And so, into the final few months of the HHuLOA project. The project has been a curious mixture to date of institutional developments informing and being informed by the specific project activities that the three partner institutions would have been unlikely to take forward without the project. This update mirrors this, and highlights that Open Access developments within our institutions go beyond what HHuLOA is covering, but also the value of the project activities.
System/metadata developments
The project has had a particular interest in how our systems can manage the metadata they need to. Within the project this has been taken forward through the analysis of RIOXX. An analysis of REF metadata (RIOXX+, so to speak) is forthcoming, and is being guided by our mutual understanding of how this can be implemented and presented through our repository systems (Hydra at Hull, hosted EPrints at Huddersfield, and local EPrints at Lincoln). Working towards a recognised metadata standard for display is also being explored at Huddersfield, focusing on APA 6th. Lincoln is focusing on the ongoing development of Repository Bridge, a system that can be used to more effectively flag the Open Access status of outputs in the repository.
Aside of repository concerns, both Hull and Huddersfield are in the process of selecting and implementing a new Research Information System. The work to understand the metadata required for our repositories will play into the RIS set-up, as it is likely that the RIS will be used to collect the metadata required in the first instance.
Another area that all three partners are looking at in more detail is ORCiD. Lincoln has a first iteration of a university-wide system for authenticating and handling ORCiD identifiers, whilst Huddersfield has implemented the EPrints plugin for testing. Hull will be rolling out ORCiD as part of the RIS implementation, and then capturing the identifier in the repository.
Advocacy/training developments
As the HEFCE policy deadline approaches, all sites have been looking at ways of spreading awareness of what academics and support service colleagues need to do, and why. Lincoln has been liaising with the local REF Office and Planning & Business Intelligence on reporting on citations and usage of OA outputs. Huddersfield is looking at making use of the CIAO and MIAO tools in training sessions (focusing on MIAO for researchers). Hull has been disseminating a postcard with instructions and attending as many staff meetings as possible to raise awareness prior to a series of open meetings and panels of academics telling their Open Access stories in Feb-Apr.
Linked to this has been the work of HHuLOA. Huddersfield has been making use of the Open Access life cycles (of which there are now four from different perspectives) and tube map in internal training sessions, whilst Hull has just concluded a national survey for the project on the links between Open Access and research workflows to better understand how Open Access can be embedded; a blog post on this will follow in February. We are also turning the work on navigating Open Access policies into a journal article to prompt ongoing discussion.
Other project activities?
Aside of the work described above, what else has the project been doing?
- Updates were made to the baseline spreadsheet of Open Access activity – further updates are encouraged and are being chased up from those who have contributed so far – and an analysis of the information within this carried out.
- Dissemination took place at the Northern Collaboration conference in September 2015, and at the Charleston Conference in the US in November. Presentations to come are at the Research2Reader (R2R) conference in February (on the Open Access life cycles) and at RLUK (on the links between Open Access and research workflows). A final project event, scoped as a Northern Collaboration Learning Exchange, is being developed for May. We also wrote up our project event from June and drew out key themes from this.
- We are working with Jisc Monitor to advise on workflows and the design of the service, whilst also taking part in the pilot as Tier 3 institutions.
- We will be looking at links between Open Access workflows and e-resource management workflows (using the TERMS structure) to identify potential links, again looking at how to better embed Open Access.
Research Data Management
So, RDM may not be a primary activity for HHuLOA, but a key area of development at each partner. Huddersfield has received its first data from a humanities research project and is refining guidelines with the Research Office. Lincoln continues to develop a business case for a data registry and repository (having tested CKAN in the past), whilst Hull is working with the UK Research Data Discovery Service to enable harvesting of data records from Hydra. A growth area…