Wednesday 26 August 2009

UKCoRR Committee meeting- minutes available

The UKCoRR committee met via telcon on 20th August.

The minutes from the meeting are now available from the UKCoRR website http://www.ukcorr.org/documents.php

Monday 24 August 2009

Research Funding and Assessment: The Future

Hi All,

I thought I'd drop a quick couple of lines about an event that I will be attending on behalf of UKCoRR.

On October 14th there will be a fairly high profile meeting held at the Royal Society in London, to look at issues surrounding the future of research funding and assessment in the United Kingdom. As many of our members will not be able to make it I thought I'd ask to see if anyone has any particular issues you would like me to try and raise at the meeting? I'm not sure what chance we will get to raise issues or ask questions, but I thought I should give it a go. More details are available on the event's website at http://www.hepi.ac.uk/wip.asp?ID=129.

I will of course be reporting back after the event, with a focus on any developments which may affect the work of repository managers in the UK. Do post any thoughts to the list, or if you'd prefer to email me in person, you can drop me a line to dominic.tate@nottingham.ac.uk.

I have spoken to David Lammy once before, when he was my MP when I lived in Tottenham - I'm not sure he will necessarily remember me though...

Dominic

Friday 21 August 2009

Cross Projects Forum

On 8th September I will represent UKCoRR at the Cross Projects Forum meeting in Birmingham.

The meeting is being held to bring together various groups and projects in the UK tasked with supporting repository development and repository managers. Representatives from RSP, ERIS, UKOLN, and the Developer Community will attend.

I will use the results of the UKCoRR survey and issues raised at the Members meeting on the 14th to identify key issues to raise at the meeting. If any UKCoRR members have any other issues they would like me to raise please let me know before the 8th.

Mary

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Response from the JISC

I fed back members' comments from our event to the JISC, about wanting more lead-in time for JISC funded projects, when we can recruit staff. JISC have responded:

"...we have received such feedback before, and we're aware that this is an issue for many projects. However, we are very constrained in what we can do about it to be honest, because of the way in which our funding works. We do our best, but I agree that it does remain a concern. We do try very hard to work with projects on this, and we do suggest that the first three months of a JISC project should be considered as setting up time.
"Proposals acknowledging this, where appropriate, are regarded as realistic, and as having mitigated potential risks that any project set-up can introduce. Projects should discuss this issue as early as possible with their JISC programme manager, who will be able to work with them to help the project develop a project plan that reflects the realities of the situation."

For anyone who has not yet investigated the sessions from our event, please do see Dominic's presentation about the JISC Recruitment toolkit, which kick-started this feedback to the JISC.

Also see the JISC Recruitment Toolkit itself.

Monday 17 August 2009

After our meeting

Our meeting last Friday went very smoothly, and the venue was a really refreshing change. Kingston is a lovely location and our hosts were especially accommodating, so thanks are due to Kingston University who not only provided the ample room but also all our refreshments.

Our speakers' presentations were thought provoking and entertaining, and members' contributions in the form of questions and discussion were also very valuable. The networking opportunity was excellent, and we are all hoping to take the UKCoRR forward with various initiatives, after the meeting. A proper write-up of the day will hopefully be appearing on the UKCoRR website soon, along with pictures and slides from our speakers (See our website).

I came away with two flip-chart sheets. One sheet lists issues relating to Open Access author-pays funds, after Theo Andrews of Edinburgh's presentation online at http://prezi.com/146247/. Theo's presentation summarises the issues relating to OA funds that many of us are struggling with. Institutions who are investigating/experimenting with such funds, who had members at our meeting are:
Edinburgh, Nottingham, Warwick, Kingston, Glasgow, UCL and Brunel.

There were different primary drivers for these institutions, including the finance office at Edinburch, Library and research support staff at Glasgow, researchers themselves at UCL and the Pro-VC for research at Brunel.

Issues which were discussed included...
1) Concern about the costs: these might escalate, and sometimes amount to "double dipping" (some publishers are paid by authors and subscribers because they charge authors for OA article publication but don't reduce their subscription fees).
2) Publishers who are aware of funder mandates for OA within 6 months, might introduce 12 month embargoes on post-print availability in OA repositories, in order to force authors to pay for OA publishing of the final version or miss their funder's mandate. (NB the point here is that funders are paying, as authors can claim such costs from funders. But we're all struggling to set up mechanisms by which this can be done - see Theo's presentation for a summary of the issues.)
3) An institutional response might be to set up an OA fund, or it might be to encourage authors to deposit post-prints into the OA repository, rather than paying such publishers' fees. Some researchers object to the fees being charged.
4) The Wellcome Trust does seem to prefer that the authors pay for OA publication, and indeed it suits authors better than depositing themselves because a part of the Wellcome mandate is for PubMed deposit. By paying, authors can leave the PubMed deposit up to the publishers to do. Is the Wellcome Trust's mandate skewing the OA landscape in the way publishers have responded to them, whilst other academic disciplines are no way near as well funded?

There is definitely a lot more to be investigated, on the topic of institutional OA publishing funds.

My other sheet records that the UKCoRR ought to feedback to the JISC that our members would very much appreciate a three month notice period from the JISC, before the projects begin, so that they can attempt to recruit staff before the beginning of a project.

On another note, I'm particularly pleased that my own draft Memorandum of Understanding was presented without any controversy, and so that will be the focus of my own efforts in the near future... watch out for further blog posts and e-mail list postings on that topic!