RePosit 16 June 2011 Meeting Minutes.docx

RePosit Project meeting No. 4

16th June 2011

9:15am–4:30pm

Woburn House, London

Present: Nicola Cockarill (Plymouth), Lizzie Dipple (Symplectic), Jodie Double (Leeds), Ellie James (Keele), Bo Middleton (Leeds), Sarah Molloy (Queen Mary), Rachel Proudfoot (Leeds), Gill Still (Exeter), Ian Tilsed (Exeter)

Apologies: Jill Evans (Exeter)

Chair: Lizzie Dipple

Minutes: Nicola Cockarill, Ellie James, Rachel Proudfoot

Agenda

1. Project progress:

review of project issues/risk - project management report
advocacy progress so far

2. Work towards project deliverables:

survey
printed advocacy materials
training workshops
Google discussion group

3. Planning for the RSP event in Nottingham on 19th July

4. Deciding how we'll organise the final project report and agreeing a plan for the report-writing (plus a start on what to include)

5. Outstanding action points review

6. AOB (inc budget points)

1. Project progress

Lizzie tabled the Project Progress Report.

Project blog: 128 posts in total with 2247 visits from 959 visitors.

Need to continue to blog on a wide range of issues.

Action: ALL to continue to blog and any outstanding blog posts to be completed

Action: EJ to blog on her ARMA presentation and Keele advocacy materials

Google Group

Concern that if topics are not posted the Group could cease and there was a feeling that this might occur before the Group had a real chance to get going.

Action: ALL At least another 2 topics to be posted on the Google group

Risk Register

Risk register has been updated. Most serious risk remains the technical issues with the implementations at Plymouth and Exeter. NC has added this as a new risk on the Risk Register that until the integration is live, full advocacy cannot begin and users can not deposit using the RT integration. Live dates are not currently known at either site despite the best efforts of staff at the sites and Symplectic. This project risk has come true.

Jill at Exeter had raised the concern that the extension to the project writing up time which now extends until 20th October, would mean that advocacy is being delivered when potentially not many academics would be around. UoP and UoE agreed that they would focus advocacy on subsets of staff – and get results from those specific departments for the final report. Also there will be inductions of new staff in the summer. No further extension is desirable.

N.B. Open-access week is 24th to 30th October.

2. Work towards project deliverables

Advocacy materials

Sarah has been working on getting the appropriate Creative Commons Licences in place and wording added as required. Ellie showed examples of her printed posters and postcards, which she’ll put up once the website is live. Good places for putting up posters include bathrooms, kitchens, etc.

Action: SM to pick up design files w/b 20th June and adding information about CC for other project staff to look at the detail.

Action: SM to ask QM Creative Services about the circular sticker design

Action: EJ needs to ensure the CC licences are in place for Keele material and will liaise with Sarah

Action: SM will upload or circulate materials w/b 20th June

Action: ALL would be useful to have some examples ready for the RSP event on 19th July.

RSP event on 15th June http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/communication-skills-for-effective-advocacy-1/

This event had some useful materials that would be applicable to the RePosit cribsheet of useful information that can be used to support advocacy and training sessions to respond to questions/concerns. Alternatively, if RSP are maintaining their own cribsheet, could they put a CRIS section on it for our material? More sustainable this way.

Action: SM to add stock Q&A from RSP communications skills event to our cribsheet (or find out if they have their own we can feed into)

Action: RP to add other information to our cribsheet

Balviar at JISC told Lizzie another project (finishing in July) wants to link to our materials in their final report. Sarah and Rachel have been in contact with this project (via RightsCom). With the QMUL repository (our final location for project output materials) still not live externally, the Leeds is our temporary alternative location if needed.

Action: LD to find out dates and follow up with the JISC project/RightsCom

Survey

All sites have the survey ready. The survey is live at Keele. Sarah is about to put the QMUL survey live, and there’s a little bit of tinkering before the Leeds one can go live. Reminder that BOS is not available 28th/29th June and that it might look slightly different when relaunched. End dates clarified as:

31st July: Keele, Leeds and QMUL

31st Aug: Plymouth and Exeter

Action: NC, SM, JD/RP, IT/JE to launch survey as soon as appropriate at their universities. (N.B. Need live RT before survey can be launched)

Action: ALL to decide on most appropriate means to advertise survey at their uni (e.g. email out, talk about at training/advocacy sessions).

Action: NC and JD to decide on most appropriate way to decide on the winner from each uni

Training workshops

Less about support from Symplectic but more about individual sites getting sessions booked in as appropriate. There was discussion about creating podcast style e-tutorials (with added audio) to promote RT using software such as Captivate and Snag It. Jodie offered support for anyone doing this since she’s had experience.

Action: ALL to book in sessions when possible

Action: ALL to investigate e-tutorials if part of advocacy plan

Training log on Google Docs

Action: ALL to add details of awareness and training sessions to training log and keep this updated as activities continue

Action: EJ to fill in training log retrospectively

Feedback was reported that an academic was concerned about submitting outputs to the institutional repository due to concerns about the perceived quality of other outputs.

Action: to be raised as a topic for discussion on the Google group.

Google Discussion Group

Discussion about viability/sustainability of Google Group and alternatives such as email discussion lists. Ideas around we need to go where people go so use the mechanisms that people use for other purposes. The final report needs to reflect that it was attempted to start a Google Group and that to make it successful and sustainable, it needs to be supported by RSP either as a forum/mailing list.

Action: JD to make Google group open for membership

Action: ALL to do advocacy around Google group

Action: ALL need to use the group to mirror the useful discussions and experience sharing that occurs naturally at RePosit meetings

Action: LD to ask other members to start discussions too

Action: RP to contact Jackie Wickham and/or Bill Hubbard at RSP to enquire about RSP future (funding?) and the possibility of having a CRIS/IR area on the RSP website (could this be a way forward to help with funding?)

3. Planning for the RSP event in Nottingham on 19th July

The REPOSIT team have been allocated a one hour and a half slot at this event. The group considered doing a half-hour presentation followed by breakout groups. The group queried the constitution of the audience, so the session could be tailored to the participants. The audience is likely to be repository and research managers. Glasgow University are also talking at the event in the afternoon.

Action: RP to ask Emily at RSP for details of bookings – number of people expected, who’s actually booked so far and the intended audience

Action: Find out from Glasgow about their talk?

From the REPOSIT team attendees are: Ellie, Sarah, Nicola, Rachel, Jodie and Jill (plus Lizzie attending).

The group discussed possible topics for the session. The CRIS integration which is the USP of the JISC project should be a key theme, perhaps along with ‘is it worth it?’ Bo noted that a lot of universities have done advocacy work for CRIS and repository separately, but not for the two together. The group brainstormed and came up with the following topics for breakout groups at the event:

Branding (Nicola)
Governance/ownership of the two systems (research office/library/IT) (Jodie)
Motivation for engaging academic staff (including links with web pages) (Ellie)
What data should be exchanged between the two systems (Rachel? Sarah?)
Being involved in procurement (make a separate case for repository – institutional context) (Rachel)
Advocacy – who are the key stakeholders? (leads into our project materials) (Jill)
Mediated vs self deposit (Sarah?)
Legacy data (?)

The group agreed to split the presentation (lessons learned) on the basis of the topics above, to include the basics of the project and also to capture the discussions in the groups. It is also important to plug the posters and materials which other HEIs can utilise. It was agreed the best format would be to start the session with the breakout groups and to finish off with a half-hour presentation. The presentations can therefore be written in advance and each presenter can feed back on the discussions in their breakout session. Each break-out session could be run in pairs to discuss two topics, giving 15 minutes discussion time, plus 5 minutes follow-up, and the groups – or us the facilitators – circulate for three times.

Action: Presentations for each topic to be drafted by 1st July, along with questions supplementary questions/materials to prompt any slow-starting breakout groups.

Action: EJ to write short 5-minute overall introduction to the RePosit session

Action: LD to arrange Skype call a week before the meeting to run through timetable and presentations (to make sure they fit together), so may involve additional Skype call.

Action: LD to speak to Symplectic about getting an academic to attend RSP event

Action: ALL to put RSP event on their email signatures and mention to people

Action: Write a blog post about our involvement with the RSP event (to publicise it)

Additional notes from discussions:

Might be useful for the project team to develop a Prezi with all the arguments for using repositories, with zoom onto CRIS reasons
Would any early survey results be able to feed into our presentations and hence provide some academic involvement?

4. Deciding how we'll organise the final project report and agreeing a plan for the report-writing (plus a start on what to include)

Lizzie circulated the JISC report template. N.B. The final report will be a public document.

Timescale: we will start to draft the final report after the Nottingham event; final report due Oct 2011.

Writing the report: some elements are project-wide e.g. how we structured the questionnaire, other elements will be written from a local perspective. Use Google docs sharing to help fill everything in together.

Impact of CRIS+repository model

Although quantitative data are important, JISC has indicated qualitative measures are also valuable. It may be difficult to collate and compare our stats across all partners. We should analyse the correlation between advocacy and deposit. Our experience suggests the CRIS-to-repository model addresses one deposit barrier but there are several others; tackling one in isolation provides no easy solution to workflow, versioning and copyright issues.

(Ian noted the loss of auto-harvested abstracts gives us an additional carrot – full engagement with the repository will yield abstract plus OA advantages.)

It is too early to draw final conclusions about the impact of the CRIS+repository model. JISC is keen for projects to feed into community practice.

Action: RePosit team to (i) continue to collect monthly deposit stats; (ii) meet 6 months post-project; (iii) consider publishing article(s) with our findings.

RSP Event/ RSP

Action: ALL to add details to email signature & publicise where possible

Action: RP to explore ‘CRIS corner’ of RSP website with RSP staff (Emily, Jackie).

Report brainstorming – as per JISC report template (sections below)

Section 1 – Acknowledgements: Lizzie to write

Include: RSP, Symplectic, ARMA, ex-project team members (Gill & Richard), Google group members?.

Section 2 – Project Summary: Lizzie and Bo to write

Initial draft and then rewrite at end.

Section 3.1 – Project Outputs and Outcomes: Lizzie to write

Open access training materials
Training strategies for embedded deposit tools
User survey report	Anecdotal evidence from survey where no absolute statistics for results available?
Advocacy strategies for embedded deposit tools
Outcomes
Increased proportion of depositors
Increased repository holdings with stable URIs	If our statistics didn’t go up: no amount of advocacy can resolve this until the publishers’ policies change.
Increased knowledge in the community about the use case
Engagement with the community	Working with other JISC projects e.g. SONEX, KULTIVATE (partic JD and Exeter)

Section 3.2 – How did you go about achieving your outputs/outcomes?: Lizzie to start general thread & others to add

Advocacy materials and training materials have merged. Realised we had to be more specific and tailored.

Split outcomes into areas and each partner to contribute to story? Perhaps a section for each institution?

Start with generic outcomes
Then say what was specific at each institution (including analysis of the statistics)

Add advocacy plans as appendices to the report.

Section 3.3 – What did you learn?: All to contribute. Brainstorm and then structure

More complicated and time consuming than expected.
Publishers policies get in the way / unhelpful.
Factors outside our control – e.g. institutional attitude. May be difficult to influence? Institutional priorities can change over time.
Whose battle is OA – is it the institution, the VCs, funders, individual authors, libraries?
Various technical issues – did we start the project too soon? We would have more evidence if the connector had been live at each partner from the start. There were too many risks and contingencies. All five partners were reliant on one company and one person.
It was difficult to create generic advocacy materials.
Staffing resources are consistently underestimated: we’ve had to call in lots of hours and greater staffing. (NB do we need to differentiate between getting system live and running the system?)
Working with other institutions: we looked different at the start but learnt a lot from each other regardless of our start points and what we’d done before.
Collaboration and relationship building: people can be nervous about revealing what they don’t know therefore a trusted and safe community is very important for open discussion of issues. Peer discussion can be a quicker way to solve problems than going back to the software vendor.
A shared service can add complication - but RePosit helped to bring shared service partner together.
What does it mean to implement repository tools? When new to the area, it can be difficult to gauge how complex or how easy implementation will be. Vendors may overstate simplicity. RePosit partners were surprised by how much local customisation was required with some code needing to be written from scratch even where there are existing customers with the same repository platform.
Vendors could offer more structured help for connector planning and implementation – important that this is fed back to JISC and vendors.
Lessons learned from Leeds presentations: generic materials work to a point but really need to be institution specific e.g. top local repository item, hits etc. This is what catches attention. There was some tension between generic needs and local needs e.g. the choice of tag lines and images.
There’s a passion to get the connector model to work despite the difficulties because we can see the benefits. Huge commitment from library and research colleagues.
Academics tend to be positively predisposed to repositories/OA but this doesn’t often translate into deposits.
Upload is easy but versions are problematic. Co-authors may not have the relevant version e.g. may reside with lead or corresponding author.
Hard to collect statistical evidence about deposits; statistical reports need to be easy to generate and be based on well defined concepts.
Project looked at one barrier – deposit method – but you can’t take it in isolation. We need to sort out the rest of the barriers. Are the other barriers more fundamental? Biggest barriers perceived to be publishers’ policies and the academic deposit culture. Cultural change most difficult to address?
Cutting journal subscriptions may have an impact; it will bring home to academics the fact that not all material is accessible to everyone.
SHERPA RoMEO colours don’t necessarily help. Needs to be clearer and emphasise where you can deposit the published PDF. Should we turn it the RoMEO data off? If we’re arguing about it and don’t understand it, what are academics to make of it?
RoMEO is really valuable for administrators but you need to be a regular user to understand it. Surfacing RoMEO ties in with mediated vs unmediated deposit models. Is one model better than the other? The answer will depend on local drivers and institutional ethos.
Lessons learned about Google Groups – need to publicise and facilitate content.
Project management – it was useful to break into small workgroups. This helped individuals focus and work towards achievable goals. Without the smaller groups, actions could seem overwhelming. Skype meetings were very helpful – danger of partners feeling isolated particular where partners geographically dispersed.
Unexpected output: Symplectic’s RoMEO colour report breaking down potential deposits by institution. This report would be even more effective if it could be broken down by academic unit. Some partners found this report valuable, others less so.
We need more statistics that can help with service planning and advocacy.
Evaluation – Nicola will feed in from training sessions.
We could include the feedback we got from the Leeds presentations – Nicola used that to inform the Plymouth presentations. Ian has feedback from the Programme meeting.
Academics’ requirements are very varied – e.g. a group of Keele scientists wanted to make sure no pre peer reviewed material was added – they even wanted the system to be locked down to ensure no pre peer reviewed content could be added. Academics can be concerned about the quality of other research deposited in the repository – they don’t want their research to ‘sit alongside’ it. Academics don’t always grasp how repository data is exposed and used in practice.
Make sure we remember informal feedback e.g. from sessions etc. Positive and negative.

Section 3.4 – Immediate Impact: To be tackled individually first then reviewed for common threads

Partner HEIs – academics, senior managers, repository staff, IT staff, library staff, students

Repository community

Research management community

Software providers?

Project teamwork, relationships, learning from other institutions.

Materials

Dissemination

Google group

Correlation between advocacy and deposit.

Section 3.5 – Future Impact

Other institutions will use our materials.

Continue to track our statistics and have follow-up meeting to review and possibly write articles from this we could publish. Other later output from anecdotal evidence can be written up on the blog.

Impact on software providers? Sherpa improvements?

Ongoing conversation about the CRIS deposit model.

Evidence Base – perhaps they could be involved in the Google group. Do they have specific questions or feedback? They’ll be producing a report for JISC.

Action: IT to follow up with Evidence Base

5. Outstanding action points review

Person responsible	Task	Original date	New notes
	PROJECT MATERIALS
SM & EJ	Create appropriate Creative Commons licences for advocacy materials		Done for SM’s images
SM & EJ	Make advocacy materials available for sharing in a format that allows for swapping of logos, etc	9th May	Burn CDs to post out
All	Each institution to tailor materials for their own use
All	Find out how much in-house printing costs
IT & EJ	Create “real-life” versions of the presentation for senior managers at Exeter and Keele respectively – and put these up in Google docs	14th Feb	EJ to upload, IT can’t write his until RT is live
LD	Pursue the creation of updated Symplectic Repository Tools user guides	February
NC	Share Plymouth-specific & RoMEO guides, since generic how-to guides not possible		NC to road-test them, then could share outside project team
All	Add to the presentations cribsheet (any concrete examples, evidence or statistics, or good answers to difficult questions)	ongoing
	PROJECT WORK
Representative from each HEI	Set up survey on BOS	w/c 16th May	Done
All	Set dates and Symplectic requirements for workshops	30th Nov
All	Work out video requirements for workshop materials (podcast-style learning objects) to enable Symplectic assistance	30th Nov
All	Find out about procedures for videoing at own institution [N.B. Leeds have offered to loan equipment.]
All	Investigate how awareness can be embedded in existing university training courses and documents, what exists (part of detail of advocacy plans)	ongoing
	PROJECT COMMUNICATIONS
EJ	Blog about Embed project	4th Feb
SM	Start a Google group discussion thread about RoMEO confusing terminology: ‘author version’, ‘post-print’, ‘accepted manuscript’	28th March	What about the Juliet data showing up as well?
All	Work through list of Google group discussion topic posts	asap
All	Continue to write blog posts	ongoing	IT promised to write something
tbc	Put up comment(s) in Symplectic client forum about RePosit and Google group – once more content in the Google group
LD	send out message/invitation to join Google group to JISC repositories mailing list – once more content in the Google group
	FINAL REPORT
All	Keep adding to log of advocacy/training events and attendees	ongoing
LD	Ensure message of needing more deposit automation is in the RePosit final project report	October
LD	Ensure RoMEO terminology issues are included in the RePosit final project report	October
LD	Explain in project report why information on alternative times for deposit wasn’t formally elicited in the survey	October
LD	Ensure the topic of counting depositors appears in project conclusions report as an area for possible future JISC research funding	October
LD	Ensure the topic of issues with interoperability, shared services and integration appear in final project report	October

New action points

Action: EJ to check terms and conditions of iStockPhoto images used in Keele designs

Action: RP to ask Gareth Johnson to start a Google group topic

6. AOB

Budget

There is money in the budget for the dissemination event. As well as our travel and accommodation costs, should we also donate to RSP? Or could this be a contribution to the ‘CRIS corner’?

If needed, there may be enough left in the budget for a fifth project meeting to work on the final report further.

Dissemination events spreadsheet

Jodie may be going to the Repository Fringe event in Edinburgh 3rd to 5th August.

Action: LD to ask BM about the CERN workshop in Zurich

Summary of New Action Points

ALL to continue to blog and any outstanding blog posts to be completed
EJ to blog on her ARMA presentation and Keele advocacy materials
ALL At least another 2 topics to be posted on the Google group
SM to pick up design files w/b 20th June and adding information about CC for other project staff to look at the detail.
SM to ask QM Creative Services about the circular sticker design
EJ needs to ensure the CC licences are in place for Keele material and will liaise with Sarah
SM will upload or circulate materials w/b 20th June
ALL would be useful to have some examples of printed up advocacy materials ready for the RSP event on 19th July
SM to add stock Q&A from RSP communications skills event to our cribsheet (or find out if they have their own we can feed into)
RP to add other information to our cribsheet
LD to find out dates and follow up with the JISC project/RightsCom
NC, SM, JD/RP, IT/JE to launch survey as soon as appropriate at their universities (N.B. Need live RT before survey can be launched)
ALL to decide on most appropriate means to advertise survey at their uni (e.g. email out, talk about at training/advocacy sessions)
NC and JD to decide on most appropriate way to decide on the winner from each uni
ALL to book in sessions when possible
ALL to investigate e-tutorials if part of advocacy plan
ALL to add details of awareness and training sessions to training log and keep this updated as activities continue
EJ to fill in training log retrospectively
Someone(?) to raise academics’ concerns about the perceived quality of other outputs as a topic for discussion on the Google group
JD to make Google group open for membership
ALL to do advocacy around Google group
ALL need to use the group to mirror the useful discussions and experience sharing that occurs naturally at RePosit meetings
LD to ask other members to start discussions too
RP to contact Jackie Wickham and/or Bill Hubbard at RSP to enquire about RSP future (funding?) and the possibility of having a CRIS/IR area on the RSP website (could this be a way forward to help with funding?)
RP to ask Emily at RSP for details of bookings – number of people expected, who’s actually booked so far and the intended audience
Someone(?) to find out from Glasgow about their talk?
ALL to draft dissemination event presentations for each topic by 1st July, along with questions supplementary questions/materials to prompt any slow-starting breakout groups
EJ to write short 5-minute overall introduction to the RePosit session
LD to arrange Skype call a week before the meeting to run through timetable and presentations (to make sure they fit together), so may involve additional Skype call.
LD to speak to Symplectic about getting an academic to attend RSP event
ALL to put RSP event on their email signatures and mention to people
Someone(?) to write a blog post about our involvement with the RSP event (to publicise it)
RePosit team to (i) continue to collect monthly deposit stats; (ii) meet 6 months post-project; (iii) consider publishing article(s) with our findings.
ALL to add details of RSP event to email signature & publicise where possible
RP to explore ‘CRIS corner’ of RSP website with RSP staff (Emily, Jackie).
IT to follow up with Evidence Base
EJ to check terms and conditions of iStockPhoto images used in Keele designs
RP to ask Gareth Johnson to start a Google group topic
LD to ask BM about the CERN workshop in Zurich