Blogging - why bother?

The benefits of blogging for academics have been well described and listed.

See these posts in the LSE Impact Blog http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/01/14/advice-for-potential-academic-bloggers/

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/02/24/five-minutes-patrick-dunleavy-chris-gilson/

and our own University of Kent advice http://www.kent.ac.uk/socialmedia/reasons.html

But in her workshop for PSSRU Kent, George Julian put a slightly different slant on it........

As an academic the likelihood is that the specific area of your research is only of direct relevance to a handful of other researchers worldwide.  The trick is to use social media to capture this small but significant audience.  This way you have a ready-made list of potential collaborators or reviewers.

This is in the context of research by Mewburn and Thomson which found that the blogs which academics write are read mostly by other academics. 

So how do you attract these followers? You’ve written a post, how are you going to get anyone to see it?

·         Tweet about it, link to it from other social media sites such as Linked In

·         Reference your blog in your email signature, presentation slides etc

·         Guest blog on other relevant sites

·         Comment on other people blogs

·         Think about the timing of your post.  Publish it to coincide with a national event (eg. an awareness week) and make sure you have sufficient time in your own diary to answer queries, respond to comments and engage immediately afterwards

Social media and academia

Dr James Baker, Curator, Digital Research, British Library
 University of Kent LibChat, 28 Jan 2014

Digital curation and research needs to be about more than just resource discovery

Can use Twitter in different ways- there are no rules:
to project information
harvest/gather information
link

You might use Twitter differently for different aspects of your life

To get the most out of Twitter you really need to engage and interact; something many organisations do not do.  Certainly the research unit I work for is keen to project but very cautious about interacting. Any thoughts?

Try Buffer http://bufferapp.com/ to queue up Tweets so that they are sent out at intervals throughout the day rather than all at once

I liked this phrase used in the discussion afterwards
"People aren't using Twitter to read articles, but to find out what people think about them"

As a result of the UK Web Archive  (Since April 2013 the British Library has begun to archive the whole of the UK web domain, under the terms of the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013) the BL will soon hold more data than books

Fascinating use of Tumblr - the BL's Mechanical Curator "randomly selected small illustrations and ornamentations, posted on the hour"

The BL has uploaded over one million images to Flickr from 65,000 books from the 17th to the 19th century.  The images are illustrations, diagrams, maps, borders and illuminated letters. Each image is tagged with the metadata for the book from which it was taken. 

As James explained, initiatives such as these pose the question "What is a collection?" Is data derived from other collections in itself a collection?

Reference: Steven Jones (2013) Emergence of the Digital Humanities

Digitising the Event: Digital Approaches to the Peasant's Revolt 1381

Digital Humanities annual lecture at University of Kent
Professor Andrew Prescott, Head of Department of Digital Humanities, King's College, London

Digitised archives need to be "different shapes", not just digitised versions of 19th century initiatives and printed calendars. 

Digitised archives need to convey the uncertainty and "layering " of events. Users want to be able to engage with the images to build up the story and the layers.  For instance, you want to detect later insertions and additions to the original, link to other documents and to images of objects. 

Historical events tend to be referred to as centralised and as having a focus, but in fact they were often dispersed and dislocated. The participants were unlikely to have had a sense of a particular pivotal moment or symbolic image. This is reflected in the archives.  For example, information about the Peasant's Revolt is spread across a whole range of archives: King's Bench, Common Pleas, Gaol Delivery, Parliamentary Rolls as well as records of Chancery and Exchequer, local town and manorial records, chronicle writing and informal letters and records.

The great opportunity of digitisation is that it makes connections possible

But emphasis has so far been on digitisation of national archives rather than local, probably because of funding. There are very few digitised manorial or town records

Open Access: Understanding the New Environment, University of Kent, 23 October 2013

Dr Steven Hill, Head of Research Policy, HEFCE

Outlined HEFCE’s current approach to Open Access for the REF after 2014.

He explained that the REF principles were to:

·         Maximise access to outputs

·         Sustain scholarly communication

·         Continue to evaluate the approach to Open Access

The current position is that outputs submitted to the post-2014 REF should be Open Access

However, “the challenge is in the detail, not the overall aims”

Consultation about this detail has just ended http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/

Decisions need to be made about:

1.       The proposed criteria for open access.  How do we judge whether an output is Open Access? HEFECE proposes that to be Open Access an output should be:

 Accessible through a UK HEI repository

Available as the final peer-review text as a minimum

Does not need to be publicly available at the time of the REF deadline but en route to be so

May have embargo periods

Should allow manual and automatic search and re-use of content including downloading and text-mining

2.       The definition of the research outputs to which the criteria will apply. HEFCE proposes these will be:

Journal articles

Conference proceedings

Not monographs (Professor Geoffrey Crossick, University of London, leading investigations into monographs)

A two year notice period of the OA requirement will apply

 

3.       The proposed approaches to allowing exceptions from the open-access requirement. These are EITHER that this could be on a case by case basis with 100% as the target OR that different percentage targets are set for each panel.

Professor Rosemary Hunter, Professor of Law, Kent Law School

Talked about her experiences establishing an Open Access journal feminists@law

She wished to dispel the myth that free online journals are vanity publishing.  In her opinion the benefits of “Diamond” or “Platinum” publishing via a free open access online journal (neither Gold, nor Green but in-between) are:

·         No Article Processing Charges (APCs)needed

·         Citation statistics prove that OA articles are more frequently cited

·         Free Open Source journal software can be used

·         Less well–endowed institutions who cannot afford to pay APC’s can produce OA articles

Business model/Design

Open Journal System software used (flexible and with a good back end for referencing, editing, admin work)

Hosted in USA at a cost of £500 a year (financed by Information Services at University of Kent)

“Free” academic labour for review, editing, proof reading

Kent therefore has an established model for hosting open access journals. See http://www.kent.ac.uk/library/research/open-access/index.html?tab=oa-journals

 Kevin Ashley, Director, Digital Curation Centre

Talked about Research Data Management for Open Access

“Because good research needs good data”

RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/DataPolicy.aspx

Digital Curation Centre provides training, guidance, overview of funders’ data policies, example data management plans http://www.dcc.ac.uk/about-us

Also Digital Curation Centre/University of Cambridge/University of Glasgow Incremental project - Really useful resources and guidance on research data management and open access http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dataman/

See Carly Strasser’s blog Data Pub California Digital Library http://datapub.cdlib.org/

Dr Michael Jubb, Research Information Network

Open Access – where are we now?

Explained the background to the 2012 Finch Report http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf which was followed by the RCUK policy on Open Access http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUKOpenAccessPolicy.pdf

Finch committee met a few weeks ago and a 2^nd Finch report is coming out.

RIN have published a report on how universities are coping with implementing the RCUK Open Access requirements http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/rcuk-oa-requirements/

Lively debate has followed the Finch report including two parliamentary debates.  See the Sep 2012 House of Commons Select Committee on Business, Innovations and Skills report on Open Access publishing http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmbis/99/9911.htm

Among other things, this recommends that more weight be given to the Green route and that funding should not be given for APCs for hybrid journals because this effectively means that funders/universities are paying twice: once for publication and once for subscription.  Unresolved tension exists between the Gold and the Green route.

Open Access Monographs in the Humanities

Open Access monographs in the humanities and social sciences conference 1-2 July 2013

Organised by JISC collections and OAPEN, Hosted by the British Library (presentations link)

 

This was a timely and thought provoking conference, the first of its kind to discuss the monograph as a research output and how this sits with open access (OA) publishing. The theme evident through all discussions was the tension between the desire to keep the monograph as an object with control, integrity and boundaries, and the culture of discourse and community which are at the core of the Humanities and Social Sciences (H&SS). However, an understanding that OA publishing is “not something that’s coming, it’s here” (Hacker, Open Monograph Press at Heidelberg) meant that the conference focused on implementation and problem solving. Key challenges for authors, publishers, distributors and libraries were reviewed. Alongside this, business models, international common policies and frameworks were identified. This report summarises the strand for institutional libraries and suggests a way forward for Kent.

Summary of challenge

In the last 20 years monograph sales have declined from an average of 2000 to just 200 sales per title.  A new OA business model is required for the monograph to survive and the H&SS research output to remain relevant in the digital age. OA for monographs has not yet been made mandatory by Finch, AHRC, RCUK, Leverhulme, or HEFCE. The Wellcome trust is the only grant awarding body to have done so. 

Benefits of OA monographs (summarised by Dr Rupert Gatti, Open Book Publishers, Director of Studies in Economics Trinity College, Cambridge)

·        Broader readership – increased access to readers not connected with an institution

·        Reader interaction  - a new peer review model at pre-and post- review

·        Opportunities for multimedia publications e.g. overlay maps, incorporating text with video and music, audio and web apps

·        Relate research to primary sources – connect back to digitised archive

·        Innovations in research and dissemination  - can be done by the academic community not just commercial publishers

·        Reduced costs of text translation  - enables non-native English speakers to be internationally competitive

All sounds great but how and who pays?

New OA monograph business models

·        Gold – authors pay a book processing charge (BPC) up front for OA.  A range of payment models exist across publishers.  Includes not for profit companies such as Open Book Publishers and Open Monograph Press.  But who provides the money?  Research funders or University libraries?

·        Green – deposit in an institutional repository.  But embargoes are a problem - very restrictive e.g. Palgrave allow one chapter to be OA after 36 months. There is no equivalent of the Sherpa Romeo Journals system to check permissions. 

·        Freemium – libraries or readers pay.  Publishers make basic HTML ‘read-online’ version available online for free and libraries pay through subscription/membership for formatted “premium” versions (Pdfs, edoc) with additional data.  These premium sales fund the free version e.g. Open Editions, OECD

·        Library consortium/partnerships – groups of libraries pay fixed costs for collections of OA titles. The cost per title or collection reduces with the number of participating libraries e.g. Knowledge Unlatched.

·        Altruists pay for public benefit. Best for back titles, crowd sourced e.g. Unglue.it

·        Increased University Press publishing  – larger institutions could see benefits e.g. Michigan, but librarians were sceptical – publishers are a professional business and universities do not have the resources/skill-set to do this

Challenges for libraries

·        Moving away from traditional distribution channels so OA can be accommodated, e.g. Dawsons and Ebrary impose DRMs on OA books

·        Preservation and Reliability – what if an OA provider ceases to exist?  Long-term technical reliability of platform?

·        Change in processes of handling commercial e-books V. OA books – collection development, training and discoverability

·        Will book and chapter level DOIs be needed? – MARC records for each

·        Hybrid OA monographs – containing in and out of copyright materials (OA and non-OA material)

·        Is there a reference point for help with technical issues with OA Books as with commercial e-book providers?

·        All institutional libraries will provide similar resources  – it will be the quality of access and support provided that will stand out not the collections

·        Administering ‘BPC’ – staff resource costs and pressure on library budgets

Supporting OA monographs at Kent

·        Subscribe to DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) and integrate into catalogue/resource discovery

·        Provide workshops/training/checklists for academics and post-grads so that they can be supported and encouraged to publish OA

·        Promote and support the use of Kent Academic Repository for Green OA: supporting authors on their use of KAR e.g. with terms of licences, safeguarding items in KAR and ensuring long term access

·        Guarantee preservation through LOCKSS and CLOCKSS, and Portico. Investigate relationship with National archiving projects and preservation models

·        Current awareness of future policy environment – e.g. the role of KAR for the next REF

·        Help library users discover and access the best quality and most relevant OA materials through:

o   Resource awareness training sessions and publicity of OA materials

o   Library subject guides and other library resource webpages

o   Reading list system to integrate and link to OA Books

o   Evaluating and distinguishing between OA publishing and free web books – produce a guide for quality sources

o   Indexing other high quality OA sources for catalogue/resource discovery

o   Investigate referencing options for OA Books with reference management tools (RefWorks)

·        Review models such as Freemium, Library partnerships and managing an in-house ‘print on demand’ service

·        Investigate subscriptions to tools such as CrossMark with a commitment to maintain quality across updated OA documents

·        Taking on more responsibilities that traditionally sit with publishers?

Good quotes

“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented good for scholarship” (Neylon, PLoS quoting Peter Suber, Budapest Open Access Initiative)

“context trumps content” … “creation of a community not a thing”… “libraries as laboratories” (Guedon, University of Montreal)

“The explosion in OA publishing has fuelled the rise of questionable operators” (Adema, DOAB)

“OA triggers anxiety about quality which has resulted in entrenchment” (Fitzpatrick, MLA)

Further reading

Kathleen Fitzpatrick Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology and the Future of the Academy (NYU Press, 2011)

Hugh McGuire, Brian O'Leary Book: A Futurist's Manifesto. A Collection of Essays from the Bleeding Edge of Publishing (O'Reilly Media, 2011)

Liaison visit to Coventry University London Campus

Rosalyn Bass and Louise Dorman visited the London campus of Coventry University where a colleague, Jane Alderson-Rice, is working on secondment as manager of the Learning Resource Centre (LRC). 

The London campus occupies two floors of East India House, Bishopsgate.  It has been open approximately 2 years and teaches 1,000 law and MBA students who have chosen to study in London rather than Coventry.  The majority of these are non-UK students, a large proportion of which are from China or India. 

The LRC staff comprises 3 librarians, 3 Information Technologists and 5 English language sessional teachers.  An additional library graduate trainee post has just been secured.  A third floor in the building has been acquired and the LRC is to be relocated.  LRC staff are currently negotiating over the proposed layout.

Information gathered during the visit which was of particular interest and relevance to the University of Kent library is summarised as follows:

Induction -  There are several new intakes in a year.  Students are required to attend a compulsory, time-tabled IT workshop which covers hands-on IT set up and login into Moodle, reading lists, timetables and library catalogue.  Moodle is used very much as a “one stop shop” for student resources. A separate library session has been offered but take up was low, so library sessions have been added onto the end of the IT session.  This has been more successful.

Information Literacy/IT skills/Study skills – An impressive calendar of training sessions is available delivered collaboratively by IT and library staff.  This are bookable though a separate module “Spotlight”.

Enquiries - one librarian explained that the level of understanding of spoken English for some of the international students can be quite low compared to their written English, and that cultural differences can require a specific and careful approach. 

Staff training – Cultural awareness training days for front line staff have been offered and found to be very helpful. 

Signs and shelf labels – the library was user-friendly and labels helpful.  We liked the: “A newer edition of this book exists” labels,  the simple listing of all the classmarks and subjects on the shelf end, and the “Not for loan” labels.  See photos.

International Student Experience Fair, University of Kent

Rosalyn Bass and Louise Dorman from Academic Liaison Services, Templeman Library, had a stand at this event on 29 January 2013.  It was well orgnaised and well attended.  30 odd students visited our stand and we were impressed by their maturity, good manners and enthusiasm. All of these had used the library and were generally positive about it.  Feedback was helpful and specific and as follows:
 

Negative

·        Refworks – postgrads had problems getting Cite N Write to work. Had taken advice from Subject Librarian and contacted RefWorks support for help, but had not had any success.  Suggested try Mendeley.

·        Ebooks – frustration with them disappearing after 1 day loan expires because personal notes are lost. Can’t print from them.  Suggested use them online because notes will be preserved as linked to login.

·        Insufficient primary texts – Not enough copies of literature primary texts.  Discussed whether these should be purchased by student. Explained library 1:8 Gold Standard of one core text per eight students.

·        Problems accessing journals – Demonstrated and explained about accessing via library pages

Positive

·        The students were happy to discuss and compare University of Kent with their experiences of university at home.  We learned that one USA library is reference only with most resources having to be used on site and that French universities feel more like schools, with most students living at home and less social life. One student expressed an interest in being an “ambassador” for the University of Kent when he returns home.

·        It was pleasing to note that when students were shown the Academic Liaison leaflet, most of them  recognised their subject librarian and had already had some sort of contact with them

·        Students like the library social area and café

·        One student praised the  “efficient IT service”

·        Many referred to the library inductions and said that they had been helpful

·        All students reported that they were confident finding their way around the library and could locate the books they needed

We both found that the fair provided a good opportunity for promoting the library services. It allowed us to interact with students informally, gather feedback and offer advice, as well as liaise with colleagues from other departments.