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Closure of this Web Site
Following the cessation of JISC’s core funding to UKOLN the ISC Web site has been closed. An archive of the Web site has been created which can be accessed via the UK Web Archive.
read moreeuroCRIS Spring 2013 Membership Meeting in Bonn
Just back from the euroCRIS Spring 2013 membership meeting which was held in Bonn this week, 13-14 May at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). As well as being one of the main research funders in Germany, DFG is also one of the main providers of research information at a national level. There has been a recent upsurge in CERIF-related activity in Germany, as related in the many interesting national presentations. These included a significant initiative to develop a ‘Core Data Set’ for research activities in Germany. Leuphana...
read moreCERIF UK coordination meeting
Brigitte Jörg, the CERIF National Coordinator at UKOLN organised a meeting last week to identify priorities for a UK CERIF roadmap building on current and ongoing activities. Brigitte’s blog includes a very useful slide of the current CERIF UK landscape – outputs from key initiatives were presented and discussed. There is an ongoing need for alignment: given the requirements of different projects, and that CERIF can be interpreted in different ways, there are inevitable slight variations in mappings eg between CERIF in Action...
read morePure UK user group meeting in Birmingham
Last Friday (1 Feb) I participated as an observer in the second day of the Pure UK user group meeting in Birmingham (by kind permission of the outgoing Chair, Anna Clements). I’m planning an update to the Adoption of CERIF in Higher Education Institutions in the UK study and thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up with some key people, which it was. It was interesting (although perhaps not surprising) that CERIF hardly got a mention, apart from by Anna (which appeared to be the norm!). CERIF is assumed as an underlying...
read moreManaging ethics review information: RMAS-EE project
Ethical approval is needed for most research work before it can be carried out although processes and requirements tend to differ across disciplines, funders and institutions. Many institutions use standalone systems to manage the approval process, with potential for duplication of effort, while Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) provide varying levels of support for ethical review information. The CONVERIS CRIS does already support ethics review and is being used for this purpose by UK user institutions. However functionality is...
read moreText mining: a survey
Recent JISC-funded horizon-scanning work has included a workshop at OR-2012 and an associated book, currently under development, to be published by Chandos. We are now also running a survey on text mining. As part of this work, we felt that it was important for us to talk to those engaged in text mining work both in the UK and internationally. This survey is intended to elicit a little information about the practices and challenges associated with text mining. Important points to bear in mind: Your input will be treated anonymously and your...
read moreNew TechWatch Report: Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education
JISC Observatory has published the final version of a report written for Higher and Further Education institutions entitled Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of Ebooks in Education.
read moreSnowball Metrics: vision for research information management in the UK
The Snowball Metrics initiative held three workshops in different parts of the UK last week, addressing the ‘vision and challenges for research information management in the UK’. Prior to the workshops, participants were asked to identify firstly what they felt would make a significant difference to research information management in the UK today, and secondly, what is the biggest challenge that stands in the way of achieving this vision. Discussion topics included the following: Interoperable data rather than integrated...
read moreREDIC project – contributing to improved information about research equipment in the UK
The JISC-funded REDIC (Research Equipment Database in CERIF) project has recently been completed and deliverables are becoming available to the community. It sits alongside several other initiatives addressing the lack of available information about research equipment. Most universities own large quantities of expensive research equipment which can include individual items costing millions of pounds. There is no national database of equipment/facility data and moreover, desk research carried out by REDIC suggests that most universities do...
read moreAriadne Issue 70 Now Available
Colleagues in the Innovation Support Centre have contributed articles to the recently published Issue 70 of Ariadne. Brian Kelly with co-authors Dominik Lukeš and Alistair McNaught highlight the risks of attempting to standardise easy-to-read language for online resources for the benefit of readers with disabilities. Far from rejecting the intentions of the W3C/WAI Research and Development Working Group (RDWG), in ‘Does He Take Sugar?’: The Risks of Standardising Easy-to-read Language, the authors seek to explain the complexities...
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