Heather Joseph

Very timely workshop on a topic that is central to the advancing collective mission not only of the library community, but of the academy as a whole, and society at large. Role as a representative of the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is to focus on the importance of consistently using Open Access as a compass point that underpins our efforts in the Digital Library and Institutional Repository space, so that initiatives led by the community can achieve the global impact they are intended to deliver. SPARC’s mission is to act as a catalyst for action in creating a more open and equitable system of scholarly communication, expand dissemination of research and scholarship in a way that leverages digital networked technology and ultimately reduces the financial pressure on libraries. The approach to Open Access is holistic:

• Infrastructure
• Journals
• Digital Repositories
• Legal Framework
• Copyright/licensing
• Author education
• Policy Framework
• Local/national/international
• Coalition Building

In particular, SPARC actively works to support emerging “meta policies” that help ensure that full OA becomes a requirement in the research arena, and enable true interoperability to be achieved.

Policy focus

• Dissemination of results is an essential component of research and the Public’s investment in science.
• Funders obtain value from their investment only when results are used.
• Governments would boost innovation and get a better return on their investment in publicly funded research by making research findings more widely available, and by doing so,  they would maximize social returns on public investments.

Emerging trends in the U.S.

U.S. NIH Public Access Policy; – U.S. Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008; Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants (TAA – CCCT). We are in the midst of some clear trends on which the community can capitalise, helping to achieve, from a larger policy level, the kind of interoperability promised by Open Access. A very clear message is being sent from the top that Open is the default.

Call to action

• Set the Default to “Open”
• Recognition that maximising access & utility maximises benefits
• Recognition that exceptions will be the rule – “Shades of Open”
• Community driven approach to  development/implementation
• National discussions include data, Open Educational Reseouces (OERs), other materials – not just articles

• Explicitly recognize need for partnerships (public/private and beyond)
• Culture change needed – incentivize sharing Intellectual property rights must be respected
• “Good Practices” that will evolve into “Best Practices”
• “Will to act” increasing as results from active policies become available

The talk is available on the dedicated web page.

Peter Burnhill

“A scholar’s positive contribution is measured by the sum of the original data that he contributes. Hypotheses come and go but data remain.”
in Advice to a Young Investigator (1897) Santiago Ramón y Cajal (Nobel Prize winner, 1906)

2 traditions/mentalities co-exist in Information Science:

1. Document tradition: signifying record-ness
2. Computational tradition: various uses of formal technique

There are non-convergent mentalities working to build the ‘digital library’: modernisation of library services  and infrastructure to access complex databases.

Emergence of Digital Library: Information Science
“Approaches based on a concern with documents, with signifying records: archives, bibliography, documentation, librarianship, records management, and so forth
“approaches based on uses for formal techniques, whether mechanical (such as punch cards and data-processing equipment) or mathematical (as in algorithmic procedures).”

Semantics of Open Repositories & Interoperability
R is for Repository

• “university-based institutional repository is a set of services … for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution & its community members. … organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access … (C. Lynch, 2003)

• Digital repository differs from other digital collections in that content is deposited, whether by content creator, owner or third party; architecture manages content as well as metadata; repository offers a minimum set of basic services; must be sustainable & trusted, well-supported & well-managed. Digital Repositories Review (R.Heery and S.Anderson, 2005)

O is for Open

• OA (for publications) not the only ‘open’ policy:
• OER: Open Educational Resources
• Open means ‘not closed’: making teaching & learning materials visible
• Open CourseWare – often as open stack of webpages
• Open Data
• Datasets tradition (IASSIST); ‘open/privilege access to databases; open data.gov
• Open Source Software
• OSS has its own way of doing things

Key questions

• Are Repositories the (only) way to support an Open Agenda?
• Is Open really what Repositories are for?
• Is this usage just intended to help us avoid issues of IP and access management?

Should the focus be on:

• Interoperability between Repositories?
• Interoperability of Repositories with the wider Internet?

Interoperability Challenges & Strategies

• Whose strategy, and towards what purpose?
• ‘within & for the research & education sector’? Or beyond?
• For the institution, the UK, EU, global anybody; for the researcher?
• For the machine as user [“Provider/Consumer”]?

The talk is available on the dedicated web page.

Seamus Ross

The DL.org Workshop on Digital Libraries & Open Access. Interoperability Strategies at the British Academy in London kicked off with a welcome to the DL statekholder community in attendance this morning. Dr Seamus Ross, Dean and Professor at the Faculty of Informatics, University of Toronto thanked the attendants for their support of the event, outlining the main goals of the event. He outlined the main focus of the DL.org project, now drawing to an end, in terms of the main outputs presented at the Academy: the Digital Library Reference Model and Technology and Methodology Cookbook. These outputs have drawn on the experiences and knowledge  of DL.org representatives flanked by an international team of experts on domains spanning content, functionality, user, policy, quality and architecture. Several experts are in atendance to offer their insights and how collaborative work has helped shape the main project outputs.

• Trigger a multi-disciplinary debate about research on Digital Libraries and Open Access.
• Discuss DL.org project results, and existing frameworks and best practices for interoperability within the communities of practice.
• Propose common strategies for interoperability: start discussing how to implement a mechanism for exchanging, sharing and integrating results between DLs and OARs communities.
• Create new connections and partnerships, and explore ways for a closer cooperation between researchers and the communities of practice.

British Academy - Workshop Setting

The Workshop addresses interoperability challenges within the context of digital libraries and open access repositories, along the perspectives of content, user, functionality, policy, quality and architecture, the six core domains captured in the DL.org Reference Model. Targeted at Library and Information Science researchers and professionals, and to the Open Access community, the event is of interest to people involved in developing interoperability frameworks or models, and people involved in the implementation of digital libraries, institutional, subject or learning object repositories, and associated services across a broad range of communities of practice.

International Experts

Peter Burnhill, EDINA, University of Edinburgh, UK

Pablo De Castro, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

Wolfram Horstmann, University of Bielefeld, Germany

Heather Joseph, SPARC, U.S.

Hans Pfeiffenberger, Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany

Experts on DL.org Outputs

Leonardo Candela,  National Research Council of Italy

Vittore Casarosa, National Research Council of Italy

Perla Innocenti and Giuseppina Vullo – HATII, University of Glasgow

Introduction and Chair of Round Table on Common Strategies for Interoperability

Seamus Ross, Dean and Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, Canada

Places are limited due to venue capacity. Early registration is highly recommended. More details here.