Libraries (prepared for JISC by Charles Beagrie Ltd). The consultation on the draft white paper is open until 12 November.

Although focussing on the UK sector, many of the economic and emerging best practice issues it addresses will also be of interest to university libraries and research institutions in other countries.

The white paper complements and references other advice and guidance available from JISC on e-journal archiving, in particular A Practical Guide to e-journal Archiving Solutions published in February 2010, which gives a detailed and impartial evaluation of the UK LOCKSS Alliance, CLOCKSS and Portico.

The white paper therefore is primarily focussing on areas not previously covered in JISC guidance, in particular outlining emerging good practice in terms of policy and procedures for institutions and drawing together the economic case for e-journal archiving.

The economic case explores the benefits arising from transitioning from print or print+electronic to electronic-only for current journal licensing; and benefits arising from the purchase or licensing of past electronic issues and/or retro-digitised versions of historic print journals.

The white paper also includes four emerging good practice case studies from the libraries of:

• University of Glasgow
• University of Huddersfield
• London School of Economics
• and the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL)

These were selected to provide a range of emerging UK good practice in large research universities, small-medium scale universities, specialist research universities, and innovative collegiate shared licensing and resource development.

Related Blog Posts

For those interested in the topic of e-journal archiving and licensing electronic content, there are a number of related posts on this blog covering some of our previous work in this field including:

A practical guide to e-journal archiving solutions

Ensuring Perpetual Access – German National Hosting Strategy for electronic resources

and Just published: A Comparative Study of e-Journal Archiving Solutions

I am pleased to announce the release of a new Factsheet from the Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) project on the costs and benefits of digital preservation. The Factsheet is being made available for download as a PDF file.

If you are attending the  iPRES 2010 conference in Vienna next week there will also be print copies available on the JISC stand.

The A4 four-page factsheet is intended to be suitable for senior managers and others interested in a concise summary of  our key findings. It will be relevant to all repositories and institutions holding digital material but of particular interest to anyone responsible for or involved in the long-term management of research data.

The factsheet covers the following major areas:

• Cost issues in digital preservation (what costs most, impact of fixed costs, declining costs over time)
• Benefits from digital preservation (benefits taxonomy, direct benefits, indirect benefits, near-term benefits, long-term benefits)
• Institutional issues (repository models and structures, key cost variables, data collection levels)

We hope the Factsheet will be of value to the digital preservation and research data communities and plan to release a further KRDS publication later this year (a KRDS User Guide).

The Keeping Research Data Safe studies have been funded by JISC and conducted by a partnership of the following institutions: Charles Beagrie Ltd, OCLC Research, the UK Data Archive, the Archaeology Data Service, the University of London Computer Centre, and the universities of Cambridge, King’s College London, Oxford and Southampton.

The University of Bath and the UK Council for Electronic Business (UKCeB) are hosting the second Knowledge Management Marketplace (KMM10), taking place at the University of Bath on 17th June 2010. It focuses on knowledge management lessons learned for SMEs. There will also be a number of larger companies there such as Airbus, BAE, BMT, Korteq, IBM, etc.

KMM10 will be of interest to:

• Those who face issues related to knowledge management in their working day;
• Vendors, consultants and developers who can assist in addressing such issues;
• Researchers with interests in this area.

The marketplace is preceded by scene-setting keynotes, and followed by a panel session where issued raised throughout the day may be debated in a group setting.

Zoe Locke, Lead Technologist at the UK Technology Strategy Board has made an interesting post Impact of Data to their blog requesting any information on the economic impact of research data sharing. Extract as follows:

“I am currently in Manchester attending a JISC workshop on Managing Research Data…

Yesterday, there was an interesting keynote speech from the Director of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC).  However, I noted that ‘Impact’ was the 3rd reason for why researchers should care about data curation.  I asked about the meaning of impact.  In the context of the talk, impact was about whether or not the research for which the data was used got published (and had an effect on the researcher’s career).  The DCC focuses on transferring knowledge on curation into and around the higher education sector so this seems like an appropriate definition of impact.  However, given the potential socio-economic impact of research and resultant data, not to mention the business opportunities it could create (though we don’t really know where or what these are, let alone how big they might be), I can’t help feeling that we need to widen the definition to stimulate greater sharing and exploitation of data.  If businesses could generate wealth or increase the quality of life with this data then surely it would be easier for anyone to justify footing the bill for curation…

Does anyone out there have any specific case studies of money being made or saved through the exploitation of research data (specifically that data generated in a different organisation to the one exploiting it)?”

You will need to register with the Connect Network to post a reply to Zoe direct but I am happy to forward any examples readers may add as comments to this posting on the Charles Beagrie blog.

I am pleased to announce that the final report for Keeping Research Data Safe 2 (KRDS2) is now available from the JISC website. This KRDS2 study report presents the results of a survey of available cost information, validation and further development of the KRDS activity cost model, and a new taxonomy to help assess benefits alongside costs.

KRDS2 has delivered the following:

• A survey of cost information for digital preservation, collating and making available 13 survey responses for different cost datasets;

• The KRDS activity model has been reviewed and its presentation and usability enhanced;

• Cost information for four organisations (the Archaeology Data Service; National Digital Archive of Datasets; UK Data Archive; and University of Oxford) has been analysed in depth and presented in case studies;

• A benefits framework has been produced and illustrated with two benefit case studies from the National Crystallography Service at Southampton University and the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex.

One of the key findings on the long-term costs of digital preservation for research data was that the cost of archiving activities (archival storage and preservation planning and actions) is consistently a very small proportion of the overall costs and significantly lower than the costs of acquisition/ingest or access activities for all the case studies in KRDS2. As an example the respective activity staff costs for the Archaeology Data Service are Access (c.31%), Outreach/Acquisition/Ingest (c.55%), Archiving (c.15%).This confirms and supports a preliminary finding in KRDS1.

A range of supplementary materials in support of this report have also been made available on the KRDS project website. This includes the ULCC Excel Cost Spreadsheet for the NDAD service together with a Guide to Interpreting and Using the NDAD Cost Spreadsheet. The NDAD Cost Spreadsheet has previously been used as an exercise in digital preservation training events and may be particularly useful in training covering digital preservation costs. The accompanying Guide provides guidance to those wishing to understand and experiment with the spreadsheet.

During the May  meeting of the National Science Board, National Science Foundation (NSF) officials announced a change in the implementation of the existing policy on sharing research data. In particular, on or around October, 2010, NSF is planning to require that all proposals include a data management plan in the form of a two-page supplementary document. The research community will be informed of the specifics of the anticipated changes and the agency’s expectations.

The changes are designed to address trends and needs in the modern era of data-driven science. Ed Seidel, acting assistant director for NSF’s Mathematical and Physical Sciences directorate acknowledged that each discipline has its own culture about data-sharing, and said that NSF wants to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to the issue. But for all disciplines, the data management plans will be subject to peer review, and the new approach will allow flexibility at the directorate and division levels to tailor implementation as appropriate.

Full details can be found in the NSF press release.

Data Management Plans are also required by a growing number of research funders in the UK. The Digital Curation Centre provides a useful overview of current UK funder requirements for data management and sharing plans and a Data Management Plan Content Checklist.