The first Director of UKOLN, Philip Bryant, has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Senate of the University of Bath for his significant contribution to the development of bibliographic management at the University. Read more in a news feature available on the UKOLN Web site.
Former UKOLN Director Honoured by University
January 31st, 2013 by lisrwThe Benefits of the ORCID ID to Researchers
January 30th, 2013 by Brian KellyUKOLN staff have recently worked with Jisc in supporting the take-up of the Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) by the research community. A recent post which explains Why every researcher should sign up for their ORCID ID has been published on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog. The post describes how ORCID is a non-profit effort providing digital identifiers to the research community to ensure correct authorship data are available and more transparent. The post also summarises the benefits to researchers who acquire their ORCID ID.
UKOLN Contributions to IDCC13
January 14th, 2013 by lisrwWith IDCC13 pre-conference workshops already underway, final preparations have been completed for the 8th International Digital Curation Conference programme in Amsterdam which starts tomorrow. The introduction at this evening’s opening reception will be given by Liz Lyon, Associate Director of the Digital Curation Centre and Kristin Tolle, Director, Microsoft Research Connections Team. Liz will also chair a DCC Symposium on Tuesday 15 January entitled What Is a Data Scientist? On Wednesday 16 January Paul Walk will chair a parallel session on Cloud Services; Marieke Guy will present a paper entitled Pinning It Down: towards a practical definition of ‘Research Data’ for Creative Arts Institutions; and Catherine Pink will present a paper called Meeting the Data Management Compliance Challenge: Funder Expectations and Institutional Reality.
In addition Alex Ball, Liz Lyon, Manjula Patel and Catherine Pink will make contributions to the extensive programme of pre- and post-conference workshops.
IDCC13 Previews: Francine Bennett and Hans Pfeiffenberger
January 11th, 2013 by lisrwWith the 8th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC13) now but a few days away, the Digital Curation Centre has published two more postings in its series of Conference previews.
The first has been written by Francine Bennett, data scientist and CEO/co-founder of Mastodon C, an organisation of agile big data specialists who offer the open source technology platform as well as the technical and analytical skills which help companies realise the potential of their data. Before founding Mastodon C, Francine spent a number of years working on big data analysis for search engines, helping them to turn lots of data into even more money.
Francine’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.
The second preview is by Hans Pfeiffenberger, Head of IT infrastructure at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and speaker for the Helmholtz Association’s Open Access working groups, where he specialises in access to data. Hans represents Helmholtz’ interest in access to data in various bodies, such as the Priority Initiative “Digital Information” by the Alliance of German Science Organizations and the Alliance for Permanent Access (APA).
Hans’ preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.
Launch of the Research Data Alliance
January 10th, 2013 by lisrwUKOLN has welcomed the announcement of the launch and first plenary meeting of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an organisation that supports research data sharing and exchange. The purpose of the Research Data Alliance is to accelerate international data-driven innovation and discovery by facilitating research data sharing and exchange, use and reuse, standards harmonisation, and discoverability. This will be achieved through the development and adoption of infrastructure, policy, practice, standards, and other deliverables.
As “big data” achieve international importance, the RDA has issued an open invitation to all interested parties to its first plenary, entitled Open Access Research Data without Barriers, to be held over 18-20 March 2013 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The RDA will be launched by sponsors from the European Commission, the US Government and the Australian Government, and by leaders in the data community. The Plenary will be a working meeting to accelerate discussion, Working and Interest Group interaction, and data community development.
Confirming her own attendance at the RDA’s first plenary meeting, Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, remarked, “As the importance of careful management of Big Data becomes increasingly evident, the appearance of the Research Data Alliance on the scene after just a few months of start-up activity can only be regarded as lending further support to the essential task of institutions worldwide in their role as stewards of large-scale data.”
The work of the Research Data Alliance will primarily be undertaken through its working groups. Participation in working groups, starting new working groups, and attendance at the twice-yearly plenary meetings is open to all.
IDCC13 Previews: Scott Edmunds and Herbert Van de Sompel
January 3rd, 2013 by lisrwTwo further preview blog postings on the forthcoming 8th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC13) have been made available.
The first has been written by Herbert Van de Sompel, team leader of the Prototyping Team at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His team is engaged in research on various aspects of scholarly communication in the digital age. Herbert has played a major role in creating the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), the Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse & Exchange specifications (OAI-ORE), the OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, the SFX linking server, the bX scholarly recommender service, and info URI. Herbert is currently working with his team on the Open Annotation, Memento and ResourceSync projects.
Herbert’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.
The second preview is by Scott Edmunds of GigaScience/BGI HK. Working with the British Library and DataCite, GigaScience published its first data (the genome of the deadly German outbreak strain of E. coli) in June 2011, and is currently developing an integrated data analysis platform to support publication of executable papers. After postdoctoral positions on Cancer Molecular Pathology at the WHO International Agency for Research in Cancer in Lyons and Institute of Cell and Molecular Sciences in London (Queen Mary), Scott became senior scientific editor for the BMC Genomics and Bioinformatics journals at BioMed Central.
Scott’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.
Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education
December 20th, 2012 by Brian KellyThe final version of the TechWatch report entitled Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education is now available.
Updated in light of feedback received from a preview version released in September, this report is a primer to help academic librarians, managers, and members of faculty respond effectively as ebooks become mainstream and the percentage of academic publications delivered as ebooks rises steadily.
The report aims to support the adoption of ebooks by:
- introducing the historical and present context of ebooks
- reviewing the basics of ebook technologies
- considering scenarios for ebook adoption and usage
- addressing current challenges
- considering future developments.
Published by JISC Observatory and written by commissioned author James Clay (Gloucestershire College) with production editing and project management provided by UKOLN Innovation Support Centre, this is the fourth in a series of TechWatch reports published since 2011.
Ariadne Issue 70 Now Available
December 17th, 2012 by lisrwAriadne Issue 70 was published recently with a wide range of feature articles, event reports and book reviews. A summary of the principal material is now available in a news feature on the UKOLN Web site.
International Journal of Digital Curation, Volume 7, Issue 2
December 13th, 2012 by lisrwThe International Journal of Digital Curation, Volume 7, Issue 2 was recently published by UKOLN on behalf of the Digital Curation Centre. It contains the usual mix of peer-reviewed papers and general articles; eight derive from papers presented at the 2011 International Digital Curation Conference, while two were new contributions received by the Journal through general submission.
A summary of the content of IJDC, 7(2) is available from the UKOLN Web site.
Possible Interruption to UKOLN Blog Services
December 12th, 2012 by lisrwAll UKOLN blog services, including this newsfeed, may be subject to interruption due to routine maintenance operations during the morning of Thursday 13 December 2012.