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JSTOR and Ithaka have recently announced the merger of their organisations. The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing systemwide costs through collective action.

JSTOR was founded in 1995 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as a shared digital library to help academic institutions save costs associated with the storage of library materials and to vastly improve access to scholarship. Today, more than 5,200 academic institutions and 600 scholarly publishers and content owners participate in JSTOR.

Ithaka was started in 2003 with funding from the Mellon Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. It is probably best known for incubating and hosting Portico its digital preservation service for e-journals and e-books. Ithaka is also the organisational home to NITLE, a suite of services supporting the use of technology in liberal arts education and has produced a number of influential reports including the 2007 “University Publishing in A Digital Age” and the 2008 “Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources.”

The merger makes sense in containing expenses at a time when endowments are under severe pressure. JSTOR and Ithaka already work closely together (for example over the Portico service) and share a common history, values, and a fundamental purpose. During 2008, the Ithaka-incubated resource Aluka was integrated into JSTOR as an initial step, further strengthening ties between the organisations. JSTOR will now join Portico and NITLE as a coordinated set of offerings made available under the Ithaka organisational name. In addition to JSTOR, Portico, and NITLE, Ithakas existing research and strategic services groups will be important parts of the enterprise.

Kevin Guthrie will remain President of Ithaka and Michael Spinella from JSTOR will become Executive Vice-President. The board will be composed of Ithaka and JSTOR Trustees, with Henry Bienen, President of Northwestern University, serving as Chairman and Paul Brest, President of the Hewlett Foundation as Vice Chairman.

I have previously blogged (see Research Data Canada) on work by The Canadian Research Data Strategy Working Group.

Its report “Stewardship of Research Data in Canada: A Gap Analysis” is now available. Using the data lifecycle as a framework, the report examines Canada’s current state versus an ‘ideal state’ based on existing international best practices across 10 indicators. The indicators include: policies, funding, roles and responsibilities, standards, data repositories, skills and training, accessibility, and preservation.

The analysis reveals significant barriers to the access and preservation of research data ’” barriers that could have a serious impact on the future of Canadian research and innovation if not addressed. For example, large amounts of data are being lost because of the woefully inadequate number of trusted data repositories in Canada.

The report summarises gaps for Canadian research data across the data lifecycle as follows:

Data Production

• Priority is on immediate use, rather than potential for long-term exploitation.
• Limited funding mechanisms to prepare data appropriately for later use.
• Few research institutions require data management plans.
• No national organization that can advise and assist with application of data standards.

Data Dissemination

• Lack of policies governing the standards applied to ensure data dissemination.
• Researchers unwilling to share data, because of lack of time and expertise required.
• Some policies require certain types of data be destroyed after a research project is over.

Long-term Management of Data

• Lack of coverage and capacity of data repositories.
• Preservation activities in repositories are not comprehensive.
• Limited funding for data repositories in Canada.
• Few incentives for researchers to deposit data into archives.

Discovery and Repurposing

• Most data rests on the hard drives of researchers and is inaccessible by others.
• Per per view and licensed access mechanisms are common where data are available.
• Many researchers are reluctant to enable access to their data because they feel it is their intellectual property.

The gap analysis will be extremely familar to many – reflecting difficulties recognised and responded to in many different countries such as the USA (Datanets), Australia (ANDS), and the UK (UKRDS feasibility study). It is pleasing to see the report cite the UK and USA as two countries that are seen internationally to be leading responses to these challenges.

It is reported that in the last several months, the Canadian Research Data Strategy Working Group has also made progress on a number of other fronts. Three Task Groups have been established to support efforts in addressing the gaps identified in the analysis. The Task Groups are:

1. Policies, funding and research;

2. Infrastructure and services; and

3. Capacity (skills, training, and reward systems). The Capacity Task Group is currently developing a workshop on data management for researchers, which it hopes to begin offering in 2009.

The next steps for the Working Group are to develop an action plan and an engagement strategy to involve senior leaders from the various institutions represented on the Working Group.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has just received the annual grant letter on higher education funding for 2009-10 from the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

HEFCE Chair, Tim Melville-Ross, said on the HEFCE website:

“‘This represents a continuing substantial investment in higher education during a period of severe economic challenges. We shall be considering the implications of the letter at the Board meetings on 22 January and 26 February in preparation for the announcement of the recurrent grant to universities and colleges on 5 March.”

The grant letter sets out funding allocations and priorities the Government has for English universities (all bar one of whom are public rather than privatly funded institutions). The broad priority areas are:

• Supporting the economy through recession and wider engagement with business [no surprises there];
• Widening participation and fair access;
• Quality and oversight;
• Promoting excellence in research, science and innovation;
• Tackling climate change;
• Student numbers and finance.

A couple of things caught my eye in the grant letter given our company’s interests and work in the sector and my own involvement with University Schools of Information Studies:

• a strong emphasis on promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics);
• implications for RAE 2008 and HEFCE ‘s distribution of £1.5 billion research funding to universities;
• the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and work between academia and the private sector;
• and “value for money”.

To quote from the grant letter to illustrate these points:

Promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)

“I would like you to work with the sector as it finds innovative ways to support business. Promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines should be a factor in all of your activities, since these are subjects that employers consistently tell us they will need in the long term…”

RAE 2008 and Research Funding distribution

“The coming academic year is the first in which research funding will be allocated by reference to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. In allocating your research funding, I expect you to continue to recognise and respond to the high cost and national importance of STEM subjects. I also expect the Council to continue to recognise and reward the highest levels of research excellence wherever it is found. I know that you will need to maintain high levels of funding for those institutions with the largest volumes of world-class research whilst rewarding and nurturing pockets of excellence elsewhere. It is also important that you seek to remove barriers to research partnerships between universities and both charities and businesses.”

and “Looking further into the future, I would ask you to work with the sector to explore ways to encourage collaboration between institutions with the largest volumes of world-class research and those with smaller pockets of excellence…”

Research Excellence Framework (REF) and work between academia and the private/public service sectors

“The Council is already working on the Research Excellence Framework, and has initiated the pilots exercise for bibliometric indicators of excellence. This should reduce the burden on institutions and take better account of the impact research makes on the economy and society. The REF should continue to incentivise research excellence, but also reflect the quality of researchers contribution to public policy making and to public engagement, and not create disincentives to researchers moving between academia and the private sector. You are also considering wider aspects of assessment, including user-focused research and subjects where bibliometrics have not yet been fully developed. I look forward to seeing your proposals on the REF by summer 2009.”

Value for money

“I am grateful for the savings the Council is helping HEIs to achieve across this CSR period, in areas including shared services, procurement, and from rationalising some special funding streams. The Council and the sector have improved value for money (VFM) in recent years and over the CSR07 period, including in areas covered by the Governments Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP). In the coming years all agencies in the public sector will need to achieve the greatest possible VFM. So I would like you, working with the sector, to examine further options and develop plans to deliver additional improvements in VFM in 2010-11 and beyond with a particular focus on those areas identified by the OEP.”

Most of these quotes are self-explanatory in terms of partnerships and shared services etc. However it may be useful for some to see the discussion on research funding (made before the funding letter was available) in The Times Higher Education Supplement this week and the related stories it cites from previous editions for the broader context and implications of HEFCE research funding, RAE 2008 and REF.

Early in 2008 there was a lot of excitement around the announcement that Google was about to launch a free service for hosting research datasets as noted in our blog posting Google to host research datasets twelve months ago.

Less widely reported so far – and I had missed it until I saw it in the Open Access News – was the report by Wired that Google has withdrawn the proposed service first known as Palimpsest (and later re-named Google Research Datasets).

Unfortunately the proposed service seems to have fallen prey to the credit crunch. The issue of sustainable funding for long-term services for datasets and the challenges of doing this in the current commercial environment are thrown into stark relief. For further information and comment see the Wired blog Google shutters its Science Data Service.

I came back from another DCC international conference in Edinburgh (1-3 December) and almost immediately succumbed with flu – so this is a late post. Fortunately others including Kevin Ashley in the ulcc da blog and Chris Rusbridge in the digital curation blog have given quite detailed reports of many of the excellent sessions and presentations.

I just wanted to pick up on one aspect which struck me from the keynote Genomic Medicine in the Digital Age by Prof David Porteous and which has also been picked up and commented on by Mags McGeever’s post Healthy Consent on the DCC Blawg, namely ethical consent and research data.

Prof Porteous’ talk focussed on his work in Generation Scotland , and ethical issues around the process of “open consent” (an interesting long-term variant of informed consent) formed part of this. A particular bone of contention was the stance taken by the chairman of the National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care on research data -see the Guardian report of his views.

Prof. Porteous is the most recent speaker voicing a concern which I’ve heard expressed now by many different researchers – someone really should arrange that offer to the chairman of a “cup of tea and a wee chat” to put across the long-term damage to health research which is the reverse side of this argument.

The results and analysis of the outcomes of the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise are published in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) today and make fascinating reading. The online version of the THES has a general overview of the outcomes for universities, an institutional ranking table and commentary, a subject rankings table, a lead editorial, and a commentary by David Eastwood (Chief Executive of HEFCE – the Higher Education Funding Council for England).

In Library and Information Management, the subject I have closest links to, I was pleased to see the THES rankings as (1) Sheffield University (2) King’s College London (digital humanities), and (3) University College London (SLAIS) – all excellent results – congratulations to all.

I am pleased to forward the announcement that the final report for the UK Research Data Service (UKRDS) Feasibility Study Project has been submitted and an International Conference on the UKRDS Feasibility Study will be held at The Royal Society, London on Thursday, 26 February 2009.

Booking for this international conference of senior policymakers, funders, scientists, IT managers, librarians and data service providers has now opened: Attendance at the conference is free. Places are limited, so early booking is advised.

The UKRDS feasibility study was commissioned to explore a range of models for the provision of a national infrastructure for digital research data management. It has brought together key UK stakeholders, including the Research Councils, JISC, HEFCE, British Library, Research Information Network, Wellcome Trust, researchers, and university IT and library managers, and it builds on the work of the UK’s Office of Science and Innovation e-infrastructure group. It also takes into account international developments in this area.

The UKRDS final report is due to be released soon and makes important recommendations for investment in this key part of the UK national e-infrastructure.

The study has been funded by HEFCE as part of its Shared Services programme, with additional support from JISC, Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and the Russell Group IT Directors (RUGIT). It has been led by the London School of Economics, with Serco Consulting as lead consultants supported by Charles Beagrie Limited and Grant Thornton as sub-contractors.

I find it difficult to gauge the impact of different JISC studies other than ancedotally and as an author of JISC-funded reports I often wonder what the take-up has been, so I was intrigued to see a brief new section in the latest Autumn 2008 issue 23 of JISC Inform devoted to the Top five publications…

I understand from colleagues this represents a snapshot of the top five monthly downloads when Inform went to print (i.e. October 2008). Downloads probably peak during the first few months of publication so I have added month of publication as an additional factor/caveat in to the rankings which were as follows:

Top five publications..

1. What is Web 2.0? TechWatch report (March 2008)
2. Great expectations of ICT: JISC briefing paper (June 2008)
3. Keeping research data safe: Charles Beagrie report (May 2008)
4. Shibboleth – connecting people and resources: JISC briefing paper (March 2006)
5. Information behaviour of the researcher of the future (‘Google Generation report’): CIBER report (January 2008).

JISC is quite a large specialist publisher: there have been 28 JISC Reports and 24 JISC Briefing Papers published in 2008 alone so far, so there is stiff competition to get into the listings and I was chuffed to see Keeping Research Data Safe at No. 3.

It was even nicer to hear that the listings had a new Number 1 in November: the Digital Preservation Policies Study (October 2008) was the runaway no. 1 with over 2,500 downloads.

Christmas must have come early this year 🙂

As a director of a small business I wasn’t overly impressed by measures to support businesses outlined today in the UK Pre-Budget Report.

However I was intrigued by an entry in the small print on the fiscal stimulus (government spending) at page 113 as follows:

“£442 million to accelerate support for around 25 capital projects to improve Further Education infrastructure and around 50 projects to improve facilities at Higher Education Institutions, and to bring forward development of scientific research facilities and improvements to university research infrastructure;”

It will be interesting to see the detail of this in due course from the UK Dept of Innovation, Universities, and Skills – a small boost (or at least bringing forward expenditure) for science and research infrastructure ?

The Alliance for Permanent Access has just completed its annual conference (Budapest, 4 November) : this year the theme was the economics of archiving scientific data.

The Alliance’s international membership includes strategic partners from the research community, libraries, publishers, and digital preservation organisations. Participants called upon the Alliance to act as an umbrella organisation to secure sustainable funding for permanent access in Europe.

A comprehensive conference report (complete with photographs conveying the atmosphere!), together with the powerpoint presentations, abstracts and authors biographies is now available online.