Back from the fringe

I've now returned from the recent Repository Fringe 2009 event held unsurprisingly in Edinburgh. Ben O'Steen (ORA Software Developer) and I had been invited to give the opening keynote presentation at the event. Being a keynote it allowed us to explore some of the areas of repository development that we think will be of importance over the short to medium term future and to flag up areas of concern. Our presentation, "Where are repositories going?" is available online. There's a blog entry written by a member of the DataShare team which gives a summary of our talk

The main points we raised were:

• New methods of publishing are likely to be attractive to authors. I used Dr. David Shotton's (Oxford, Zoology) semantically enhanced article as an example. There research data is provided in such a way that it can be manipulated and re-interpreted and terms within the article are semantically linked. This goes way beyond keyword search because relationships between specified words are machine readable eg all words concerned with habitat are identified, and all organisms are linked to their Linnaen classification. It makes for a very powerful document. Aren't authors going to want more of this aren't they?
• New methods of publishing may lead, in some disciplines, to new models of peer review that takes advantage of the power of the web.
• Current work with identifiers for individual authors will continue and ultimately bear fruit. This is a real problem which, when resolved will make life so much easier for ensuring that this Jane Smith is the same person as this J.Smith, this Jane M. Smith and this Jane Brown (after she was married).
• Everything on the web should have a name. This is basically the linked data model that I described in a previous post
  
• Repositories are going to become much more integrated within general research management at institutions - this is already beginning to happen at Oxford. It will mean, amongst other things, that academics are not constantly being asked for the same information by different people, and that the institution can easily access the data it requires for statutory and other reporting and for planning.
• There are some areas where we need to cut the complexity: copyright (digital items are in danger of being 'locked away' more than print because of restrictive rights as reported in the BL paper 'Copyright for education and research'), open access (too many different and confusing models), multiple deposit of a single item into a number of appropriate repositories (eg local and subject repositories) and individual deposit (needs to be almost invisible).
• Print on demand is likely to become more prevalent. Imagine being able to select a number of freely available items or sections of items from a repository and print them out as a nicely bound volume at minimal cost in 5 minutes. A bit like you might take a memory card of photos to print out in Boots the Chemist. It's so cheap that you wouldn't worry about writing your own annotations on the book.
  

One service I saw which I liked was the annotation tool, a.nnotate, which can be easily (so I'm told) plugged in to repositories. It allows users to annotate PDF documents with comments. This is something I would like to add to ORA. As well as adding annotations for personal use, they can also be shared.

As usual, much value of the event came from the networking opportunities. I'm now in contact with the Edina people who are running some work to ease deposit into multiple repositories (the Open Access Repository Junction project). They are working with Nature Publishing Group with whom we've already been in contact, and they are keen to work with us.

The closing keynote was given by Clifford Lynch, digital library guru who is respected for his thoughtful insights on developments. One point he mentioned which came up more than once at the event, was that in the current financial situation, repositories like ORA may become more important sooner than we think. We’re used to the idea that institutions in 3rd world countries cannot afford journal subscriptions. There is a possibility that this could become the case in the developed world and be true for major institutions, with repositories taking a more important role for dissemination of research. He described huge cuts in library budgets in the US and this will have an effect on subscriptions. He posed the question of what would be the outcome if high energy physicists were forced to choose between paying for the upkeep of ArXiV (it has recently been reported that Cornell is baulking at paying for continued upkeep) or retaining journal subscriptions? Additionally, there is likely to be a reduction in subscriptions to second tier journals which could have a significant effect in some areas.

Cliff Lynch expects traditional peer review to reduce in some disciplines. Traditional peer review is profligate in its demands on human resources. Reviewers have far too much material to review. Authors spend too much effort re-submitting in order to find a publishing outlet. It is all too expensive and unsustainable to continue with the current enormous volume of literature moving through the peer review system, and the numbers of person hours involved. He would like to see more direct distribution of research via repositories like ORA or via university presses.

It was an inspiring conference. And as well as publicising Oxford library developments, we've come away with some excellent contacts and ideas.

SallyR