Statement from Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science

Following on from my posting of earlier today, I would like to share with you a Statement from Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science, which addresses the issues which are of importance to UK universities going forward:

‘EU and international students make an important contribution to our world-class universities, and our European neighbours are among some of our closest research partners.

There are obviously big discussions to be had with our European partners, and I look forward to working with the sector to ensure its voice is fully represented and that it continues to go from strength to strength.

EU students who are eligible under current rules to receive loans and grants from the Student Loans Company will continue to do so for courses they are currently enrolled on or about to start this coming year. The Master’s Loans launched today are also still available to eligible EU students. EU students will continue to receive funding for the duration of their courses. Information on the eligibility criteria, including residency rules, is available. The SLC have provided more information at ‘EU Nationals and Student Finance in England’

Further future funding arrangements with the EU will be determined as part of the UK’s discussions on its membership and we will provide what updates and clarity we can.

As the Prime Minister has stated, there will be no immediate changes following the EU Referendum, including in the circumstances of British citizens living in the EU, and European citizens living here. This includes those studying or working at UK universities.

For students, visitors, businesses and entrepreneurs who are already in the UK or who wish to come here, there will be no immediate change to our visa policies.

Erasmus+
The referendum result does not affect students studying in the EU, beneficiaries of Erasmus+ or those considering applying in 2017. The UK’s future access to the Erasmus+ programme will be determined as a part of wider discussions with the EU.

More broadly, existing UK students studying in the EU, and those looking to start in the next academic year, will continue to be subject to current arrangements.

Horizon 2020 research funding
The referendum result has no immediate effect on those applying to or participating in Horizon 2020. UK participants can continue to apply to the programme in the usual way. The future of UK access to European science funding will be a matter for future discussions. Government is determined to ensure that the UK continues to play a leading role in European and international research’

I hope this is helpful, and I will continue to share news with you as things develop.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

Provost’s Video

I am writing in the light of my recent post on the UK’s EU Referendum to invite all colleagues in UCL Library Services to view the new video from the Provost which addresses some of the immediate questions which staff and students have been posing.

Universities UK and the Russell Group of research-intensive universities are working to safeguard future access to EU funding streams, including for research via Horizon 2020, ERC (European Research Council) and Marie Curie, and for Erasmus exchanges. We will also be working to ensure that staff from other member states of the EU maintain a right to remain and work. We will be fighting to ensure that we maintain the right to free movement of staff and students from Europe and the rest of the world.

I will continue to write on this issue as things develop. Finally, and importantly, the most worrying aspect of the way that this debate has been promoted by the Leave campaign is that it has played on xenophobia and racism. Please know that if you are subject to any form of abuse, or if you witness any, that this is unacceptable behaviour and you will have my full support and that of UCL in addressing it.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

Referendum result

I am writing following the Provost’s e-mail to all-staff today, in light of the result of yesterday’s EU Referendum. I want particularly to echo the Provost’s words when he writes: ‘Today, more than ever, I want to reaffirm to you all that UCL will remain a global university through our outlook, people and enduring international partnerships. I also want in particular to address UCL’s staff and students from all countries of the European Union. We value you enormously – your contribution to UCL life is intrinsic to what the university stands for.’

University bodies such as Universities UK and the Russell Group of research-intensive universities are already working to support the position of the UK’s outstanding HE infrastructure following the result of the Referendum. The Russell Group has already said: ‘The UK has not yet left the EU so it is important that our staff and students from other member countries understand that there will be no immediate impact on their status at our universities.’

Clearly, there are significant challenges for the UK and for UK universities to tackle in the coming weeks and months. If any member of UCL Library Services staff has a particular concern about the impact of the Referendum result, they should raise the matter with their immediate line manager. We can then discuss any pertinent issues with UCL to identify what the solution could be.

Change is an opportunity, as well as a challenge. We greatly value all our staff members and their contribution to the success of the Library’s services. I can assure you that this will not change.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

LEaders Activating Research Networks

LEARN is an EU-funded project, led by UCL Library Services, which aims to prepare researchers, research organisations and funders for the data deluge. In new emerging research paradigms, the research data which underpins the research publication can be made available alongside the publication itself (e.g. journal article, book).

The 2nd LEARN Workshop was held in the University of Vienna on 7 April (Stephansdom, Vienna, left). There were just under 50 attenders from a number of countries – Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Switzerland. The morning session was given over to keynote presentations, setting the scene. I gave one on the importance of research data management and the ambitions of the LEARN project.

The afternoon sessions were devoted to Breakout Groups, where all the attenders were asked to contribute their views on a number of issues. I chaired the session on policy development. Compared to the UK, it was interesting to discover that most research organisations in central and eastern Europe did not have research data management policies. UCL’s is here.

The Workshop was very useful in identifying a number of themes and approaches, which will be reflected in the Toolkit of Good Practice which the project is developing. One obvious area is on policy development, and the routes that institutions have taken in establishing research data management policies. Another lesson learned from the Vienna meeting is that the project outputs, principally the template Research Data Management policy and the Toolkit of Best Practice, need to reflect the actual needs of research organisations and where they are in instituting research data management practices and infrastructures. These will differ institution by institution and the project needs to be aware of this.

The 3rd LEARN Workshop is at the LIBER Conference in Helsinki in the Summer.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

An important week for Scholarly Publishing in Europe

The 2nd week in December has been a triumphant one in Europe for supporters of new developments in scholarly publishing.

Two European announcements have underlined that the publishing landscape is fast changing.

The first announcement took place on 9 December, when the European Commission issued a Communication on the future of European copyright reform. LERU (League of European Research Universities) immediately issued a Press Release to celebrate the momentous news that the Commission has promised to bring forward legislation in 2016 for a mandatory, pan-European, Exception in European copyright frameworks which will allow researchers to undertake Text and Data Mining (TDM) on all content to which they have legal access.

Text and Data Mining is a set of workflows and tools which will allow automated searching of petabytes of material to identify new linkages and meanings. For commercial journal and monograph literature, text and data mining in Europe is currently only legally possible in the UK, which has an Exception in its national laws. This is hopeless for much research, which is today undertaken by research groups across national boundaries. LERU, along with LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries), has lobbied the European Commission and Parliament for years to act. On 9 December, the Commission said that it would. This means that, when legislation is passed, researchers will have legal certainty in performing text and data mining on commercial materials (to which they have lawful access) as well as Open Access materials.

The Commission’s announcement, however, does not please LERU completely. The proposed Exception is restricted to academic activity, and would not empower SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) or Citizen Scientists (unattached to a university) to undertake TDM on commercial materials to which they have lawful access. LERU says in its Press Release that this must change, and that a level playing field for TDM activity should be introduced across Europe.

The second important event took place on 10 December, when Dutch universities and the publisher Elsevier issued a joint statement describing the new agreement that the Dutch have reached with this publisher from 2016. LERU immediately issued a second Press Release. In the agreement, Elsevier has promised that by 2018 30% of Dutch-authored papers published in a selection of Elsevier journals will be made available as Open Access without the payment of Gold Article Processing Charges (APCs). LERU has campaigned vigorously for publishers to offset APC payments against subscription costs – to support university library budgets which are under great pressure. 7500 organisations and individuals have so far signed the LERU Statement on this topic. If you would like to sign, click here.

LERU has welcomed the move by Elsevier to offset some of the articles it publishes against subscription costs, but the % is modest. LERU wants more. Professor Kurt Deketelaere, Secretary-General of LERU, says: “With this Dutch agreement on the table, I call upon the European Commission and the forthcoming Dutch EU Presidency to work with all stakeholders and bodies involved, to bring EU-wide sensible solutions to the fore. In the era of Open Science, Open Access to publications is one of the cornerstones of the new research paradigm and business models must support this transition. It should be one of the principal objectives of Commissioner Carlos Moedas and the Dutch EU Presidency (January-June 2016) to ensure that this transition happens. Further developing the EU´s leadership in research and innovation largely depends on it. Finally, this agreement must also be a signal for university associations in other countries to come to similar, preferably even better, big deals with publishers in the near future. Hopefully the negotiations in the UK and Finland in 2016 can be inspired by this first, modest, step in The Netherlands.”

Well, the UK negotiations with Elsevier on a new big deal do start in 2016 and I, as chair of the JISC Electronic Information Resources Working Group, will be chairing the Elsevier Negotiating Board, with 2 UK Vice-Chancellors adding their weight to the discussions.

2016 is going to be a momentous year for the development of scholarly publishing. In a way, UCL Press has beaten everyone to it. We are a born-OA University Press and all our publications can be downloaded and are open for text and data mining activity by readers. I made this point tonight (10 December) when I addressed the UCL Press Christmas Party in the Flaxman Gallery. 2016 will bring enormous challenges before we reach the happy position of having a mandatory pan-European Copyright Exception for TDM and the best possible UK deal, embracing OA publishing, with a major global publisher. It will be interesting, a year from now, to see the outcome of these two separate discussions.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

CEO UCL Press

EU Copyright reform: Breakfast meeting in the European Parliament

On Monday 19 October, I was honoured to be the keynote speaker at a meeting organised by LERU, the League of European Research Universities, on the projected EU copyright reform. The Breakfast meeting was hosted by MEP Julia Reda (pictured),who was the rapporteur for the European Parliament’s Report on the projected reform of EU copyright legislation. 60 people attended the session (standing room only) on a Monday morning before 09.00 to hear a session on European copyright – clearly something is going on.

In my keynote presentation, I set the proposed European copyright reform against the backdrop of the emerging agenda of Open Science (=Open Research), with Open Access to publications, Open Data, new forms of research evaluation, and Citizen Science. I explained that the technique of Text and Data Mining (TDM) comprised a new set of tools for researchers, which changed the way they undertook research. TDM allows researchers to search huge amounts of digital material (publications, research data) and to find linkages, and therefore meaning, between them. This has the power to revolutionise research and to speed up discoveries to some of the great challenges which face Society. However, to enable these new technologies, there need to be changes in European copyright frameworks – namely an Exception to allow TDM in the forthcoming review of European copyright frameworks.

What European universities want is a mandatory, pan-European, Exception for TDM in at least the fields of education and research, which is mandatory, and which cannot be overridden by contracts. The right to read is the right to mine and, ideally, everyone should be able to undertake TDM activity on material to which they have lawful access.

The LERU Press Release, issued after the meeting is The Right to Read is the Right to Mine. My presentation to the MEPs and their Assistants is entitled What Universities want from EU copyright reform. 

The timetable for reform is now set for an announcement by the Commission in December 2015, followed by a series of legislative proposals in 2016. Exciting times for those of us who have lobbied for over 2 years for this copyright reform.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services and UCL Copyright Officer

European Open Access developments

On 12 October, I attended a Workshop in Brussels run by DG CONNECT and presented on the UCL Press Open Access (OA) model. 120 people attended the session, which lasted from 09.00-18.00. Attenders were impressed by the range of material the Press is publishing: research monographs, textbooks and journals. Especially interesting were the usage figures I was able to present, which show that since the launch of the Press in May the 3 books in print have been downloaded 5172 times from UCL Discovery, with 2970 downloads of the Enhanced versions – all Open Access! During the course of the day, a number of universities approached me and asked how they too could start library-based University Press publishing using UCL Press as a model.

At the end of the day, I was a member of a Panel which looked at current developments in OA publishing. Here I presented a Statement from LERU, the League of European Research Universities on current issues in Open Access.

Yesterday, LERU issued a Statement indicating that it wished to work with Commissioner Carlos Moedas, EU Commissioner for Research Science and Innovation, and the incoming (January 2016) Dutch Presidency of the EU to make Open Access one of the principal issues of the Dutch Presidency.

The LERU Statement outlines a number of issues in Green and Gold Open Access, which LERU feels need to be tackled immediately. For the UK, ‘double dipping’ (the payment of subscriptions AND APCs [Article Processing Charges] for the same content) is a major issue – hence the title of the Statement Christmas is Over.

In this area, LERU wants to see offsetting deals between purchasing consortia, libraries and publishers to offset APC payments against subscriptions. In other words, LERU is advocating a model whereby subscriptions and APC payments are combined into one payment, as low as possible. This transition would represent an important step in the transition of the academy to full Open Access.

LERU is inviting all universities in Europe to sign the Statement. Over 100 people signed in the first 24 hours! LERU will then present the Statement and the List of Signatories to the Dutch Presidency of the EU and work with relevant Commission officials to convene a Summit in 2016 where the issues can be addressed and solutions identified by all stakeholders.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

On Friday 25 September, I spent 24 hours at the University of Milan talking to the Board of Directors of LERU (League of European Reseach Universities). Last week was, apparently, Fashion Week in Milan, but LERU has more immediate concerns to deal with – policy and implementation issues for future models of scholarly communication.

LERU is the League of European Research Universities, comprising 21 research-intensive universiites in Europe; I chair their Community of Chief Information Officers. In terms of Open Research (Open Science in EU speak), we looked at 2 issues:

• Challenges in Green and Gold Open Access
• The Hague Declaration on Knowledge Discovery

For Open Access, the Board of LERU Directors agreed that universities and procurement bodies should seek offsets for Gold APCs (Article Processing Charges), so that universities do not pay twice for the same content – once for the subscription and once to make an article OA in a commercial journal. The meeting also looked at Green embargo periods (the period during which material from commercial journals cannot be made OA in repositories) and agreed that further harmonisation with funder requirements was needed. These are issues which will be pursued across Europe in the next 6-9 months.

The Hague Declaration looks at copyright issues in a digital age. The Declaration has been signed by over 650 signatories since it was launched earlier this year in Brussels. The Declaration makes the point that facts and research data were never meant to be covered by copyright laws. We cannot copyright the truth – the grass is green, the sky is blue. Attempts to lock research data behind copyright rules are therefore mistaken. For publications, the Declaration asserts that copyright Exceptions should be sought to allow researchers to use Text and Data Mining tools to seek meaning in the mass of research literature that is now published. In the Milan meeting, LERU agreed to sign the Declaration. This is important because later this year the EU Commission is announcing a series of reforms to EU copyright frameworks. A mandatory Exception for Text and Data Mining, which cannot be overridden by contract, is one of the deliverables that bodies such as LERU and LIBER are seeking.

The Scholarly Communications space is one which is dynamic, continuing to evolve as we identify future models for the conduct and dissemination of research.  The coming 12 months are important in determining what some of these new models will be.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

On Monday 14 September, I was honoured to be asked to speak at a 1-day Workshop at the Swiss National Science Foundation in Bern, Switzerland. The theme of the Workshop was Open Data in Science, and the purpose of the meeting was to help the Science Foundation, as a research funder, determine what its policy on Open Data should be.

Data-driven research is a new paradigm in the way that research outputs and outcomes are communicated and shared. In its recent consultation on Open Science (=Open Research), the EU Commission noted that the two most important aspects of this topic are Open Access to publications and Research Data Management.

Here in UCL Library Services, we currently offer a digital curation platform for the outputs of digitisation programmes, digital cultural heritage materials and other research outputs in our Digital Collections Service. We have an Advocacy Officer, Myriam Fellous-Sigrist, who will soon be launching advocacy webpages to support researchers in managing their research data and in meeting the requirements of research funders. And the University of Sheffield has been training library colleagues over the last 12 months in the essentials of research data.

Research Data Management is an important new development in research support for academic libraries and UCL is well placed to make an important offering.

Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services

2015 End of Year Report

On Wednesday 8 July 2015, I attended the UCL SMT and spoke to my report on the Library’s performance against the 6 Key Performance Areas of the Library Strategy in the 2014-15 academic year.

The unanimous view was that UCL Library Services has had an outstanding year, and that UCL SMT was absolutely delighted with progress. And UCL SMT asked me specifically to pass on these congratulations to all members in the UCL family of libraries. This I am more than happy to do, because I see the academic year 2014-15 as one of the most successful in the Library’s history since we were founded in 1829…

Why do I say this? Well, because we now have a unified Library Strategy across all members of the UCL family of libraries; and also because UCL Library Services is seen as an innovator in service delivery across UCL. That’s a fantastic place to be in, and I absolutely agree that this is the space we need to occupy.

So all members of UCL Library Services staff should feel congratulated in helping to re-invent what the Library of the 21st century looks like. UCL is a European leader in this regard and it is UCL which is determining what the Library of the Future looks like. We are right to be innordinately proud of this. Even today, when I was attending a national library meeting in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the magnificent learning spaces in the Cruciform Hub were highligted as examples of Best Practice…

So THANK YOU for all you have done.

I hope you will all have a restful Summer, supported by the fact that UCL thinks that we are all doing a superlative job. This is certainly my assessment too!

Kind regards.

Paul
UCL