Realising the innovative potential of digital research methods: a call from the research community.

As announced at the LIBER Conference in Riga, LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries, along with 17 other International library and research organisations, have issued an open letter to Elsevier.

The letter requests that Elsevier withdraw its TDM policy because it places unfair restrictions on how researchers can mine content to which they have legal access to and how they disseminate the results of their research.

The letter is available here:

http://libereurope.eu/news/european-research-organisations-call-on-elsevier-to-withdraw-tdm-policy/

It is open to further signatories, so please disseminate amongst your networks! Individuals or organisations wishing to sign the letter should forward their details and logo on to me: susan.reilly@kb.nl

Filed under: Electronic Information Resources, eTexts, General, Open Education, Research

Closing the Loop: Evaluating Your Key Scholarly Communication Programs and Services

Feed: News | Association of Research Libraries® | ARL®
Posted on: Thursday, 22 May 2014 3:00 PM
Subject: Closing the Loop: Evaluating Your Key Scholarly Communication Programs and Services

August 7, 2014, in Seattle, image © Chris TarnawskiMany libraries have been operating scholarly communication programs or providing scholarly communication services for several years. We have identified what is important to our communities. We have thought strategically about what services we might best offer. We have discussed how we might organize ourselves to deliver those services. How can we maximize the impact of the scholarly communication programs and services we offer? How do we know we’ve achieved our intended outcomes for our target audiences? What tools can help us begin to measure those outcomes?

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Filed under: Quality & Assessment, Research

Value & impact studies UK data services: new report

Forwarding for information:

Jisc has just published the synthesis report of the value & impact studies of Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), and the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC).

This report is available to download from [http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5568/1/iDF308_Digital_Infrastructure_Directions_Report%2C_Jan14_v1-04.pdf]

It summarises and reflects on the findings from a series of recent studies, conducted by Neil Beagrie of Charles Beagrie Ltd. and Prof.John Houghton of Victoria University, into the value and impact of these three well established research data centres . It provides a summary of the key findings from new research and reflects on: the methods that can be used to collect data for such studies; the analytical methods that can be used to explore value, impacts, costs and benefits; and the lessons learnt and recommendations arising from the series of studies as a whole.

The data centre studies combined quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to quantify value in economic terms and present other, non-economic, impacts and benefits. Uniquely, the studies cover both users and depositors of data, and we believe the surveys of depositors undertaken are the first of their kind. All three studies show a similar pattern of findings, with data sharing via the data centres having a large measurable impact on research efficiency and on return on investment in the data and services. These findings are important for funders, researchers, and data managers, both for making the economic case for investment in data curation and sharing and research data infrastructure, and for ensuring the sustainability of such research data centres.

The quantitative economic analysis indicated that:

·The value to users exceeds the investment made in data sharing and curation via the centres in all three cases – with the benefits from 2.2 to 2.7 times the costs;

·Very significant increases in work efficiency are realised by users as a result of their use of the data centres – with efficiency gains from 2 to 20 times the costs; and

·By facilitating additional use, the data centres significantly increase the returns on investment in the creation/collection of the data hosted

– with increases in returns from 2 to 12 times the costs.

The qualitative analysis indicated that:

·Academic users report that the centres are very or extremely important for their research. Between 53% and 61% of respondents across the three surveys reported that it would have a major or severe impact on their work if they could not access the data and services; and

·For depositors, having the data preserved for the long-term and its dissemination being targeted to the academic community are seen as the most beneficial aspects of depositing data with the centres.

An important aim of the studies was to contribute to the further development of impact evaluation methods that can provide estimates of the value and benefits of research data sharing and curation infrastructure investments. This synthesis reflects on lessons learnt and provides a set of recommendations that could help develop future studies of this type.

Many thanks Rachel

*Rachel Bruce*

Director Technology Innovation

*jisc.ac.uk <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/> *

Filed under: Quality & Assessment, Research, analytics, data curation, data services, data sharing, JISC, John Houghton, Neil Beagrie, ROI