DataCite and the Research Data Challenge

Last Friday (25th May) I took my second trip of the week to London (having been at the Symplectic User Conference on Monday).  This time it was the gentle stroll from St Pancras to the British Library Conference Centre to participate in the first JISC/BL DataCite workshop.  Billed as an introduction to data citation and DataCite, this seemed an ideal follow up to the Research Data Management Forum event in Southampton back in March.  As the role of the LRA Manager migrates to look increasingly at how we will manage, share and curate research data outputs as well as publications it was the sort of thing that I felt I really needed.

Data Citation

Following the house keeping and welcome from the BL’s Lee-Ann Coleman and JISC’s Simon Hodson (owner of the finest waxed moustache I’ve seen in many a moon), Lee-Ann kicked off with an overview of Data Citation; what it is and why is it important.  The fact that there is an expectation from the RCUK that research data will be shared, to assist in validation of research conducted by their funded investigators, is perhaps the most major driver.  At the same HEIs want oversight on their research outputs, and as such the curation of their organisations data resource is important to them for building on earlier work and enabling collaborative research to organically evolve.  Given that many academics in adjoining offices are often unaware of what colleagues are producing, increasing this transparency and accessibility to a rich, queriable and reusable research resource is believed to be of value in not only progressing collaboration but enabling genuine novel research from preexisting work.

Lee-Ann cited some examples included the importance of data sharing in speeding up the sequencing and generation of a vaccine for the African strain of Avian flu.  Her other examples were also in the STEM field which slightly concerned me, given that two-thirds of research here at Leicester is in disciplines outside this domain; whom in my experience often need a greater assistance in capturing and sharing technological resource.  Lee-Ann stressed that one question that needed to be addressed by HEIs was what is critical/worthy data to curate?  A microbiologist might see all the raw data output from an instrument as worthy of this, and yet for many other people it would be the processed data given context and analysis that would be of value.

What is DataCite?

Next  up was Elizabeth Newbold (British Library) who gave an overview of what is DataCite.  Founded in 2009 it is a registration agency, effectively an allocating agent for DOIs (which I had never realised are based on the Handle system that I use daily in the LRA).  However, it was made very plain that DataCite does not work directly with researchers, they are expected to deposit their data (in whatever way possible) to an appririate data centre, and then come to DataCite to “mint” a DOI.  Minting of DOIs was new phrase for me, but clearly one that I can see slipping into my regular conversations about this subject here at Leicester.

It was noted that the UK Data Archive had a strong definition of what was data (termed data collections) as groups of all outputs from a single project source.  Commented that other data centres across the country were working along similar lines and methodologies.

DataCite Infrastructure & Working with DataCite

After an excellent lunch (BL London catering never fails to delight) Ed Zukowski (British Library) gave a very useful, if in part quite detailed and technical, overview of both DataCite and DOIs.  Handles being the technology that underpins them, where DOI is actually a trademarked derivative.  DOIs importantly point to landing pages not to the objects themselves (akin to our implementation of Handles on the LRA), and in practice using the DataCite front-end take around a minute to mint.  He went on to detail how DataCite resolves contents from DOIs minted via them, but I think I’ll wait and link to the slides once available rather than try and make sense of my slightly confused notes.  I was content to see that the service worked, rather than worry about the technicality.

Following this Elizabeth Newbold returned to talk briefly about working with DataCite and the data client responsibilities.  In terms of their metadata schemea there were only 4 required elements needed to make it work.  However, locally people may well augment this with many more fields as they felt appropriate for discovery and description.  I confess one nagging worry I have is whom will create this metadata?  Is it a task we will anticipate a PI will perform at the conclusion of a project?  Personally I have concerns over the quality, accuracy, uniformity and standardisation of such input; going on my experience of manually created records submitted to the LRA via IRIS.  From the academics’ perspective I can see the challenge being that this will be seen as yet another piece of administration trivia that they are expected to deal with, and achieving the cultural change to embeded this into their standard workflows will be challenging with some serious and time-consuming carrot-whipping.  Given the struggle to work deposit of publications into our open access repository into their routine over the past four years, it is a serious challenge and the scale of this should not be underestimated!

Elizabeth noted that metadata created must be shared under a Creative Commons Zero licence, noting that for example the British Library OPAC makes data available for sharing and reuse in this way.  There were some concerns from those present in the room that this might cause problems in cases where institutions, funders or even publishers made claim over such data.  Another speaker also highlighted the problem of having data (with a minted DOI) then having a third party mint a different DOI to it which could interfere with metrics of access as well as uniformity of reference.  There didn’t appear to be a clear consensus or answer to these concerns, and the discussions broke up over tea.

Challenges Around Managing Research Data

The final session of the day was a workshop format where we were broken into small groups, and then smaller groups, an then finally into pairs (!) to discuss and document what we perceived as the challenges around managing research data.  I think it was a shame we were so subdivided, since while I had a valuable chat with my counterpart I would have relished a broader chat with a slightly larger group.  Given that there was a wide disparity between the role of delegates (from publishers to project manages to editors to directors of service through to repository managers) I feel we lost some of the benefit that we could have achieved through putting more of these diverse heads together.  I also sensed a slight bias in the broader discussion when each pair’s issues were categorised and resolutions discussed – it did feel like the expectation was that the answer to “How do we solve this problem?” was intimated to be “DataCite”.  It wasn’t in our room, although in at least one of the other two larger groups DataCite seemed ready to answer more of their challenges.

Conclusion

My slight concerns over the value of the final session aside, this was an eye-opening and valuable day.  It has for me perhaps opened up more questions than answers, although some of those were provided as well.  Importantly what I think it offered was a chance to gauge where other people are on the research data management question and more importantly it gave shape to the bigger operational and strategic questions that we need to be asking ourselves within our organisations.  As such the day was most certainly worthwhile, and my thanks to all the speakers, organisers and delegates for a thought-provoking day.

Further reading

• Liz Lyon (2007) Dealing with Data: Roles, Rights, Responsibilities and Relationships: Consultancy Report
• Ball, A. & Duke, M. (2011). How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications. DCC How-to Guides
• Garfield, E. “When to Cite ,” Library Quarterly, 66 (4) p.449-458, 1996.

A twitter archive of discussions around the day is also available.

LRA Top 10 Items (April 2012)

Here are the most heavily accessed records on the LRA for the month of April 2012. A mix of old and new items as always.

1. Mobile technologies and learning (Naismith, Laura et al)

• Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida)

• Pragmatic randomized trial of antenatal intervention to prevent post-natal depression by reducing psychosocial risk factors (Brugha, Traolach S. et al)

• The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)

 

• An efficient and effective system for interactive student feedback using Google+ to enhance an institutional virtual learning environment (Cann, Alan James)

 

• Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)

• Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al)

 

• An evaluation of forensic DNA profiling techniques currently used in the United Kingdom. (Graham, Eleanor Alison May)

• Twitter and Public Reasoning Around Social Contention: The Case of #15ott in Italy (Vicari, Stefania)

• The challenges of insider research in educational institutions: wielding a double-edged sword and resolving delicate dilemmas (Mercer, Justine)

LRA – Most accessed items March 2012

As usual here are the most popular items on LRA last month.

1. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida)
2. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
3. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard)
4. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al)
5. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al) 
6. Pragmatic randomized trial of antenatal intervention to prevent post-natal depression by reducing psychosocial risk factors (Brugha, Traolach S. et al) 
7. The challenges of insider research in educational institutions: wielding a double-edged sword and resolving delicate dilemmas (Mercer, Justine) 
8. An efficient and effective system for interactive student feedback using Google+ to enhance an institutional virtual learning environment (Cann, Alan James) 
9. The Development of Nurture Groups in Secondary Schools (Colley, David Rodway) 
10. Mobile technologies and learning (Naismith, Laura et al)

Don’t forget if your research publications are on LRA, that they can be accessed by anyone in the world, unlike those behind publisher paywalls.  Simply by sharing the unique identifier (handle) in an email list, on webpage or via social networks you will find that your access rates and citations should climb yet further.

Deposit to LRA now via IRIS

As many readers will be aware over the past year the LRA team has been working with the Research Office and ITS to integrate Leicester Research Archive more closely with central systems; in particular the IRIS research information management platform.  As of late December this has now gone live - which means all non-thesis deposits of publications now need to go via IRIS; rather than being emailed to the LRA team as in the past.

Hopefully this will make it much easier for authors to check what they have/haven’t deposited as of yet; as well as for the LRA team too.  There is a guide to the process available from the Library webpages, which we’ll be updating over the coming weeks with answers to any FAQs that we receive.

If you do have any particular questions – either comment here or drop a line to me or my team and we’ll do our best to answer!

Top LRA Items for November 2011

Here are the most accessed items on the LRA in November 2011

1. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa Ndako, Umar Bida
2. High Performance Work Practices: Work Intensification or ‘Win-win’? Sparham, Eimer et al
3. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths Sim, Chow Yen Desmond
4. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change Sandell, Richard
5. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ Madge, Clare et al
6. Ethics and Plagiarism – helping undergraduates write right Willmott, Christopher J.R. et al
7. Introducing undergraduate students to scientific reports Willmott, Christopher J.R. et al
8. The List of Threatening Experiences: a subset of 12 life event categories with considerable long-term contextual threat Brugha, Traolach S. et al
9. Measuring the efficiency of European airlines: an application of DEA and Tobit Analysis Fethi, Meryem Duygun et al
10. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences Preston, Carolyn C. et al

An interesting split with the top half of the table being mainstays from recent months, but with the lower half all being new materials. Notably the articles by Chris Willmott (et al) had been actively marketed by the academic this month, with links back to the LRA as the primary access route. Notably, fewer theses than in recent months are also seen in the table.

Don’t forget you can follow all the new additions to the LRA on twitter – UoLLRA.

DREaMing of a Library and Information Science research network

Last week I attended the first workshop of the AHRC-funded DREaM project. DREaM stands for ‘Developing Research Excellence and Methods’ and the project aims to create a network of Library and Information Science researchers across the UK. As an academic librarian with a research background I’m very enthusiastic about the potential for research to improve our practice, and I was delighted to be given a new professional’s travel bursary by the DREaM project, and to have my attendance supported by the Library. In return for my support from Leicester, I’ve been asked to think about how the methods discussed in each workshop might contribute to better understanding the community our academic library serves, and improving our services.

The DREaM workshops are being very thoroughly documented by the team running them: both slides and videos of the presentations are available at the Workshop 1 webpage. I’ll link to, rather than replicate, that content, and focus on my personal thoughts about each method from my own practitioner-researcher perspective.

Introduction to ethnography – Dr Paul Lynch
Ethnography is an approach used to understand culture, usually through immersion within that culture. Better understanding the culture of academic library users, students and staff, is clearly key to improving our service. My MA Librarianship dissertation used ethnographic interviews to look at how students viewed and understood library space, and I think there’s a lot more to be done on understanding how students use and want to use libraries.

In the workshop, Paul Lynch discussed the dual role of the ethnographer – as insider (participant in a culture) and outsider (observer of a culture). I suspect my ability to produce an ethnography of library users is limited by my increased distance from both student and academic roles, so this method may be out for me.

Introduction to social network analysis – Dr Louise Cooke
Social network analysis looks at the networks which exist within groups, and patterns in links between individuals, by asking members of a group to report on their own relationships. During the workshop I could immediately see the relevance of this method to my own work: a major part of my role is acting as liaison between the Library and academic departments, and recording the existence and nature of links between librarians and academic staff would be absolutely fascinating.

I could never use this method with my own departmental contacts: asking individuals to report on their relationships with yourself would be ethically unsound (and probably produce inaccurate results!) However, there is clearly potential to apply this technique elsewhere within the university: perhaps looking at networks between librarians, other academic support staff, and lecturer / researchers within one of the Colleges I don’t directly support.

Introduction to discourse analysis - Professor Andy McKinlay
Discourse analysis is a technique for analysing gathered data, rather than a method for gathering data itself. It involves analysis of what people say (or write) through understanding of the context in which it is said: the social norms embedded in that context, and how language is used to construct a way of seeing the world.

There’s clearly expectations, norms and values implicit in how users talk about the Library. One of the most common comments at from students walking into the David Wilson for the first time is ‘Where are all the books?’ I think that one sentence (and all its implicit assumptions about libraries) could keep a discourse analyst going for days! I could see focus groups, or even analysis of how students describe the Library to each other, on- and off-line, as a really useful way to surface these concepts, and work with, or think about changing them.

Unconference and ethics discussion
The workshop also included bonus research-related sections. In the middle of the day, an unconference session encouraged us to discuss what we wished: I outed myself as a methodological pluralist (i.e. one who believes there is no one best method for studying the world, and has dabbled in several!) and learned about the research interests and priorities of others in our emerging network. At the end of the day, Professor Charles Oppenheim led a section in which we debated ethics in a number of research-related scenarios.

Both these additional sessions really got me thinking about my role as a practitioner-researcher. There are a limited number of participants with dual roles in the DREaM network, but plenty of participants who have been on both sides of the divide at different times in their careers. I think there are lots of interesting discussions to be had about how practitioners use and carry out research, and I look forward to these workshops starting a few. Perhaps we can even kick off here: I’d be pleased to get feedback on some of my suggestions so far…

EMALINK Supporting Researchers Event

Several of us attended this event on the 13^th April 2011. Sorry for the rather delayed write-up!

Emalink photos

View more presentations from Jenny Delasalle

The bulk of the session revolved around the idea of the “information arc” that a researcher would work through, going from a consumer to a producer (see embedded slideshow). We all thought about what researchers might want at different points in their research and how we can fulfil those needs.

Literature Search

• Defining research topic, Concept mapping, Search Strategies
• Types of information required & how to access them
• Time management
• Reading strategies, decoding academic language
• Alert services – as literature search evolves, is refined and is reviewed  later in research

Information Management

• Reference management strategies & software, bookmarking tools
• RSS tools
• Note taking
• How to structure writing  a literature search, thesis, journal article
• Critical Analysis

Writing

• Academic writing style
• Proof reading & grammar skills
• Summarising, paraphrasing, citing

Publication Strategies

• Types of publication
• Copyright issues
• Writing for a specific audience
• Quality measure – impact factors/bibliometrics – what might be required for REF
• Benefits of collaboration
• Publication fees – OA ‘vs’ traditional publishing
• Publication trends
• Responding to feedback and/or Handling rejection
• Tips for becoming highly cited & reviewed
• Corrections and retractions

Publicising Work/Publications

• Open Access (Institutional Repository)
• Online research profiles (and being professional online)
• Social Networks and blogs
• Google Juice

Most of the institutions represented at the event felt that they offered training or services that could help with all these areas but:

• Not clear who offers what – Library, Student Development/Support/Study Skills, Staff Development, Research Support Team.
• No clear advertising/promotion or route through the training available from different places.

Other points that arose from discussion were:

• Researchers often need/want one to one support as have specific needs.
• Useful to talk to staff before they go on sabbaticals to see if they need any research support.
• Good to get research supervisors on-side and clued-up on training on offer.
• How can we get involved in the research process and be there at the right time to offer support?
• Important to share expertise between staff.
• Look at collaborative project e.g. EMRSG who are creating online tutorials for supporting researchers.
• Online tutorials – there for staff that cannot access face to face services, access at the time right for them.
• Need to market libraries better and ensure buying the right resources for researchers.

We are lucky at Leicester to have a couple of specialist posts to support researchers and work alongside Information Librarians:

• Bibliometrician
• Research Forum Facilitator & Graduate Media Zoo

Leicester Research Archive: Top items June 2011

Here I am again with the list of the most frequently accessed items on Leicester’s research publications repository during the month of June 2011.

1. How can autistic intelligence be recognised and accommodated within an inclusive education framework? (Jacobs, Barbara Helen)
2. Evaluating Repository Annual Metrics for SCONUL (Johnson, Gareth James)
3. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
4. ‘You’ve gotta love the plastic!’ An ethnographic study of Ultimate Frisbee in the UK (Griggs, Gerald Michael)
5. Measuring the outcomes and impact of learning in museums, archives and libraries: the Learning Impact Research Project end of project paper (Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean et al)
6. Consuming Underwear: Fashioning Female Identity (Tsaousi, Christiana)
7. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)
8. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida)
9. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences (Preston, Carolyn C. et al)
10. Teaching presentation skills to undergraduates: Students’ evaluations of a workshop course. (Colman, Andrew M.)

Nice to see a few new titles appearing again this month, along with some continuing popular items.  In terms of countries that have been accessing Leicester’s research only a little change.

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. Germany
5. Australia
6. China
7. Canada
8. Italy
9. France
10. Malaysia

Symplectic User Group Conference 2011

This Tuesday saw me down in London once again (a whole 4 days since my last trip down for CILIP Council) for the Symplectic User Conference 2011 at Hamilton House – so here are my notes – apologies for any typos as I was typing these on my knee! 

The day was split in two with talks in the morning and workshops in the afternoon.  Daniel Hook kicked off the day by announcing that Symplectic had partnered with Digital Science to work in the open science community.

The first speaker was Lorna Mitchell of the Brunel University talking about the BRUCE project.  She mentioned BRAD (their Symplectic Elements) and repository BURA (which coincidentally I helped formally launch back in 2006).  They have linked BRAD and BURA together, although they noted that this was a longer process than they expected.  They both a mandate, of which many academics remain unaware, but also a OA publishing fund for researchers to bid to for OA publishing.

BRUCE was a JISC funded project.  Their aim was to facilitate the analysis and reporting of research information from existing data sources, using a CERIF framework. It brings together a lot of different sources of information from across the university system and generates bespoke reports based on them.  While the focus is often the REF, there are other university management areas of interest for the outputs.

The next speakers (Sarah Mallory, Rachel Proudfoot and Nicola Cockarill) spoke about the RePosit project (I’m on the expert group for this one).  The aim of the project was to increase the engagement with repositories to generate more content for them.  A lot of the focus was on advocacy but also to engage with the repository community as well.  The project has 5 HEI and one commercial partners, using one CRIS and 5 different implementations.  The question they asked was does simplifying the process of deposit increase the level of ingest for the IR.  At Queen Mary part of their problem was low visibility, and so their engagement with stakeholders aimed to get them up the agenda.  Embedding it within college strategies was key in this respect.

Plymouth  rolled out their SE alongside their repository (PEARL) – but noted it was tricky in terms of time.  Not for the first time we head about how much of a time sink setting up crosswalks between SE and the repository has been too; something I know will occupy a lot of my time in the coming months.  Plymouth are considering moving to a self-deposit model, as they feel this mirror the model of staffing and library service.  However, noted that speaking with other repository managers Emma noted that there were various concerns to address.  Their advocacy was met with mixed reception, some were very enthusiastic.  For others though they struggled to see where it fitted in with their research outputs.  However, illuminating academics with the knowledge of how restrictive (or not) publishers in their sector are with open access is a role all subject librarian staff should be very experienced and engaged with.  Highlighting metrics of downloads and demonstrating that students want or indeed expect to be able to download their local academics research from the repository, important for keeping student experience levels high.

The third case history was from White Rose Repository Online (Leeds, Sheffield and York) where a similar experience to Leicester, 25% engagement from academics even after a protracted advocacy campaign including direct email contact.  Awareness of WRRO was generally low.  Making deposits as easy as possible was a major point, as academics are simple creatures with time poor lives.  They also suggested that there is a need to build a community of interest in CRIS related systems, not solely within Symplectic but across the IR, research support and IT environment.

Next up was Jonathan Breeze talking about research data management, from more of an IT and data life cycle POV.  Researchers think a lot about their data but how do you keep it or even what do you keep.  Research funders are increasingly expecting or requiring data as well as publications to be shared, and curated for long-term access.  Ownership of data is unclear, even within the institutions let alone whom or how this will be captured and stored.

Finally for the morning Peter Murray-Rust made a call for open bibliographies.  He declined to use PowerPoint or PDF on the grounds that they “Destroy information”.  He went on to say that we should use volunteers to gather bibliographic data rather than paid for systems.  He spoke a lot about community performing the data gathering or aggregation functions, but I must confess that while he raised some interesting points practically I think a lot of what he talked about was aspirational rather than functional.  Most academics I’ve worked with over the years have very little interest in collating the literature, they’re more focussed on their own area of research and outputs.  What Peter was suggesting was certainly laudable, and may have worked in the isolated examples he suggested but one has only to look to the Arts or Social Sciences to see where the technical knowledge or awareness may prevent many academics from engaging with his one.

After a sandwich free (but tasty) lunch we broke into two groups for workshops.  The one I was at looked at new REF functionalities for Symplectic, which as I’ve yet to have much hands on experience; and given this is more the research office’s forte, left me a bit flat.  Then we went into groups to discuss where the problems with REF submission functionality in Symplectic will be.  Again, somewhat out of my area of knowledge so not something I felt informed enough to contribute to.

All in all there was a lot to talk about with the other delegates on the day, and I especially benefitted from conversations with a number of my fellow repository managers; focussing on the implementation side of Symplectic Repository Tools.

LRA Most Accessed Research April 2011

1. Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socialising and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’ (Madge, Clare et al)
2. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data (Garino, Gaia et al)
3. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard)
4. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al)
5. Educational Leadership: an Islamic perspective (Shah, Saeeda J.A.)
6. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond)
7. Authenticity in ELT Task Design: A Case Study of an ESP Project-Based Learning Module (Choi, Lai Kun)
8. A cross-cultural study of predictors of self-handicapping in university students (Pulford, Briony D. et al)
9. Optimal Number of Response Categories in Rating Scales: Reliability, Validity, Discriminating Power, and Respondent Preferences (Preston, Carolyn C. et al)
10. Thomas C. Schelling’s psychological decision theory: Introduction to a special issue (Colman, Andrew M.)

The same paper as last month tops the charts for April, and sets a new record high for accesses (1019 accesses!); clearly a hot topic for the moment. Overall this month there has been a rise in all the items appearing in the chart; even while as a whole access to the LRA were down this month. However, the Easter extended shutdown likely affected the levels. Countrywise the same top ten countries continue to show up as last month.

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. Germany
7. China
8. Malaysia
9. France
10. Italy

In other news the LRA Annual report for 2010 is now available online for consultation.  One thing is very clear – this month’s top item scored almost as many accesses as last year’s annual top item.  It seems the use of research shared on the LRA just continues to rise month on month to new heights, which is a real credit to the LRA Administration team for making it possible!

Good Practice in Information Literacy for Academic Research

I attended this RIN/UK Council for Graduate Education workshop at the University of Warwick on 14 March.  It has taken a little while to write this!

There were three useful particualrly useful presentations:

Kate Mahoney of Vitae spoke about the Researcher Development Framework (RDF), designed to be integrated into all training given to researchers.  It is a tool designed to help researchers find out what they know and what training they need.   It has four domains – one, “Knowledge and Academic Abilities”, specifically includes Information literacy and management as one of its “descriptors”.   Other domains include descriptors of interest  – for example, ”IPR and copyright”, in the “Research governance and organisation” domain.    There are also many other descriptors that have an information literacy angle.       There is more about the RDF on the Vitae website.

Wendy White of the University of Southampton spoke about the soon to be launched revised Sconul 7 Pillars of Information Literacy.   This is scheduled to be launched at the forthcoming LILAC conference.  

Joy Davidson of the Data Curation Centre spoke about data management, something, along with copyright, that researchers need to think about at the outset, and not the end of their research.      Many people – universities, publishers, funders – have opinions or mandates on data management, but not many people offer support, so perhaps a role for us as part of our own institutional support?  Attention was drawn to DCC training and support materials.  

The two breakout sessions produced some interesting things which I will follow up: I liked the sound of Glasgow Caledonian’s RefWorks material, online and designed to be worked through at one’s own pace.   I liked the sound too of adding “contact your information librarian” to the induction of new staff, thus becoming something that they had to do and have ticked in their first week or month.

The three presentations mentioned above, plus one other, are at http://www.ukcge.ac.uk/events/pastevents/1011area/infoliteracy11.

Most used items Leicester Research Archive: Feb 2011

Here are the most used items in the Leicester Research Repository, the gateway to the University of Leicester’s research publications, for February 2011.

1. The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data (Garino, Gaia et al) (2381/4441)
 
2. The propagation of VHF and UHF radio waves over sea paths (Sim, Chow Yen Desmond) (2381/7444)
3. Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care (Pitchforth, Emma et al) (2381/309)
 
4. Female Fandom in an English ‘Sports City’: A sociological study of female spectating and consumption around sport (Pope, Stacey Elizabeth) (2381/8343)
5. Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Sandell, Richard) (2381/52)
 
6. Thomas C. Schelling’s psychological decision theory: Introduction to a special issue (Colman, Andrew M.) (2381/476)
 
7. The costs of Activity-Based Management (Armstrong, Peter) (2381/3645)
 
8. Teaching presentation skills to undergraduates: Students’ evaluations of a workshop course. (Colman, Andrew M.) (2381/537)
 
9. Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (Ndako, Umar Bida) (2381/8924)
 
10. Saint Christopher Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches, c.1250-c.1500 (Pridgeon , Eleanor Elizabeth) (2381/7964)

In terms of the countries using the LRA, there was no overall change in the top 10 just a bit of jockying for position.

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. India
4. Canada
5. Germany
6. China
7. Malaysia
8. France
9. Australia
10. Italy