The Research Information Landscape:

Challenges for Researchers and Service Providers

Michael JubbDirector

Research Information Network

UK Data Archive Workshop11 July 2007

The Role of Information in Research: a Crude Model

Defining a set of research questions, issues or problemsIdentifying relevant existing knowledgeAccessing, analysing, and evaluating existing knowledge and dataDesigning a methodology for generating new knowledgeApplying the methodology and discovering new knowledgeCombining old and new knowledge to answer research questions and to enhance understandingDisseminating the outcomes of research in a form that is both sustainable and retrievable

Core Functions of the Research Communications System

Doing research to generate new knowledge and understandingAssuring the quality of information outputsEnsuring appropriate recognition and rewardPresenting, publishing and disseminating information outputsFacilitating access and useAssessing and evaluating usage and impactPreserving valuable information outputs for the long term

A Changing Landscape

Research in the Lab

Libraries and Archives

Publications and DataFieldwork

A Changing Landscape

Researchers’ Behaviour

1. As Users of Information

What do researchers want to find and use?

Research Resources Yes No Journal articles 99.5% 0.5%

Chapters in multi-authored books 97.0% 3.0%

Organization’s web sites 90.8% 9.2%

Expertise of individuals 90.1% 9.9%

Conference proceedings 85.8% 14.2%

Monographs 83.3% 16.7%

Datasets – published or unpublished 62.0% 38.0%

Original text sources, e.g. newspapers, historical records 61.5% 38.5%

Preprints 54.7% 45.3%

Non-text sources, e.g. images, audio, artifacts 47.0% 53.0%

Other 18.0% 82.0%

What Discovery Services do they Use?

Ranked research discovery service/source Rating

1. General search engine 1.6

2. Internal library portal 2.0

3. Specialist search engine 2.1

4. Research colleague 2.2

5. Subject-specific gateway 2.4

6. A&I service, Bibliographic database 2.6

7. External library or library portal 2.7

8=. Browsing internal library shelves 2.9

8=. Citation index 2.9

10. Librarian 3.1

11. List-servs 3.3

12. Blogs 3.5

Researchers’ Behaviour

2. As Creators of Information

Where do UK researchers publish?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Percent

Arts & humanities 82.0 6.1 8.6 6.5 2.8

Social sciences 77.9 8.6 15.9 5.3 3.8

Phy sical sciences 72.6 20.6 27.8 6.3 5.4

Life sciences 78.3 8.6 14.1 10.1 14.9

Sub-based journal (SBJ )

SBJ + OA repository

SBJ + own website

Fee-based OA journal

Free OA journal

See http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/libraries-report-2007.pdf

Data and Publications

Policy InitiativesOECD

Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public FundingMinisterial Statement, January 2004Recommendation to Member States December 2006

US Atkins Report 2004NSB Long-Lived Data Collections Report 2005NSF Cyberinsfrastructure Vision, and Interagency Working Group on Digital Data 2007

UKWellcome Trust Some Research Councils

Increasing the Return on Public Investment in Scientific

ResearchScholarly capitalLeveraging research investments

Replicating and verifying research findingsAsking new questions of extant data

Emphasis on collaborative researchCreation, sharing, re-use

Wellcome Trust

Issue 2 – Research potential not fully realised

Internet provides new opportunities for text and data to be fully integrated

The web – and web 2.0 developments – provides the ability for researchers to data-mine and mash-up data to generate new knowledge

The “read-only” access rights favoured by many publishers, limits these developments

Integrating text and data

Integrating text and data

Developing new resources from mining the literature: textpresso

Ability to computationally mine the text and data to enable new facts to be discovered The abstract is just not good enough.  TextPresso developers found that

"full text access increases recall of biological data types from 45% to 95%.  Some specific types of data (e.g., antibody data, mapping data, transgene data) are very unlikely to appear in abstracts ( 10% recall) but can be found in full text (70% recall)

Developing new resources from mining the literature: Malaria Atlas Map

Data mined from the research literature

“Mashed-up” with Google earth

Issues with Data Publication and Sharing

Integration and interoperabilityAnnotation, amendments and updatingProvenance and qualityExporting in agreed formats

To other programmes as well as people

SecuritySpecifying and enforcing read/write access

Disciplinary Differences

Incentives to Share?“openness”collaborationreciprocityrecognitioncoercion

rewards are for publication, not dataeffort needed to document data, produce metadata, anonymise personal datacontrol, competition and priority

Control until publicationControl until mining of data complete

IP, confidentiality and access issues

Misuse and misinterpretation“free riders”confidentialityPermissions re access to resources controlled by others

New (Non-Public Sector) Services

RSS

Some Issues and ImplicationsQuality assurance and the metrics of trust

Ratings for commentators and reviewers

The role of “high trust” specialistsAccess to their annotated bibliographies and taxonomiesContinuing commentaries on specialist topicsCharges for access to their brains?Formation of trust syndicates?Security and authentication

Implications for peer review systems?Citation and credit

Or………….

Scholarly Information Infrastructure

Agreements between research partnersOwnership, access and re-useRelease of data to others

Agreements within and between disciplines

Syntax and semanticsEmbargoes, ownership and release

Services, technology and policies to facilitate

Use and re-use of research findingsDiscovery and re-use of data

A Microsoft View

3. Some Conclusions

The need for evidence

Researcher behaviour and needsChanging research methods and culturesDisciplinary differencesGap between the leading edge and the mainstream

Virtual research environments, e-scienceOpen access

Take-up of new services

The information landscapeHighly distributed, nationally and internationallyRoles and responsibilities of key players

Policy, Process and Service Development

Sustaining world-class research and research communications

Continuity and changeChallenge and response

Enhancing efficiency and impactEvaluation and quality assessment(Biblio) metricsKnowledge transfer and social/economic impact

Balances and interfaces International, national and local Researchers, service providers and institutionsCommercial and non-commercial providers

Thank You

Michael JubbResearch Information Network

http://www.rin.ac.uk