Beagrie.com

Projects from the JISC Managing Research Data Programme were involved in a Parallel Session at the annual JISC Conference on Tuesday this week.

Entitled ‘The benefits of more effective research data management in UK Universities’, the session explained how projects have been developing ‘Benefits Case Studies’  with support from Charles Beagrie Ltd to provide evidence of the positive effects of improvements which they have engineered.  The case studies provide significant indications of improved research efficiency through more effective research data management.  The case studies will be synthesised in a report by Neil Beagrie due for release in May.

Presentations from the parallel session are available online at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2011/03/jisc11/programme/1researchdata.aspx

They are best perused in the following order:

Simon Hodson, JISCMRD, Introduction
Neil Beagrie, Cost-Benefits and Business Cases Support Role
Manjula Patel and Neil Beagrie, I2S2 Project, UKOLN, University of Bath
June Finch, MaDAM Project, University of Manchester
Jonathan Tedds, HALOGEN Project, University of Leicester

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new project focussing on development of a digital preservation benefits analysis toolset.

The “Digital Preservation Benefit Analysis Tools” project is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and will run from 1^st February to 31 July 2011.

The project  aims to test, review and promote combined use of the Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) Benefits Taxonomy and the Value Chain and Impact Analysis tool first applied in the I2S2 project  for assessing the benefits and impact of digital preservation of research data. We will extend their utility to and adoption within the JISC community by providing user review and guidance for the tools and creating an integrated toolset. The project consortium consists of a mix of user institutions, projects, and disciplinary data services committed to the testing and exploitation of these tools and the lead partners in their original creation. We will demonstrate and critique the tools, and then create and disseminate the toolset and accompanying materials such as User Guides and Factsheets to the wider community.

A project website is at http://beagrie.com/krds-i2s2.php and the project plan and project outputs will be available from the website in due course. A dissemination event to mark the conclusion of the project will be held in central London on 12 July 2011 (further details and registration will be announced in May).

The project partners are UKOLN and the Digital Curation Centre at the University of Bath, the Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education (CHIME) at University College London , the UK Data Archive (University of Essex), the Archaeology Data Service(University of York),  OCLC Research, and  Charles Beagrie Limited.

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.

Dear all

A quick reminder to anyone wishing to respond to the JISC consultation on the draft e-Journal Archiving White paper that the deadline for comments is the end of next week (Friday 12 November).

Details of the consultation and the draft white paper are available here.

Charles Beagrie Limited are pleased to be partners in the DryadUK project which launched earlier this month. DryadUK is a JISC-funded project being run from the British Library and Oxford University, with assistance from NESCent, the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), ourselves, and the Research Information Network (RIN).

The project is assisting the further development of Dryad in the following ways:

Expanding Dryad

• By establishing a UK mirror site
• By expanding the service to include new publishers, journals and disciplines

Increasing Dryad sustainability

• By developing a sustainable business plan
• By establishing a framework for evaluating Dryad data usage

Adding value

• Exploring ways to improve metadata standards for deposition, citation and annotation
• Adding usage of DataCite dois.

For further information see the DryadUK webpages.

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’ve just looked at our webstats  and the Keeping Research Data Safe Factsheet has  had over 2,000 downloads in its first week of publication. A lot of work went into its development so it is great to see that level of interest.

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.

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.