Final project report

The project blog may have gone a bit quiet in recent weeks, but that's not because of a lack of work going on - but mainly because we've been beavering away writing up the final report for the project, which is being delivered to JISC today. As soon as we've got their go-ahead, the report will be posted here too.

Signing out... for now...

Lizzie Dipple

Advocacy session at Exeter

I forgot to mention in my previous blog that we recently gave a presentation on our research repository, ERIC, to Associate Directors of Research at Exeter. We discovered there was quite a low level of awareness of the repository and what it’s for – for example, that depositing in the repository often allows a researcher to fulfil his/her obligation to the research funder. They were interested to hear about the integration with Symplectic and generally in favour of it (although some still queried the amount of time it would take to deposit). This led on to a discussion about Open Access and the feasibility of imposing a mandate for both research publications and primary data. There was a lot of support for a mandate but also recognition that a change in culture, especially in certain disciplines, would be necessary for it to work. The Open Access agenda will, again, be picked up and taken forward by the Open Up! project mentioned previously.

Jill Evans

University of Exeter

Update from Exeter

Work on integration is continuing at Exeter. We’ve made significant progress, for example Repository Tools 1.3 has now been installed but we’ve also hit a number of unexpected technical hitches that have held things up a little.

Testing has been going on for a few weeks, initially with the Engineering department, which has produced some very useful feedback. Crosswalks and collection mapping have also been tested extensively and we’re now working our way through the list of identified issues. We’re still not sure when we’ll be in a position to go live but we’re moving nearer to that point!

We’re looking at ways of getting publications into ERIC quickly as soon as Repository Tools goes live. For example, some funds have been put aside for a postgraduate to deposit the top four ‘favourites’ for all researchers participating in the REF in ERIC via Symplectic. We’re also aware of a number of publications collections around the University that are, with a little copyright checking, ready to be uploaded.

Advocacy planning is ongoing but we’ve had to scale back some of the activities planned for Open Access Week as it’s unlikely Repository Tools will be working by then. We’ll still be doing general awareness-raising, however, and will follow up with our own OA week when the integration’s been completed.

Some good news – we were successful in our recent bid to the JISC for funds to continue our pilot research data management project. The new project, called Open Up! for the moment, will start in October and will, amongst other activities, look at embedding use of repositories in the research lifecycle. We will have a full time advocacy officer for 12 months, picking up from and building on RePosit advocacy work. We’re aiming for much closer integration of our repositories and deposit procedures, particularly the linking of research publications with the underlying primary research data. So Symplectic will continue to be a focus of advocacy work but through Open Up! rather than RePosit, which will soon come to an end.

If you’d like further information about our integration work or Open Up! email me: jill.evans@exeter.ac.uk

Jill Evans

University of Exeter

Update from Plymouth University

The sharp eyed will notice the change in the University's name to Plymouth University.

The summer saw significant progress in the work on the integration between Symplectic Elements and Pearl, following a visit from Symplectic and ongoing work here. After testing, we are currently in the final stages of working through the last issues with the crosswalks and the file handling scenarios.

I also ran the RePosit survey using the Test systems and chose a select group of the 60 most frequent users of Symplectic Elements Publications to pilot the Repository Tools and test out the process. This proved an insightful exercise, the feedback showed that there was confusion around versions and copyright information. I now know how to amend the user documentation in response to this feedback. As Plymouth are using a self deposit model, I am also now going to roll out RT, by starting with one Faculty, in order to able to provide support to users and not be overwhelmed.

Open Access Week (beg 24th Oct) is a key target and I will be running advocacy events around OA so ePHDs and masters as well as Pearl. Due to some staff illness here, our plans for getting the integration live have had to be reevaluated and I can not set a date for the integration to go live. However I will be running advocacy activities in OA week and will adapt what I do when I know if the integration will be Live/Test.

Nicola Cockarill

Plymouth University

JOINING SYSTEMS: who owns, administers, and links the systems together?

When planning our discussion topic for the RSP event Working Smartly Together, we assumed that people participating in the discussion group would already have a link between a CRIS and repository system - or be well on with planning the link. We also hoped that people would be further down the line in joining systems and could share their experiences with those still thinking about a potential CRIS/repository link.

In fact, to our surprise, the majority of group members were still at an early stage: some considering a CRIS/repository link, some planning to expand an existing repository to offer CRIS type functions and others just interested in the topic but with no current link plans. Although the CRIS/Repository model is becoming more common, institutions that have followed the process through and achieved full integration between the two systems are still few and far between.

Quickly shifting gears from the initial breakout group plan, we discussed some of the potential benefits and challenges of the new model.

Findings are below (transcribed from flip charts and added commentary):

Benefits

• Potentially greater deposit: whether this is true or not depends on where you are starting from with your existing repository. Some are well embedded, but others have struggled to become part of everyday researcher workflows.

• One stop shop: single place of deposit but also a way to draw together many strands of research information. A CRIS can be enhanced by an OA platform and the high standards of data curation which come with it; the repository can be complemented by the administrative data in the CRIS.

• CRIS+repository may be a good model to support researcher compliance with funder OA and reporting requirements.

• CRIS benefits from repository visibility – research becomes more discoverable.

• Web page feeds may include publication lists with links to repository content - but also grants, expertise, activities, impact etc.

• Repository usage stats could be fed back to the CRIS. As well as usage, stats could show non-OA-depositors what traffic they’re missing.

Risks / challenges

• OA takes a back seat.

• Academics don’t care about the depositing system – it’s just another admin system to them. Maybe this doesn’t matter. And it’s not an issue that’s limited to the CRIS+repository model. But perhaps academics are less likely to engage with OA aspects of a CRIS if they don’t see the relevance to their own subject discipline and research.

• REF – a useful driver - but too much REF focus could lead to fewer OA deposits and more limited engagement with repository systems.

• Why have two sets of metadata? Is the repository just a file store? Does it matter?

• Data quality – building the publication database within a CRIS tends to involve importing data from a number of different sources. E.g. Thomson Web of Science, departmental databases, individual publication lists in EndNote, BiBTeX etc. Inevitably there is duplication and a range of data quality issues. Is it worth tidying the records up? Who does this? Is there any resource to do this? Is surfacing publication data on researcher web pages sufficient incentive for them to rectify any issues with their own data?

Wishlist

• The model helps with research publication and research data curation – funder data is tied in with compliance requirements, depositors are advised on these & there is automatic deposit or notification to required external subject / data repositories.

• Effective data exchange between systems & common data standards – probably CERIF.

• Crosswalks between systems are easy to set up and readily tailorable.

• Relevant support departments work together to create an effective system (Research Office, Library, IT, Staff Training). Effective governance mechanisms are put in place.

• Uptake by some researchers exerts peer pressure on others, raising overall take up.

Conclusion:
So long as you have an effective system to deposit, describe, disseminate and preserve you research information, it may not matter too much what the underlying architecture looks like. However, there are many practical issues to be tackled – particularly if you have pre-existing systems which must be linked or phased out – when introducing a CRIS+repository architecture.

Many thanks to the attendees as the comments provided the project with insights that will be written up in the final project report.

submitted by: Rachel Proudfoot and Jodie Double

Repositories and CRIS / working smartly together - report from conference 19th July

I led the workshops on CRIS/repository advocacy. Do you advocate as separate systems or as one system? If the CRIS and Repository are integrated, do you need to brand the repository, is the focus on the CRIS or is a combination approach best?

The 2 groups all had different CRIS / repository models, some institutions had both and some were integrated/ some not. Other institutions had just a repository or just a CRIS so it was excellent to get a wide variety of views.

Key feedback :

• the concept of the one stop shop so if staff are working in one system, be it the CRIS or repository, then advocacy was focused on the one system as the place to do all the necessary tasks.


• that institutions can often put in artificial barriers between systems, often relating to the organizational unit that manages them and in terms of language and terminology


• researchers don't care which system is doing what, they just need to know what they have to do


• researchers want clarity with support so joint sessions, singe points of contact are key


• repositories can provide real life statistics which can be used in advocacy sessions to promote the repository


• the REF is a key driver for research strategy at many unis and is also having an effect on people's perception of the repository, on submission and Open Access. Some institutions reported that discussions were being had on what is good enough quality to be deposited into the repository and a suggestion that only REFable material should be submitted. Should the repository be for all research or just as a shop window for the highest rated research? Clearly this raises questions around the drivers for submission which may vary according to stakeholder group


• In general, most of the institutions were giving their repository a brand and identity

I then weaved this feedback gained on the day into my presentation which provided a case study of how the questions were approached at Plymouth University.

My conclusion, which was backed up by the conference participants, is that researchers and senior university management want clarity and demonstrations of coherence and of support for individual and university goals.
The branding and advocacy strategy needs to be flexible and responsive to the audience and messages.
It is perhaps not a question of deciding a single focus on CRIS or the Repository or integration but a question of deciding when and how to apply a varying focus, depending on your audience/message.

Nicola Cockarill, Plymouth University

Break-out session on CRIS/repository community at RSP conference

One of the five topics that we covered through smaller group break-out discussion sessions at last week's RSP conference was all about how the CRIS and repository community might want to communicate. This nicely tied in with the end of Simon Kerridge's keynote speech about how linked systems mean that more communication between research office and repository managers is essential. The session's title was 'Community and Communications to Support the CRIS Model' and it was basically a facilitated discussion around whether this new CRIS->repository world requires new thinking and new means to share the knowledge and experience that's out there. Are existing discussion forums or mailing lists sufficient to the task?

I started by asking each of the two sets of people who had chosen to join this topic how they had found out about the RSP event itself, which lead on to an interesting look at which lists different types of people (RO = research office, RM = repository managers/library, IT = technology people) belonged to.

group 1:


group 2:


There was a bit of overlap but no obvious one existing place that all the groups who now are involved when CRIS systems (traditionally coming from the research office) are linked to institutional repositories (usually run by the library) or the link is under consideration - except perhaps for the JISC-repositories list, which is rather wide-ranging and already quite busy.

Then we had some discussions around open vs closed lists (the RePosit Google discussion group is now open to all new members) and the dangers of 'flaming'. We talked about how to avoid list fatigue - perhaps by using technical solutions to join existing lists via keywords into a super-list rather than creating anything new - and heard with interest that ARMA and UKcorr lists may be joining forces. Also, how to maintain the informality of a group - such as that which has helped make the RePosit Google group approachable for queries and discussions? Plus there were those who felt that existing communication was sufficient without needing anything else, using Twitter or Google searches to find individual sources of extra information - or just the willingness to pick up the phone and talk to someone in person.

All in all, some interesting discussion - but how to take this forward? In the absence of one obvious person who is so motivated to set up and run a CRIS/repository community, which is the body to run with the idea? In our discussions, the consensus seemed to be some combination of RSP/JISC and ARMA was our best bet.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

What's happening at Exeter

We still don’t have a definite date for the roll out of Repository Tools here but crosswalks and collection mapper seem to be working so we’re almost ready for testing with users, hopefully starting next week or the week after.

An important breakthrough for us is that automated emailing of depositors notifying them that their submission has either been approved or rejected is now working. Thanks to Ian Wellaway for his hard work on this – if anyone else is interested we’d be happy to share what we (or rather Ian) did.

I’ve started planning advocacy activities in more detail in the hope that we have to be ready to go some time soon.

• We’ve identified a number of testers from different subject areas – the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences are particularly keen as the new EPSRC open access ruling means they have to put all their funded research publications on OA starting September.
• I’m having a series of meetings with the Academic Support Consultants to plan advocacy in the Colleges from September – hoping to get a clear picture of what they are able to do, to whom, when, and what supporting materials they will need me to create for them (adapting RePosit materials).
• We’ve been invited to give a presentation to Associate Deans of Research in mid-September – a really great opportunity initiated by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Transfer, who is a real supporter of OA. These are obviously key people when it comes to influencing researchers in the various Colleges.
• I’m aiming for a big repositories push during OA Week in October, plugging RT using RePosit materials at various events that I’m in the process of planning.
• Have started work on an OA web site to be launched in OA week.
• Seeing our design studio this week to talk about commissioning some UoE repository leaflets – to be used alongside the RePosit materials.
• Started work on a Library ‘repositories@exeter’ web page providing a single point of access to repositories & Repository Tools, news, events, training materials, advice etc. – currently info is buried in the Library pages and difficult to find – this r@e link will appear prominently on the Library home page: http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/
• Working on content for a new course for PGRs ‘Getting yourself known: how to enhance your research profile’ – this will include a demo of Repository Tools.
• Will be doing training with Academic Support Consultants after testing is completed.
• Have started to use Twitter to alert people to repository developments.

We'll be doing more, but this is just to start with – I’ll post more as we start to make progress. If anyone has any comments or suggestions please let me know: jill.evans@exeter.ac.uk

posted by: Jill Evans

RePosit at yesterday's RSP conference

As has been mentioned in a number of recent posts on this blog, the RePosit project was very much involved in the RSP conference entitled 'Repositories and CRIS: working smartly together', which took place yesterday, Tuesday 19th July, at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham. We had an hour-and-a-half slot in the morning, during which we facilitated five interactive break-out discussion sessions (as listed below) and gave a series of presentations around those topics to share some of the findings from the project. The audience was a good mix of repository managers/library staff and people from the research office, with a sprinkling of IT and others, and we had some interesting discussions. There will be individual blog posts about each of the discussion topics in more detail - to follow.

1. JOINING SYSTEMS: WHO OWNS/ADMINS/LINKS THE SYSTEMS TOGETHER? In a blended landscape does it matter whether or not you have a separate repository? What are the implications for pre-existing repository services of the CRIS+repository model? How is legacy data handled? How do the two systems complement each other? Who owns the system?

2. CRIS/REPOSITORY ADVOCACY. Do you advocate as separate systems or as one system? If the CRIS and Repository are integrated, do you need to brand the repository, is the focus on the CRIS or is a combination approach best?

3. ENGAGING YOUR RESEARCHERS. What will motivate researchers to upload to the repository using the CRIS? What is special about it? How do we SELL it? Carrot or stick?

4. DEMONSTRATING THE BENEFITS: ADVOCACY STRATEGY IN A CRIS->REPOSITORY WORLD. Any advocacy strategy begins with identifying stakeholders and advocacy methodology. In a CRIS-to-repository model are there people, issues and tools to consider that are different to other deposit models, and if so, how to we deal with them?

5. COMMUNITY AND COMMUNICATIONS TO SUPPORT THE CRIS MODEL. Does the CRIS->repository world require new thinking? How best do we share the knowledge and experience? Are existing forums sufficient?

posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Busy busy with dissemination preparations

Despite the recent blog silence, in fact there’s quite a lot going on with RePosit at the moment. Next Tuesday is our main project dissemination event for the whole year (although Jodie Double has just agreed to present at the Repositories Fringe in Edinburgh next month too) – at the RSP event in Nottingham. Six members of the project team – Ellie James (Keele), Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary), Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Jodie Double (Leeds) and Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic) – will be there representing RePosit, outlining our project findings so far and sharing our experiences of advocacy planning and in action. Therefore we’re all busily making final changes to presentations, running over organisational details and tying together our sessions. We’ve been using our usual Skype call method of keeping in touch and facilitating necessary discussions. Roll on Tuesday...


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

New project team photos

As at previous project meetings, after the day's proceedings were completed we took a team photo to commemorate our meeting in London on 16th June (above). Left to right: Ian Tilsed (Exeter), Gillian Still (Exeter), Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Jodie Double (Leeds), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary), Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic).

Since Ellie had to leave very swiftly to catch her train she's in a separate earlier photo (below). Ellie James (Keele).


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

4th project team meeting minutes

Last month - on Thursday 16th June - we held our fourth project team meeting, in London (after previous meetings in the north and south-west of the UK). This was a crucial time to get the project team together because, even with our report write-up project extension, we're now in the final quarter of the project cycle. So it was key to make sure that the project advocacy work continues on track, and also to sort out any wobbles or issues. In addition, everyone who comes to these meetings has said that getting together like that is the best way to re-energise for the tasks at hand.

Aside from an update on the various strands of project progress - outputs, such as the advocacy materials (we saw Ellie's first printed posters and postcards for Keele - very exciting to see them in the flesh), the survey and the deposit community Google discussion group we've created and are trying to keep alive; and outcomes, such as how we're noting engagement with the repositories - we had two major areas to get our teeth into: (i) the upcoming RSP event taking place in Nottingham on 19th July, which is our major project dissemination opportunity, and (ii) how to put together the content for the final project report itself. Both subjects were large enough we could have spent twice as long on each, but at the end of the day we had shared out topics to work on for the RSP event and had brainstormed quite a good proportion of the sorts of points we already know we want to make in the final project report. Oh yes, there are plenty of lessons to be learned!

The full meeting minutes are available here.


Posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Advocacy materials

These are the advocacy materials developed for Keele University and are currently being distributed around the campus to raise awareness

Poster:

Leaflet (2 sided)

An editable version of these will be made available for other Universities to use, as part of the outputs from the REPOSIT project

Ellie James
Keele University

ARMA presentation

Doesn't time fly! It was a few weeks ago since I presented at the ARMA conference (Association of Research Managers and Administrators), here is my Prezi http://prezi.com/xhxhicyxmo-z/the-repository-rollercoaster/

We had some fantastic discussion about the issues around repositories, with colleagues in the audience at different stages.

Ellie James
Keele University

Digital preservation and self deposit

Advocacy and outreach surrounding RePosit will hopefully increase deposits through the connectors. The exact numbers and scale is YTD but what we do know for certain is that user generated files bring digital preservation and long-term access issues with them. While a vast majority of the files will be ok, can we be certain all the files are healthy and reusable for the future? How do we automate file verification to free up repository staff time and resources? All very exciting questions, challenges and issues surrounding increased deposits both from external users and content creating internally.

The AQuA project is investigating these issues and more:

AQuA project, a JISC funded collaboration between: University of Leeds, University of York, British Library, and Open Planets Foundation will have project outputs that can be implemented in repositories to assist with the growing list of file issues.

Future postings on how the tools can assist repositories will be posted after the 3 day London event 13-15 May 2011. Outcomes from the Leeds AQuA Event held in April are on the AQuA wiki.

posted by Jodie Double

Forthcoming project team meeting and report deadline extension

Although we've had a number of Skype calls and informal meet-ups at other events, it's been five months since our last full project meeting - held in Leeds in January. So this week we have our fourth project team meeting, taking place on Thursday 16th June in London. As well as reviewing progress so far, and hopefully resolving any final niggling issues, the two major topics we'll be discussing are: what to put together for our part of the RSP dissemination event and how we want to put together our final project report - once all the findings are in.

Our revised project report deadline is 20th October 2011. Unfortunately, after further delays to the implementations of Repository Tools at Plymouth and Exeter - compounded by the departure of Richard Jones from Symplectic - in discussion with our JISC programme manager, an extension to the deadline for submitting the final project report was agreed to allow extra time so that the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth could also run training and advocacy activities as per their published plans (Exeter and Plymouth). Of course, this extension basically runs through the summer vacation, so there will be different types of opportunities (and possibly fewer of them) to talk to academics compared to term time - something that has to be worked around.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

EPSRC mandate - working closely with Research Office staff

Research Office staff can play an important role in publicising repository deposit. The relationship between repository staff and research support staff is a key one which should be nurtured. It's great that we have direct research support representation on the RePosit team (Ellie from Keele) as this brings an important different perspective to our work - but also provides a good route to information which may naturally come the way of the Research Office but may or may not make it as far as the Library. The recent EPSRC mandate is a good example. The EPSRC open access policy is not new, but it has been revised recently. There is a prominent and imminent date on the policy which has made institutions sit up and take notice (true of EPSRC's open access publication policy and their data management policy). There's some interesting psychology in that. In addition, the EPSRC has written to all University VCs to publicise their policy.

From a deposit/RePosit point of view at the University of Leeds, the Research Office has take the opportunity to publicise the EPSRC policy on the staff intranet and in a direct email to all EPSRC grant holders. We (repository staff) were able to confirm deposit via Symplectic meets the green route requirements and we provided relevant text for the email to grant holders. Because the EPSRC policy is flexible and allows recipients to choose whether to comply via the gold route or green self-archiving route, we can gave a straightforward message to grant hodlers. Yes, deposit into White Rose Research Online meets your funder requirements. There is no cost to you . Here's how you do it. The EPSRC email provided a great way to reach academics directly and show our relevance to them - and to work closely with our Research Office. Whether it will have a significant impact on deposit - we'll see!

Kultivate Metadata Workshop

While many of the members from the project team were at the Symplectic User Conference at the end of May a couple of weeks ago, I was across town at the Kultivate Project Metadata Workshop giving a talk on issues surrounding non-text and practice-led research outputs.

What is a Kultivate workshop?

Kultivate workshops bring together repository managers and other key stakeholders interested in creative and visual arts research discussing specific topics. Previous topics have consisted of advocacy at the February event and March centered around archiving and curation. Attendees are always very engaged, generously sharing experiences and ideas that you can take back and immediately implement in your institution.

Ironically, I heard through the grapevine that arts deposit came up at the Symplectic Conference the very same day Kultivate was meeting. Arts research being talked about in the broader context of research outputs, makes me very happy and illustrates Kultivate's timeliness in addition to how repositories have grown beyond journal articles and book chapters.

How does this relate to the RePosit Project?

It relates in many ways as repositories will be dealing with all types of content at some point if not already, especially in the planning and build up to the REF. Practice led research (art, design, performance etc...) represents vast quantities of research outputs that have traditionally been curated within departments or were out of scope for the publications database. This is one more area for repositories managers to keep an eye on and plan for future expansion of services and tools.

posted by Jodie Double, on the train back to Leeds after a very productive RePosit project meeting today

The Repository Rollercoaster

I'll be at the ARMA conference in Glasgow next week and on the Wednesday morning at 11am I'll be doing my session on 'The Repository Rollercoaster'. The 'prezi' will take the audience on a journey through my repository experience, including some of the advocacy work, and my partipication in this JISC project.

I will post the link to the presentation here afterwards, and also post the discussions.

Ellie James
Keele University

How do you know when you have achieved increased engagement?

Way back at the start of the project, one of the aims we set ourselves as project partners was to be able to demonstrate increased engagement with repositories as a result of our simplified deposit model. In order to show increased engagement, we needed to be able to calculate numbers of unique depositors (so who is doing the uploading), but this wasn't the simplest data to be able to extract.

DSpace doesn't have a report with which to provide this data, and it isn't possible to extract it from the Elements database. However, we knew that when an item was uploaded, along with the metadata for the item and the file, data about who had made the submission was entered into the dc.description.provenance field. How to get at this and turn it into useful numerical data took a little time to work out.

Our IT Services systems administrator performed a search within DSpace looking for matching text strings within the dc.description.provenance field. Once he had this, he provided me with a (very much tidied up) text file which I was able to import into spreadsheet software to begin turning into numerical values. Since the data we wanted was cumulative, it didn't take long to make the appropriate calculations (especially since the number of depositors is relatively small at the moment).

This was a messy process, with some risk of inaccuracies because of the manual extraction process, fine as an interim whilst something better is investigated perhaps (hello DSpace developers?), and I do have to wonder if there is an easier way to get at the data. It also occurs to me that this time consuming process might work for one-off data extractions, but would be unsustainable over longer periods for regular collection of data. However, we do now have statistics on how many people are actually engaging with our repository (not to pre-empt the final report of the project but: July 2010 = 24, April 2011 = 61), and this gives us some evidence of how well we're doing; not only in terms of new users, but also with sustained engagement.

With many thanks to my IT colleague, David Goddard, for handling the extraction and cleaning up of the data.

Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary)

RePosit at Symplectic User Conference

This week saw the annual Symplectic User Conference in London, and a number of the RePosit project team attended. The day was loosely themed around repositories and data storage. Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Sarah Molloy (QMUL) and Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth) jointly gave a presentation about RePosit - one of the four talks given by outside speakers. There were a number of questions from the audience for the RePosit speakers, and it seemed that the three case studies - outlining what has been taking place at each of the three institutions represented regarding RePosit activities - struck a chord. We also plugged our involvement with the forthcoming RSP event in Nottingham on 19th July - a major dissemination opportunity for the project.

At the end of the day, making the most of the chance to meet face to face, we had a brief project discussion about progress in various areas. We also talked about how the RePosit presentation had been received that day - and I learned that at least one other institution had made contact to find out about potentially reusing some of our advocacy messages to help them make a case for the CRIS-to-repository model.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Notes from project team Skype call on 28th April 2011

At the end of last month, the team got together – virtually – for one of our regular Skype calls to keep each other up to date with progress and share experiences. The formation of smaller groups within the team to look after individual parts of the project work seems to be going well: for instance, the group looking after the survey have made great strides – and in the call we made the final tweaks to the core survey questions. Subsequent to the call, we now have an agreed core survey, which has been set up on BOS for the first site (Exeter University) and there will be further news about the survey in later posts. Another area of project work that has been active recently is the planning of our dissemination event – which is to take place within an all-day event hosted by RSP in Nottingham.

Here are the notes from the call.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple