Thank Joy, Let's be clear. It's very difficult to initially fund research activities on an international scale. It's impossible to sustain them if they aren't on an international scale. That's the ..... (what's the word?). Our institutions appear to have a vast interest in R(esearch) and very little interest in the D(evelopment) which is supposed, i thought, to follow it.
If we are serious about sustainability, then we need to broaden the "shared/common" services, both I and c, focus a little less on the survival of existing institutions and place a little more importance on the global (research) groups which, supposedly, they are meant to support. We're not going to get out of this (information overload) mess without using a different way of thinking to the thinking which got us into it. To give the conversation about research a little more gravitas, let me point out that the 5% that each reader lost from the value of their pension fund last week, will lead to an education in what happens when an entire economic system is founded on a financial instrument called a Credit Default Swap. By this time next year it will have cost each of them at least 30% of the value of their nest eggs, unless it's already in cash. By that point, we can reflect on the fact that our institutionalised grab for short-term funding into "Research Management" led us into a lifecycle of broad social indifference. Incremental progress in an old paradigm no longer work. You put it well. ".... the problem is deciding where the financial support will have the greatest impact". It's also deciding how to do that with less resources. If I can convince your readers that they are in the Media business and not the Research or Education business, we might become capable of doing just that. I also hope that no one will take offence to my GB Shaw method of overstatement. Having lost a wife to the Big C, and discovering less than half of cancer research can be found easily, i write to relieve myself of hate (of existing institutions), not spread love as John does. So let me start here. http://tiny.cc/fw69b It's a report to network operators (the "mousetrap builders" in each country = NREN). They 'Hamster Wheel' (to use Lorcan Dempsey's terminology) in their social indifference as much as cheesemakers (curators) do. Eventually, if we can get the two world views to understand one another, we might become capable of making our new global institutions sustainable. I'll also ask that you find me the group within your 'continental' funders who are responsible for sharing the public resources for "Research Management". This is the mousetrap builder's little group. http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fire/contacts_en.html If we're starting from the bottom up, I'd like to know we are dealing with people, not institutionalized behaviour. Regards, simon -----Original Message----- From: Joy Davidson [mailto:joy.david...@glasgow.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, 4 August 2011 4:06 PM To: 'Simon Fenton-Jones'; research-data...@jiscmail.ac.uk; dcc-associates@lists.ed.ac.uk; 'DCC Phase 3' Subject: RE: [dcc-associates] News release: JISC support for MPs' peer-review report Hi Simon, I think you raise a good point. It is very difficult to sustain activities on an international scale. The DCC currently cooperates in numerous international initiatives. Several are jointly funded - for instance we are partners in a JISC and IMLS funded project at the moment. However, these are generally short-term projects and it would be good to have some sort of sustained fund that supported international cooperation over the longer term. The new EC project sounds interesting. The DCC has been working to improve understanding and communication between researchers and other stakeholders in the research data lifecycle for the past seven years so this would be something we'd be keen to hear more about. Perhaps more immediate to many of the researchers and research support staff we work with in the UK is the challenge of sustaining support and services at the institutional level. The JISC Managing Research Data (MRD) programme has made some excellent progress in embedding the results of short-term projects into institutional infrastructures and budgets. The next group of MRD projects due to start in October should progress things even further. I guess part of the problem is deciding where the financial support will have the greatest impact - locally, nationally or globally. There is probably a need for support at all levels. However, if more institutions were able to sustain their research data management, sharing and preservation infrastructures and support locally it might lead to a bottom up improvement on a global scale. Best regards, Joy -----Original Message----- From: Simon Fenton-Jones [mailto:simo...@cols.com.au] Sent: 04 August 2011 01:00 To: Joy Davidson; research-data...@jiscmail.ac.uk; dcc-associates@lists.ed.ac.uk; 'DCC Phase 3' Subject: RE: [dcc-associates] News release: JISC support for MPs' peer-review report Hi Joy, I had the same kind of discussion with some Aussie MP's re this one a few years ago. It boiled down to some people pointing out to MP's that it's a bit "do we say, not do as we do". The most important researchers (it can be argued) in any country are the ones who support Parliamentary inquiries. After all , they decide where the public's money is spent. A Parliament's researchers are not seen to collaborate in an inquiry. Each does pretty similar things, separately. Each comes up with fairy similar conclusions, separately. Each then goes off the fund pretty similar (ICT) research inquiries, separately. Then it's left to the inquirers to compensate for the obvious lacking in a parliament's perspective. We live in a globalized world. This National mindedness is enlarged to a European level, where an EC parliament offer dobs of money, to existing professionally-minded consortia, on a ritualized basis; the division of which is judged by "expert groups". Many associations attempt to gather a consortia from their own profession. The DDC do so in their member's attempts to improve the "management of Data" as much as others, like terena, will do in their member's attempts to "share data" in a "cloud". One will work on "open archives", the other will work on "open storage" as if one was in no way related to the other. I'm bring this up now as you may have noticed the EC attempting to improve their "partner's search". http://tiny.cc/pwzk4 The FP7 site is becoming participant centric. http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/whatisnew With a communication hub to come (they hope). http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?lg=en&pg=forum At the core, they're starting to get their heads around the fact that if "their" NCP's don't collaborate globally, then it's unlikely their fundees will. So is there any chance you might like to focus on this call as well. http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet_en.html It's a bit more open. Now the real problem. Data/content managers and Network operators don't talk the same language. One focuses on (Information) Awareness; the other, (Communication) Collaboration. Never the twain doth meet. But there is talk at a EC project called Paradiso about "Platforms for Awareness and Collaboration", so maybe there's a chance we can get the two (well defended) professional kingdoms together. Excuse the length. But you'd have to admit, it beats reading any National MP's report. Just so irrelevant these days. Question. How do you fund Global Groups (for the long term) instead of a National Institutions? Regards, simon -----Original Message----- From: owner-dcc-associa...@lists.ed.ac.uk [mailto:owner-dcc-associa...@lists.ed.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Joy Davidson Sent: Tuesday, 2 August 2011 3:45 PM To: 'research-data...@jiscmail.ac.uk'; dcc-associates@lists.ed.ac.uk; 'DCC Phase 3' Subject: [dcc-associates] News release: JISC support for MPs' peer-review report News release 1 August 2011 JISC support for MPs' peer-review report MPs recently recommended improvements to the way scientific papers are checked before they are published, calling for the peer review process to be more transparent. Read the BBC article about the report <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14314501> The recommendations came out of a House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report which also urged that researchers make their scientific data publicly available, and that reviewers have formal training. Executive secretary at JISC, Dr Malcolm Read, said: "At JISC we strongly support the recommendations of the House of Commons Committee report. Though most researchers agree with the principles of peer review, many feel there is room to improve how it is implemented. Recently there have been suggestions about alternatives, like open peer review and JISC has funded universities to look into open access academic journals which are compiled from other openly available material." JISC is already acting on a number of the recommendations - including funding the Dryad project mentioned in the report. Dryad-UK provides a repository for the data underpinning research articles, encouraging greater research openness. The BMJ Open journal and titles from BioMedCentral and PLoS have become partners, integrating their submission process with Dryad and strongly encouraging authors to deposit research data. Neil Jacobs, programme director at JISC, said, "We are also engaged in productive collaboration with innovative publishers such as PLoS, as well as industry bodies, for example on standardising the way usage statistics for articles are reported." The government report describes access to data as 'fundamental' for researchers to reproduce, verify and build on each others' results. This spirit of openness is something JISC supports, through its work with the UK Research Councils. However, there are challenges, as JISC's programme manager for data management Simon Hodson explains, "These objectives will be difficult to realise unless research practice and supporting systems and infrastructures are developed to make good practice easier. Similarly, researchers will feel little motivation to make data available in a timely way unless conventions of recognition and reward evolve to encompass the effort required to ensure data quality and reusability. The JISC managing research data programme is helping universities support researchers in responding to these challenges." ends JISC's position on why becoming more open can benefit colleges and universities <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/openaccess> How can I better manage my research data? <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/supportingyourinstitution/researchexcellence/datamana gement.aspx> Advice on data management planning from the Digital Curation Centre <http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-management-plans> Follow the 'importance of good data management' event online in advance and on the day (13 Sept 2011) <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2011/09/researchintegrity/conferenceonline.asp x>
