Source-to-Output Repositories – Phase Two Summative Evaluation Final Report

This document presents the final results of the phase two summative evaluation of the UKDA-StORe project’s portal repository system. After the completion of the regular funding phase of StORe under the JISC Digital Repositories programme in 2007 the project was granted an extension until mid-2008 to further refine the portal under the name UKDA-StORe. For the regular project a phase one summative evaluation assessed “the technical structure, functionality, design and quality of the demonstrator system, and the appropriateness of the ‘common model’ approach, using workshops to test the system with representative repository users”. It was agreed to conduct a phase two summative evaluation to further assess the development of UKDA-StORe and to complement the findings of the first evaluation phase. The phase two summative evaluation is based on a series of five expert user interviews to evaluate the StORe system in use. In the phase one evaluation it is stated, that “it is probable that a second complementary evaluation phase will be conducted in the future also based on the approach introduced here”. This endeavour could be realised in general, but under other specifications: As the UKDA-StORe extension did not consist of a user base for the evaluator to draw on the approach had to be modified – from user evaluation workshops to qualitative evaluation interviews with domain experts – with the task to evaluate the system in regard to barriers and facilitators to use and usability issues unchanged

Issues for the sharing and re-use of scientific workflows

In this paper, we outline preliminary findings from an ongoing study we have been conducting over the past 18 months of researchers’ use of myExperiment, a Web 2.0-based repository with a focus on social networking around shared research artefacts such as workflows. We present evidence of myExperiment users’ workflow sharing and re-use practices, motivations, concerns and potential barriers. The paper concludes with. a discussion of the implications of these our findings for community formation, diffusion of innovations, emerging drivers and incentives for research practice, and IT systems design

Scoping and business models report

The aim of this work was to scope the community for needs, raise awareness and encourage adoption of new social simulation models and tools developed in the National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation (NeISS) and gather findings, establish contacts, and build capacity for future activities

Summative Evaluation Plan - Project StORe

To evaluate the demonstrator system and project ‘common model’ in order to make recommendations for future development work. The evaluation will assess the technical structure, functionality, design and quality of the demonstrator system, and the appropriateness of the ‘common model’ approach, using workshops to test the system with representative repository users

Accelerating transition to virtual research organisation in social science (AVROSS) : final report

This report is the fourth deliverable of the AVROSS study (Accelerating Transition to Virtual Research Organisation in Social Science, AVROSS). The study aims were to identify the requirements and options for accelerating the transition from traditional research to virtual research organisations through e-Infrastructures. The reason for this focus is that it is clear that "soft" sciences have both much to gain and a key role to play in promoting e-Infrastructure uptake across the disciplines, but to date have not been the fastest adopters of advanced grid-based e-Infrastructure. Our recommendations to EU policy-makers can be expected to point the way to changing this situation, promoting e-Infrastructure in Europe in these disciplines, with clear requirements to developers and expected impact in several other disciplines with related requirements, such as e-Health

Development of a pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester – approach, findings, challenges and outlook of the MaDAM Project

Management and curation of digital data has been becoming ever more important in a higher education and research environment characterised by large and complex data, demand for more interdisciplinary and collaborative work, extended funder requirements and use of e-infrastructures to facilitate new research methods and paradigms. This paper presents the approach, technical infrastructure, findings, challenges and outlook (including future development within the successor project, MiSS) of the ‘MaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester’ project funded under the infrastructure strand of the JISC Managing Research Data (JISCMRD) programme. MaDAM developed a pilot research data management solution at the University of Manchester based on biomedical researchers’ requirements, which includes technical and governance components with the flexibility to meet future needs across multiple research groups and disciplines

Towards a generic research data management infrastructure

Until recent years, a focused and centralized strategy for the annotation, storage and curation of research data is something that has not been widely considered within academic communities. The majority of research data sits, fragmented, on a variety of disk structures (Desktops, network & external hard drives) and is usually managed locally, with little interest paid to policies governing how it is backed up, disseminated and organized for short or long term reuse. Recognition of how current practices and infrastructure present a barrier to research, has resulted in several recent academic programmes which have focused on developing comprehensive frameworks for the management and curation of research data1-3. Many of these frameworks (such as the Archer suite of e- Research tools1), however, are large and complex, and have an overreliance on new and novel technologies making them unwieldy and difficult to support. The paper discusses the development of a simpler framework for the management of research data through its full lifecycle, allowing users to annotate and structure their research in a secure and backed up environment. The infrastructure is being developed as a pilot system and is expected to work with data from approximately a dozen researchers and manage several Terabytes of data. The technical work is a strand of the MaDAM (Manchester Data Management) project at The University of Manchester which is funded by the JISC Managing Research Data Programme.

User-centered development of a Virtual Research Environment to support collaborative research events

This paper discusses the user-centred development process within the Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW) project, funded under the JISC Virtual Research Environments (VRE) programme. After presenting the project, its aims and the functionality of the CREW VRE, we focus on the user engagement approach, grounded in the method of co-realisation. We describe the different research settings and requirements of our three embedded user groups and the respective activities conducted so far. Finally we elaborate on the main challenges of our user engagement approach and end with the project’s next steps