The Research Information Landscape: Challenges for Researchers and Service Providers Michael Jubb Director Research Information Network UK Data Archive Workshop 11 July 2007

The Role of Information in Research: a Crude Model Defining a set of research questions, issues or problems Identifying relevant existing knowledge Accessing, analysing, and evaluating existing knowledge and data Designing a methodology for generating new knowledge Applying the methodology and discovering new knowledge Combining old and new knowledge to answer research questions and to enhance understanding Disseminating 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 understanding Assuring the quality of information outputs Ensuring appropriate recognition and reward Presenting, publishing and disseminating information outputs Facilitating access and use Assessing and evaluating usage and impact Preserving valuable information outputs for the long term

A Changing Landscape Research in the Lab Libraries and Archives Publications and Data Fieldwork

A Changing Landscape

Researchers Behaviour 1. As Users of Information

What do researchers want to find and use?

What Discovery Services do they Use? Ranked research discovery service/sourceRating 1. General search engine Internal library portal Specialist search engine Research colleague Subject-specific gateway A&I service, Bibliographic database External library or library portal2.7 8=. Browsing internal library shelves2.9 8=. Citation index Librarian List-servs Blogs3.5

Researchers Behaviour 2. As Creators of Information

Where do UK researchers publish? See

Data and Publications

Policy Initiatives OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding Ministerial Statement, January 2004 Recommendation to Member States December 2006 US Atkins Report 2004 NSB Long-Lived Data Collections Report 2005 NSF Cyberinsfrastructure Vision, and Interagency Working Group on Digital Data 2007 UK Wellcome Trust Some Research Councils

Increasing the Return on Public Investment in Scientific Research Scholarly capital Leveraging research investments Replicating and verifying research findings Asking new questions of extant data Emphasis on collaborative research Creation, sharing, re-use

Wellcome Trust

Issue 2 – Research potential not fully realised l Internet provides new opportunities for text and data to be fully integrated l The web – and web 2.0 developments – provides the ability for researchers to data-mine and mash-up data to generate new knowledge l The read-only access rights favoured by many publishers, limits these developments

Integrating text and data

Developing new resources from mining the literature: textpresso l 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 interoperability Annotation, amendments and updating Provenance and quality Exporting in agreed formats To other programmes as well as people Security Specifying and enforcing read/write access

Disciplinary Differences

Incentives to Share? openness collaboration reciprocity recognition coercion rewards are for publication, not data effort needed to document data, produce metadata, anonymise personal data control, competition and priority Control until publication Control until mining of data complete IP, confidentiality and access issues Misuse and misinterpretation free riders confidentiality Permissions re access to resources controlled by others

New (Non-Public Sector) Services

RSS

Some Issues and Implications Quality assurance and the metrics of trust Ratings for commentators and reviewers The role of high trust specialists Access to their annotated bibliographies and taxonomies Continuing commentaries on specialist topics Charges 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 partners Ownership, access and re-use Release of data to others Agreements within and between disciplines Syntax and semantics Embargoes, ownership and release Services, technology and policies to facilitate Use and re-use of research findings Discovery and re-use of data

A Microsoft View

3. Some Conclusions

The need for evidence Researcher behaviour and needs Changing research methods and cultures Disciplinary differences Gap between the leading edge and the mainstream Virtual research environments, e-science Open access Take-up of new services The information landscape Highly distributed, nationally and internationally Roles and responsibilities of key players

Policy, Process and Service Development Sustaining world-class research and research communications Continuity and change Challenge and response Enhancing efficiency and impact Evaluation and quality assessment (Biblio) metrics Knowledge transfer and social/economic impact Balances and interfaces International, national and local Researchers, service providers and institutions Commercial and non-commercial providers

Thank You Michael Jubb Research Information Network