Uncovering research - what's the standard - Jisc Digital Festival 2015

Uncovering research – what’s the standard?

Catherine Grout

Head of change -Research

» Introduction – Catherine Grout

» Research Data Discovery Service – Christopher Brown

» ORCID – Verena Weigert and Janette Colclough

» Organisational Identifiers – Christopher Brown

Session content

09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 3

» Many institutions and research institutes (within and outside universities)

» Many research funders (UK Research Councils only 30% of total research income)

» Varied infrastructure – Institutional Repositories, CRIS’s (one of these or neither)

» Changing environment

› Mandates effecting research information and research data

› Increasing importance of external (non-governmental) funding

› Interdisciplinary and international focus

UK research context: General


» Research excellence Framework (REF) from the four university funding bodies* - research impact (REF2014 published, preparation for 2020 - awaiting guidance)

» REF open access policy - to be eligible authors accepted manuscripts must be deposited in Institutional Repositories (journal material)

» Research Councils UK (RCUK) - 7 subject based research councils: the RCUK Policy on Open Access aims to achieve “immediate, unrestricted, online access to peer reviewed and published research papers, free of any access charge”

UK research context: policies and mandates


*Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL)

» To help implementation - new funding policy block grant to Universities to cover cost of Article Processing charges (APC’s)

» EPSRC Research Data Mandate – universities set in place processes and practices to ensure curation and preservation of research data (create roadmap for compliance and act on it)

UK research context: policies and mandates


» Not a shared national reporting infrastructure

» Funders and agencies

› Funder systems’ landscape is complex (and somewhat ad hoc): Je-S; ResearchFish, Research Outcomes System; Grants on the Web; REF; HESA

» Universities

› Institutional systems landscape is complex (ad hoc): 60 using CRIS/Cerif, spreadsheets, repositories used by many, 125 HEIs with an Institutional Repository

» Information required for both day-to-day management, funding requirements and strategic decision making

UK research context: RIM


» Supporting adoption and implementation of key standards

» Jisc CASRAI-UK pilot

» ORCID

» Frameworks - CERIF, euroCRIS, UKRISS

RIM – Standards


» Support universities core business and help make research process more productive

› Developing shared services/infrastructure where appropriate

› Supporting implementation of key standards

› Providing a channel for universities requirements with funders, vendors etc.

› Getting everyone together

› Research Data – management, policies, discoverability

Jisc – How are we helping?


» Organisational identifiers – Jisc CASRAI-UK working group of stakeholders to help develop recommendations

» Researcher identifiers – ORCID pilot

» Discoverability of research data – Research data discovery service (pilot to potential service)

» Open Access reporting working group (Jisc CASRAI-UK pilot)

» Vocabularies for Open Access (V4OA) and key metadata standards

Fitting the pieces together


09/03/2015 11

Research data management and discovery services for the research data lifecycle

Key Other supportedJisc supported

Data

Clouod

Librarians, research managers & IT have three interlocking suites of services, to support researcher needs and institutional policies

Researchers have a cohesive and interlocking suite of research data

management, publication and discovery services

Research data management and planning services

Research data storage and archival services

Research data discovery services

UKDA, BADC ICSU / WDSEBI / GenBank

Research data management applications

Journal policies registryResearch data registry / Cross repository discovery service

DMPonline

DMP Registry

SWORD +

Disciplinary data repositories (National and International)

Institutional data cataloguesInstitutional data catalogues

Disciplinary research data Discovery services

Metadata exchange between journals, archives, repositories

Data identifiers and Metadata schema

Support for Research data lifecycle

Cloud/Storage

There is a set of infrastructure

components that underpin all three suites

Researcher identifiers Organisation identifiers RegistriesData Identifiers

Research data management applications

Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham

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Contact…

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND

Catherine GroutHead of change - Research

@catherinegrout

Making research data discoverable

Christopher Brown

» Funder mandates for UK universities to have data catalogues/registries. Broader mandate to know what research data assets exist and make sure they are reusable

› For example, “EPSRC expects research organisations to publish appropriately structured metadata online describing the research data they hold, normally within 12 months of the data being generated” See more at: dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/research-funding-policies/epsrc#sthash.eUvFiSxv.dpuf

» A registry solution that aggregates simple, but textually rich, metadata records for research data assets

Research data discovery – requirements


http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/research-funding-policies/epsrc

» A discovery solution for UK research data collections

» Presents records as web pages and thus promotes the visibility of data resources to search engines

» Two important related use cases:

› to break down data silos, encouraging linking and reuse of related data collections, particularly in interdisciplinary research;

› to facilitate linking data to other research outputs, making data citation and referencing easier, thereby incorporating data in research achievements and impact

Research data discovery – requirements



» Idea from UKRDS report in 2010

» Modelled on Research Data Australia developed by ANDS

» In order to be re-used, data must be discoverable

» Harvests simple, but textually rich, metadata records for research data assets

» Piloted with early adopters - 9 HEIs and UK Data Archive, Archaeology Data Centre and NERC data centres

Phase 1 - DCC pilot / technical evaluation (Oct 2013-Mar 2014)

Research data discovery – From pilot to service

Research data discovery – Phase 1: HEI pilots


» UK Data Archive

» NERC data centres

› British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC)

› British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC)

› Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC)

› National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC)

› NERC Earth Observation Data Centre (NEODC)

› Polar Data Centre (PDC)

› UK Solar System Data Centre (UKSSDC)

» Archaeology Data Service

Research data discovery – Phase 1: Data centre pilots


» Technical Development

› Trialled Australian National Data Service (ANDS)

– Existing national research data registry service researchdata.ands.org.au/

– Open Source software (Apache License version 2.0) github.com/au-research/ANDS-Registry-Core

» CentOS Linux instance in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform

» Harvester – separate Java component

» Crosswalks – imported metadata has to be converted to RIF-CS (Registry Interchange Format – Collections and Services) format (from DDI, UK GEMINI 2, Datacite, EPrints, MODS, OAI-PMH Dublin Core)

Research data discovery – Phase 1


http://researchdata.ands.org.au/

https://github.com/au-research/ANDS-Registry-Core

» Technical Recommendations:

› Evaluation of alternatives e.g. CKAN

› Effort to agree more broadly on metadata schemas

» If going with the ANDS software:

› Collaborate to:

– make it more easily adapted to other contexts

– improve documentation

– shape future developments

› Develop associated components (Harvester)

› Further develop and test crosswalks




» HEI/Data Centre Requirements

› Need to have some research data and expose its metadata

› Harvest the associated metadata

› Project should incorporate representation of researchers’ needs

› Service should look into what will encourage and increase reuse of datasets

› Software should be easier for users to understand

› Software should be able to respond appropriately to deletions and merge records

› Service should promote visibility of research datasets to generic search engines

› Desirable for institutions to have opportunity to check quality of harvested output



» Laying the firm foundations for the service, including a service operation plan and business case for its delivery into the future

» Engaged with early adopters, now moving to possible shared infrastructure

» Plan for shared service but assessing the best way to deliver this and key use cases

Phase 2 - From pilot to production (Nov 2014 – July 2016)

Research data discovery – From pilot to service


» Further evaluate potential software solutions (ANDS, CKAN and any other)

» Collaborate closely with the HEIs and Data Centres from Phase 1

» Identify and finalise the agreement on the metadata schema that is appropriate for a successful cross disciplinary service

» Produce toolkits and advice/guidance on implementation

Phase 2 - From pilot to production (Nov 2014 – July 2016)

Research Data Discovery – From pilot to service


» Develop and agree sector requirements for a UK Research Data Discovery Service

» Ingest metadata into a functioning service instance for all participating Data Centres and HEIs

» Making sure Research Data that is being managed and available can be found

» Providing a data catalogue solution for institutions

Phase 2 - Further Aims



» Establish and run stakeholder groups to engage with the community to understand their needs and to help to build an effective solution

» Evaluate the role of this service as providing institutional infrastructure for data discovery and how it works with universities

» Ensure the service and user interface has undergone comprehensive usability tests

» Clear articulation of where the UK Research Data Discovery Service sits within other elements of research data infrastructure

Phase 2 - Further Aims


Phase 2 - Work packages


» Stakeholder engagement » Requirements gathering» Software evaluation» Metadata development» HEI Pilots implementation» Data centres pilots implementation» Service definition and design» Dissemination


rdds.jiscinvolve.org/wp/

Supported by:

Led by:

http://rdds.jiscinvolve.org/wp/

Find out more…

Contact…

Christopher BrownSenior Co-design manager, Jisc

[email protected]

@chriscb

ORCID adoption in the UK

Verena Weigert

» January 2013 Joint statement in support of ORCID (ARMA, HEFCE, HESA, RCUK, UCISA, Wellcome Trust, Jisc); joint implementation plan

» May 2014 – March 2015Jisc ARMA ORCID Pilot

Aim: streamline ORCID implementation process at universities develop the best value approach for a potential UK wide adoption of ORCID in HE.

» 8 HEI based pilots (May 2014-January 2015)» Summary Report and Cost-Benefit Analysis (March 2015)



http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/di_researchmanagement/researchinformation/orcid.aspx

http://orcidpilot.jiscinvolve.org/wp/


» Preparing to consult with the sector to ask HEIs to express their interest in participating in consortium, also consulting with funders and reconvened ORCID implementation group (ARMA, HEFCE, RCUK, UCISA, HESA, SCONUL, RLUK, Wellcome Trust, BL) to keep them informed

» Considering what other support we can provide post the JiscARMA ORCID pilot – e.g. technical support

» Working on the dissemination of the results of Jisc-ARMA ORCID pilot

Next step is to coordinate ORCID consortium membership for UK Jisc is now:


Find out more…

Contact…

Verena WeigertSenior technology manager, Jisc

[email protected]

@WeigVer

Implementing ORCID iDs at the University of YorkExperiences of the JISC-ARMA ORCID Pilot

Janette Colclough, Research support manager,

Information directorate, University of York

The University context


» Founded 1963

» Research intensive (14th in REF)

» Member of the Russell Group and White Rose Consortium

» 16,000 students, 1,400 academic and research staff

» >30 departments in humanities, social sciences, sciences

» High duck density

ORCID iDs at the University of York

» Voluntary registration for iDs by researchers, with institutional support and advocacy

» Backed by institutional policy (University Policy on the Publication of Research)

» Technology: Integration of ORCID iD functionality into CRIS (Pure)

» Technology: Use EPrints connector to populate the shared repository (White Rose Research Online) with ORCID iDs

» Joint Information Directorate and Research Strategy andPolicy Office project



Key features of the York project



» Membership of ORCID

› Basic Creator license enabling one API integration

» Easy to activate once Pure options were available and working

» EPrints connector now working in Pure Test (4.20.3)

» See York ORCID blog for more information

Technical set up

» Short trial of technical and advocacy issues with 4 departments

› Monitored uptake, online survey

» Add/Create options in Pure

› Worked but many researchers did not Save their iD into Pure

› More instructions needed

» Wide recognition of need to “Distinguish yourself”

» Expectation that Pure would populate ORCID profile

» Role of research administrators



Pilot stage exercise



» Email from Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research

» Website modified from pilot stage exercise

› york.ac.uk/orcid

› Added instructions, benefits of Pure, iD only

» Pre-launch promotion

› Bookmarks distributed to researchers

› York Research Administrators Forum

» Progress to date

Implementation for academic and research staff

http://www.york.ac.uk/orcid



» Complete work on EPrints connector and repository (WRRO)

» Make iDs visible in York Research Database (Pure portal)

» Consider implementation for postgraduate research students and staff without Pure profiles

» Work on sustainability issues

› Continuing costs

› New staff and students

Next steps



» See York ORCID blog yorkorcid.blogspot.co.uk/

› Users and use case

› Technical approaches

› Important lessons learned

› Benefits of our approach

» Breakout session at UK Serials group conference

Find out more

http://yorkorcid.blogspot.co.uk/

Find out more…

Contact…

Janette ColcloughResearch support manager, University of [email protected]

york.ac.uk/library

Organisational identifiers

Christopher Brown

» Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI)

» International community of leading research funders and institutions collaborating to ensure seamless interoperability of research information

» Develop and maintain a common data dictionary and advocate on best practices

Introduction to CASRAI


» Jisc and CASRAI are piloting three National Working Groups in the UK

› Data management plans

› Organisational identifiers

› Open Access reporting

» Each at different stage of process but has charter and plan

» Pilot ends March 2015

Jisc CASRAI-UK pilot


» Identify main candidate sources of OrgIds

» Subject them to common use cases which are relevant to universities and other parts of the RIM and RDM workflow

» The main output will be a common statement about how the UK research community should use OrgIds and the policy requirement in order for harmonised OrgIds to work

» Develop a sustainable process for maintaining authoritative lists of organisations in the CASRAI dictionary

» The membership of this working group includes representatives from ARMA, Research Councils, HEDIIP, BL, CrossRef, Wellcome Trust, CRIS system vendors and UK HEIs

OrgId working group - objectives


» Organisational Id landscape study – a report to inform the working group on the current use of organisational identifiers was commissioned and delivered (Sept 2013)

» Organisational Id review – commissioned by the working group to review a core set of organisational identifiers (ISNI, Ringgold, Digital Science and UKPRN) (Dec 2014)

» Use cases – based on key use cases from the Research lifecycle, these have been identified by the working group and further developed under the OrgId Review (Dec 2014)

OrgId working group - outputs


» Examined the landscape of organisational identifiers in the UK and identified 23 different IDs

» Based on interviews with key individuals

» Stakeholders interviewed for this study typically described identifying organisations as “a nightmare”, specifically disambiguation and deduplication

Landscape Study: Summary


» Benefits from effective unique identifiers are truly realised when data is shared

» Key aspects of identifiers that support the widest range of uses:

› Governance, trust, transparency, temporal, appropriate metadata

› Of these, the “temporal” information is perhaps the most challenging to address

Landscape study: Summary


» None of the identifiers investigated fulfils the role of being an “authoritative list” of organisations involved in research. They are all constrained in scope

» ISNI and UKPRN both warrant particularly careful consideration by the working group

» The Research Councils, as major funders of research in the UK, should be closely involved in the development of any new identifier system

Landscape study: Recommendations


» Given the range of existing identifiers, any new identifier system should only be developed and introduced if there is clear evidence of demand, and sufficient buy in to ensure that it is universally adopted

» The authority can remain separate from the identifier (for example, it would be feasible to establish an authority list with appropriate metadata but using the ISNI as the identifier)

Landscape study: Recommendations


» Clarify a representative but not comprehensive set of use cases for the UK research community to use organisational identifiers

» Survey and interview a small number of well-informed people in the field in order to create and prioritise a list of desirable features for the provision of OrgIDs and potential services built around them

» Check the use cases and these required features against four* possible candidate OrgIDs and their providers

» Inform the Working Group of the review’s conclusions and, if appropriate, make recommendations for adoption by the UK research community

*Four candidates = ISNI, Ringgold, UKPRN, Digital Science

OrgId review: Terms of reference


» UC1 - Researcher applying for funding As a Researcher applying for funding, I need to list multiple organisations related to my proposal in order to enable the target funder to uniquely identify previous employers and other funders, collaborators or industry partners and beneficiaries.

» UC2 - Funder: minimising conflicts of interest As a funder preparing to find referees or reviewers, I need to be able to identify suitable people in order to minimize conflicts of interest (through potential co-location at host institution).

» UC3 - Funder - tracking published outputs As a Funder, collating outputs in end-of-research reports, I need to be able to track published outputs in order to understand our contribution & successful collaborations.

» UC5 - Researcher or research manager - reporting academic impacts to funders As a research producer, I need to report academic impacts to different funders with different requirements.

» UC6 - Researcher - tracking organisations across time As a researcher I need to preserve the historical integrity of organisational names at the time of data creation, collection or deposit (and other, specified times); it is similarly important, however, to record and retain the links between these differing names, so that any user can see which data came from which organisation, even if the organisation name has changed.

» UC7 - Repository manager - populating repositories, managing automation As a repository manager I need to be able to uniquely identify my repository, whether or not its location or URL changes; this will enable me to control semi-automated population of repository records.

» UC8 - Developer - directory services As a developer for research funders, I need to link an OrgID within my application to a directory service. This will allow an end user or a machine to verify identity and contact details.

N.B. UC4 was deleted early in the review

OrgId Review – Use Cases


» UKPRN

› ukrlp.co.uk

› UK Register of learning providers is a register of legally verified learning providers in UK

› Each verified provider will be assigned with a unique provider reference number UKPRN

› Information shared across sector with agencies (e.g. Skills Funding Agency, Higher Education Statistics Agency, HE Funding Council for England and Universities and Colleges Admissions Service)

OrgId review: Candidates


http://www.ukrlp.co.uk/

» Digital Science Institute Database

› Public beta Feb 2015 idb.datasci.it

› Global coverage of organisations that feature in the scientific lifecycle

› 25,ooo organisations expected to be indexed by release

› Metadata includes names, aliases, urls, wikipedia pages, types, relationships and addresses, with all address data linked to geonames

› Substantial amount of this database available for free under a CC-BY licence



http://idb.datasci.it/

» ISNI www.isni.org/

› Holds public records of over 7.49 million identities including 7M individuals (800K are researchers) and 490,000 organisations

› ISNI database is a cross-domain resource, contributed to by 29 institutions and databases, and 40 major national and research libraries

› Part of the suite of ISO identifiers (along with ISBN, ISSN, etc.)

› Its governance infrastructure is designed with the purpose of ensuring the long-term viability of the identifier

› ISNI is a bridge identifier, designed to provide interoperability between different proprietary identifiers, such as the Ringgold ID and a critical component in Linked Data and Semantic Web apps



http://www.isni.org/

» Ringgold ringgold.com› A registration agency for ISNI

› Identify database contains 400,000 organisation records with organisational identifiers and associated metadata

› The database is global and covers all market sectors, including universities, research centres, funders, corporations, non-profit organisations, government entities and organisations, healthcare and hospitals, schools and public libraries

› It contains basic location metadata and is not designed to replace existing identifiers but to provide a bridge between them across multiple parts of the wider creative industries

› Not replacing the Ringgold ID with the ISNI number, but will provide the ISNI number along with the Ringgold ID. The ISNI number is designed to sit above the proprietary identifier to link systems of identifiers together as a bridge identifier



http://www.ringgold.com/

OrgId review: Candidate check against use cases


OrgId review: Recommendations


» A hybrid approach with ISNI as the backbone. Institutions and others needing to register and use OrgIDs should use a solution which relies on and feeds the minimum data set curated by ISNI

» In considering registration solutions and value-added services, organisations should bear in mind that, in the short term, Ringgold is the most developed agency conforming to the above

» Expect that soon there will be other service providers working to deliver value added services on top of ISNI and the Working Group should do what they can to encourage such competition by, for example, Digital Science, who should consider the possibility of acting as a registration agency for ISNIs in a similar way to Ringgold

» CrossRef should consider creating and maintaining a crosswalk or table of equivalence between FundRef IDs and ISNI, either through a direct relationship with ISNI or through a third party / registration agency. Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) has recently become a registration agency for ISNI and the review recommends that HEFCE and the British Library discuss whether it would be appropriate for there to be a UK-based registration agency and how bulk creation/checking of ISNIs (and bulk registration and/or the creation of a table of equivalence for UKPRNs) might take place for UK academic institutions and other organisations involved in research

OrgId Review – Key recommendations


» Statement of Agreement – currently being drafted

› A draft statement based on the recommendations from the OrgIdReview Report and discussions with the OrgId Working Group. The purpose of this statement is for key organisations such as Jisc, RCUK, HEFCE, etc. to sign up to

OrgId working group: What next?


» Testing

› A merged list of organisations, created from UCL's interactions with Wellcome, should be submitted to ISNI to test the quality of the UCL/Wellcome data and the quality and timeliness of the existing ISNI data and their response

› "sandbox" experiments should be set up with Ringgold, Digital Science and ISNI to look at whether the data tested in [i] (or a subset) is capable of providing the basis for a value added solution with the present state of orgID services

» Post-pilot Working Group

› Pilot ends March 2014 -> future relationship with CASRAI

› Review working groups

OrgId working group: What next?


» CASRAI/Jisc National Network: Jisc.ac.uk

» CASRAI website casrai.org

» Jisc CASRAI-UK pilot blog jisccasraipilot.jiscinvolve.org/

» Organisational Identifiers

› Landscape study - repository.jisc.ac.uk/5381/

› Review & use cases - repository.jisc.ac.uk/5853/

Links


http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

http://casrai.org/

http://jisccasraipilot.jiscinvolve.org/

http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5381/

http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5853/

Find out more…

Contact…

Christopher Brown

Senior Co-design manager, Jisc

[email protected]

@chriscb