Thom explained that the Innovation Zone is a JISC-funded initiative focussing on supporting developments in repository infrastructure in the UK, managed by the Innovation Support Centre at UKOLN and the RepositoryNet (RepNet) at Edina. Support is within four main areas:  technical knowledge-exchange through expert workshops;  sharing of key information on repository components and use cases via a knowledge base;  trials of APIs with developer communities through DevSCI; and the incubation of prospective services, an area currently under development and available soon.

Thom is keen to hear from anyone who has repository-related service with an API they would like to trial with developers. The Innovation Zone is able to offer help in putting you in touch with developers and making links with other projects in complimentary areas of work.

The incubation aspect of the Innovation Zone support will be available soon and can help with new development initiatives such as repository infrastructure innovations, prospective components and microservices. Again, Thom is keen to hear from people who have projects that could benefit from incubation.

To find out more and engage with the  Innovation Zone, leave a comment here and/or contact Thom.

Brian Kelly of UKOLN ISC presented a poster in the Poster Minute Madness session on Tuesday, promoting the paper “Can LinkedIn and Academic.edu Enhance Access to Open Repositories?” which he co-authored with Jenny Delasalle of the University of Warwick. The poster focusses on the importance of adding ‘Google juice’ to your institutional repository by generating more links to individual papers deposited in an IR.

Brian has the largest number of downloads from OPUS, the IR of the University of Bath and he has an h-index of 11 for his papers on accessibility in particular are being well-cited. Research carried out by Brian and Jenny suggests that the large number of downloads and citations may be due to inbound links from popular services such as LinkedIn and Academic.edu.

More research needs to be done in this area, but should repository managers be acting on the current findings? There are obvious benefits of actively encouraging researchers to link to their papers from popular profile services used by their fellow researchers. Jenny’s review of the sector suggested repository managers are not being pro-active in promoting the use of such services. Why is this? What, if any, are the barriers?

Brian wrote a blog post that summarises the paper and another about the poster session. Jenny has blogged further thoughts on the original paper as part of this ongoing discussion.

For those not able to attend or wanting another look, there is a SlideShare presentation available,  based on the poster.

The debate carries on, so if you didn’t have time to contribute during the session or you weren’t able to attend the conference, please join in by leaving a comment on Brian’s blog and/or tweeting at Brian and Jenny.

In conjunction with Open Repositories 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland

Text mining tools and technologies have a long history in the repository world, where they have been applied successfully for a variety of purposes. These vary from pragmatic aims such as enabling document search and browse facilities, linking related documents, identifying copies or facilitating the deposit process, to support tools for academic research. The latter category includes supporting research on the basis of a large body of documents, facilitating access to and reuse of existing work, and connecting the formal academic world with areas such as the traditional and social media. The JISC have funded a number of projects and initiatives in both areas, notably NaCTeM and the ResDis programme. Research areas as diverse as biology, chemistry, sociology and criminology have seen effective use made of text mining technologies.

However, the uptake and hence the impact of these tools has been uneven. Several obstacles to development and deployment are frequently cited, including the maturity, complexity, and in some instances cost of software packages, as well as scarcity of relevant technical skills. Text mining methods and tools can be fragile and complex, requiring significant set-up time and effort. Projects making use of text mining may also suffer from legal obstacles, such as copyright and intellectual property considerations. The benefit to be gained from deployment of text-mining tools in areas such as institutional repositories or as a research tool in its own right may be difficult to predict without a costly pilot project.

This workshop is intended to bring together contributions from practitioners and researchers in fields connected to text mining and analysis. Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research papers: as a workshop, both work-in-progress and completed work are welcome.

This event will take place during the OR–2012 pre-conference workshop session (9th–10th July 2012).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Discipline-specific research involving text-mining: bioinformatics, chemistry, the social sciences, etc.
2. Techniques in text mining: sentiment analysis/subjectivity analysis, opinion mining, affect analysis, metaphor analysis, etc.
3. Legal aspects of text mining/analysis.
4. Current developments in text mining.
5. Metadata extraction from document text, including formal and informal metadata: document indexing, document classification, and evaluation of metadata quality.
6. Text mining for document categorisation or summarisation.
7. Text mining over the social web: community detection, timelines, etc.
8. Evaluation of text mining tools, open-source or commercial: case studies and findings.

Types of contribution

The following possible contributions are sought:
1. Full papers (6–8 pages)
2. Extended abstracts for oral presentation, posters or software demos (1–2 pages)

Submission

Papers/extended abstracts should be prepared in either Word or LaTeX using the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0–164–6–793341–0).
Files should be submitted by email to Emma Tonkin

Important Dates/Deadlines

• 15-May–2012 Title/Abstract submission (optional)
• 25-May–2012 Full paper/Extended abstract submission
• 8-June–2012 Decisions announced
• 25-June–2012 Submission of final papers
• 9/10-July–2012 Workshop

Publication

All accepted contributions will be published in the workshop proceedings. Authors of selected contributions will be invited to submit an extended and revised version for formal publication; to this end, a call for chapters will be launched following the workshop.

Workshop chairs

• Emma Tonkin – Innovation Support Centre, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK
• Torsten Reimer – JISC
• Paul Walk – Innovation Support Centre, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK