I recently visited Utrecht University as part of an Erasmus Exchange exploring Open Science. The exchange was attended by staff working in libraries across Europe including Croatia, Finland, Malta, Austria, France and Latvia.  The exchange focused on Open Science support being delivered by Utrecht University as part of a national plan for open science.

Open Science in the Netherlands 

The programme was introduced in the context of ambitious plans in the Netherlands to pursue Open Science launched in a ‘National Plan open Science‘ launched in February 2017.

This plan includes focuses on three key areas;

1. open access to publications which includes the ambitious aim ‘that publicly-funded scientific publications must be accessible to all by 2020’
2. Making research data optimally available for reuse
3. Recognition and rewards for researchers.

Open Science at Utrecht University

Utrecht University has developed local plans with the library playing a key role in supporting open science. The library spent time meeting with researchers to discuss how open science could be implemented within the university. This ensured researchers could outline their concerns and their own visions of open science. The chair of the project to implement the project is a researcher and will be supported by library colleagues. The library believed that this strategy of in-depth engagement which included meeting with 45 researchers/groups ensured that there was true buy-in from the research community when the project was launched.

The library has taken a distributed approach to work on Open Science with staff across the library taking ownership of particular areas of open science support. This approach has allowed the library to have a bigger impact than could be achieved by limiting open science support to one team and has made a broader range of support services possible.

Utrecht University’s city centre Library

Areas of Open Science support

The schedule during the week included sessions on a range of topics:

Open access

This session introduced the work being done within the university and in particular focused on the coordinated work being carried out by Dutch universities to negotiate national deals with publishers for Hybrid Journals. These deals mean that researchers are able to publish without paying APCs themselves. Some publishers have helped this process by introducing workflows that make it easy for researchers to understand that they do not need to pay for an APC whilst also reducing the workload for the library in processing APCs.

The library also funds APCs for full Open Access journals but has set a maximum APC of a 100 Euros. This approach  – similar to that of other funding bodies including the Austrian Science Foundation – is intended to positively impact the market for APCs and push down the price. This type of policy was the topic of my Master’s dissertation so it was nice to revisit the topic and see how these approaches are currently being pursued by university libraries.

Research Data Management support 

Utrecht University has a policy on Research Data similar to that of UCL. Alongside helping develop and advocate for this policy the library provides training and support across the research data lifecycle including Data Management Planning and the publication of Research Data through various repositories.  A recent project by the library to build a pool of Data Managers based in the library but working on projects within the university was a particularly interesting approach to delivering practical support to projects in a sustainable way. This allows smaller projects who would struggle to hire a data manager themselves to get access to support as part of a funded project and also ensures that knowledge about systems, processes and policies are not lost at the end of a project when temporary staff leave.

Data Storage infrastructure at University of Utrecht and Research IT services

Utrecht University has also worked to develop IT Services to support research. This is still a relatively new area of support but has already resulted in some impressive projects. This includes YODA a platform that allows researchers to store, manage and share data on one platform. It leverages iRODS a data management technology which allows researchers or data managers to set rules for how data will be managed. YODA includes options to take snapshots to be archived at particular points in the project, options to share data with collaborators with a range of access permissions and to publish metadata or the full data through a repository. A major advantage of the platform is that it is also suitable for holding sensitive data. This means researchers don’t need to engage with different systems when they are working on projects that contain sensitive data and they can also easily publish metadata only records of projects to allow other researchers to request access to this data.

Digital Humanities support, Open Education Repository and other experiments by the library

The library is also experimenting in a number of other areas related to open science. This includes providing support for digital humanities projects, particularly by providing legal advice for text mining projects and facilitating access to materials. The library is currently launching an open education repository to support the dissemination of potentially reusable teaching materials. Utrecht University Library is also in the process of becoming an early example of a library without a catalogue. Instead, they have moved their collections to WorldCat this approach was taken in recognition of the fact that most researchers and students won’t necessarily begin searching for information through a university library catalogue.

Lessons learned

Attending this Erasmus Staff Exchange was a valuable learning experience, particularly in helping me think about how to link the Research Data Management support within the library to open science. Some of the lessons picked up on the exchange will feed into a course I run on open science and open notebooks.  The approach of developing a programme for a group of visitors meant that experiences of supporting open science could be exchanged between participants and it was particularly interesting to learn about how open science was being approached across different insitutions accross Europe. I hope that the Erasmus Exchange will continue to be available to people based in UK universities in the future and would encourage anyone interested to apply to the scheme. If you have questions about how it works I would be happy to answer them.

UCL Press celebrates 1 million downloads

21 May 2018 was a very special day for UCL Press, because this is when we officially celebrated 1 million downloads of our research monographs, textbooks and journals.

The Press was founded in 2015 and has now been in production for 3 years. It is a tremendous achievement to have reached the magical figure of 1 million downloads so quickly. Initially, I thought that it would be a result if we achieved 10,000 downloads any time soon. How wrong can you be? The festive party for UCL Press was attended by senior members of the university, UCL academics, our authors, UCL students, and honoured guests. It was held in the North Cloisters on a sunny, warm Spring evening.

There were three speakers at the event. Professor David Price, Vice-Provost (Research), congratulated the Press on achieving its remarkable impact figures and pointed out that UCL Press titles were now downloaded in 222 countries and territories. This includes North Korea, where UCL Press titles even there have been downloaded 15 times.

The second speaker was Georgina Brewis. Georgina has just revised The World of UCL, which is UCL’s institutional history.

As Georgina explained, she did more than add an extra chapter to bring the history up to date. She rigorously pruned the number of images in the book, many of which are from UCL Special Collections, and ensured that UCL’s commitment to equality and diversity are reflected in the earlier materials in the book. Beautifully designed and produced, the new institutional history of UCL is a worthy addition to the UCL Press stable.

Finally, I was able to complete the trio of speeches with a few words of my own.

At the present rate of download (90,000 per month), we will reach 2 million downloads this time next year. So, certainly time for another party. I also recounted a story about the European Commission, who were represented at the latest meeting of LERU Rectors. On Saturday, I was present with the Provost in Edinburgh to seek acceptance by the 23 Rectors of LERU (League of European Research Universities) of the new LERU Roadmap for Open Science. Lessons from UCL Press figure largely in this Roadmap. Open Access publishing performed by an institutional Press has the power to transform the way research outputs are stored, disseminated and used by all those in Society with an enquiring mind.

So congratulations to UCL Press colleagues, to our authors and to everyone in UCL who helps to make the Press such a fantastic success. Let’s look to the next 1 million downloads, coming your way soon…

Paul Ayris

Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services)

Congratulations to Desta Bokre and Katie Meheux on their recent publications, a testament to our engagement with research:

Rüschen H, Aravinth K, Bunce C, Bokre D. 2018. Use of hyaluronidase as an adjunct to local anaesthetic eye blocks to reduce intraoperative pain in adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 3, DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD010368.pub2 [http://cochranelibrary-wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD010368.pub2/full].

Meheux K. 2017. Digitising and Re-examining Vere Gordon Childe’s ‘Dawn of European Civilization’: a celebration of the UCL Institute of Archaeology’s 80th Anniversary. Archaeology International, 20, 91-105, DOI: 10.5334/ai-357 [https://ai-journal.com/articles/10.5334/ai.357/].

Meheux K. 2017. Eight Socialist Conscientious Objectors at the University of Oxford, 1914-1918. Oxoniensia, 82, 165-200.

Anna Di Iorio and Michelle Wake

New Student Centre

Friday 16 February 2018 saw the topping out ceremony for the new Student Centre. This tremendous building development is a pivotal objective of the UCL 2034 strategy and of the Library Strategy, which are designed to enhance the Student Experience and to provide an environment fit for education, research and outreach in the 21st century.

The photograph to the left shows the current state of the interior of the building. Topping out marks the fact that the building has reached its full height in terms of construction. No fitting out has yet been undertaken in the interior of the building. That comes next.

A large group of UCL staff, including members from the Library, joined the construction teams to celebrate the topping out ceremony. There were a number of speeches to mark the occasion led by the Provost and President of UCL, Professor Michael Arthur. The Provost spoke of the importance of the UCL 2034 strategy to deliver a first class student and research experience. The delivery of the vision contained in UCL 2034 is of fundamental importance for the future health and vitality of the institution as one of the great research universities of the world.

The topping out ceremony itself took the form of the Provost inscribing a concrete block with his name and title, which will now be secured into the structure of the building.

The Student Centre, when fully open this time next year, will mark a transformation for the service which the Library can provide to UCL students. The building will be operated by the Library and contain 1000 digitally-enabled learning spaces. There will be no paper provision in the building. Library collections will remain in the existing UCL family of libraries. If borrowed by the student they can, of course, be brought to the new Student Centre for personal use. The type of learning spaces the Library will provide is being closely modelled on the learning spaces which we already provide in the Cruciform Hub and in the UCL Institute of Child Health. These are in fact the model we aspire to for all UCL’s libraries.

One of the most striking things, which I noticed when I joined the UCL group for the topping out ceremony, is that the views from the top of the building are stunning. Pictured here is the view of Wilkins’ Dome in UCL and UCLH across the road in Gower Street. And the Student Centre will offer a new thoroughfare through UCL, helping to unite the campus and to bring a greater sense of community to staff and students on the site.

The opening of the Student Centre marks a very important development for the Library. It will transform the Student Experience and the way students use libraries and learning spaces across UCL. This will give us the opportunity to continue to re-think our existing library spaces and how they are used.

The topping out ceremony marks the start of a year of communication in and from the Library as UCL fits out the interior of the building and we plan for the full operation of the Centre. Ben Meunier this week gave an interview to CILIP, and there will be other interviews and national Newsletter articles to announce the birth of what is a major development in academic libraries throughout the whole country. It augurs well for a bright future for UCL students working in a cutting-edge building.

Paul Ayris

Pro-Vice-Provost

UCL Library Services

This week is the 3rd international Love Data Week. ‘Similar to Open Access Week, the purpose of the Love Data Week (LDW) event is to raise awareness and build a community to engage on topics related to research data management, sharing, preservation, reuse, and library-based research data services.’ Several Research Data Management teams from London universities have joined forces to run a series of data related events.

Most events are open to all UCL research staff and research students and library staff are also welcome to attend. During the Love Data Week we will also be publishing a number of data case studies on UCL’s Research Data Management Blog.

You can find an overview of the events below;

• Get Ready for GDPR: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 1pm
• What’s my Research Data?: Monday, 2pm
• UCL Research IT & Data Management drop-in: Tuesday, 10am
• Get Your Data In Shape (Organizing and Documenting): Tuesday, 2pm
• Working With Audio Visual Data: Wednesday, 11am
• Consumer Data Research Centre drop-in: Wednesday, 11am-2pm
• Working With Personal Data: Wednesday, 2pm
• Making the Most of Your Research Data: Thursday, 11am
• UCL Introduction to Digital Scholarship and Open Research: Thursday, 1.30pm
• Data Management Planning: Thursday, 3pm
• Introduction to UK Data Service: Friday, 2-3.3opm

A full listing of events is available to share.

For any UCL-specific questions, please contact the UCL Research Data Support officers at lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk.

UCL Press Megajournal platform

16 January 2018 saw the soft launch of the UCL Press megajournal platform to an audience of 55-60 people in the JZ Young Lecture Theatre.

What is a megajournal and why is UCL Press launching a megajournal platform? Essentially, a megajournal is a platform where cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary work can be brought together and where the outputs are characterised by openness – of peer review (where the reviewers’ reports are available for scrutiny), of readership (when the final output is freely available for sharing and re-use), of scope (where, for example, underlying research data can be made available alongside the published output), and of evaluation (where responsible metrics are used to help evaluate the quality of the outputs).

If that is the ‘what’, then why is UCL Press taking this road? The megajournal platform looks very unlike traditional journals. The reason is this – there is a growing acceptance that the future of scholarship is best served by the Open Access and Open Science agendas. What is the best mechanism to achieve this transition to full Open Access? Research funders have started establishing their own Open Science platforms and research-intensive universities like UCL can do the same. This has the power to change the culture in academic publishing by bringing publication and dissemination back into the academy.

It was these questions and potential solutions that the Megajournal platform launch sought to celebrate and investigate. Three external speakers set the scene – Robert Kiley, who talked about the Wellcome Trust’s Open Research platform; Stephanie Dawson from Science Open, which is the company selected by UCL to deliver its Megajournal platform; and Dr Catriona MacCallum from Hindawi. The plenary session concluded with a presentation by Ian Caswell of UCL Press, announcing the broad details of the planned UCL Press provision, which will work initially with the environmental science research domain in UCL to create an environmental science Megajournal.

The Town Hall meeting ended with a Question and Answer session with the speakers plus Paul Ayris as CEO of UCL Press, which was chaired by Professor David Price (Vice-Provost, Research). This session showed very lively engagement in Open Science by the audience of 55-60 attenders – journalists, commercial publishers and academics.

The UCL Press Megajournal platform will be formally launched in the autumn of 2018 to co-incide with Open Access week. It is an important development in the Press’s mission to change the pattern of scholarly publishing in the academic community as Open approaches gain momentum in a global move towards Open Science.

Paul Ayris

Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services)

It has been some time since I last wrote about TOPS, so as we start the New Year, I would like to provide a brief update. But first, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best for a successful 2018.

As a reminder, the vision for the TOPS programme is for UCL to provide effective, efficient and integrated professional services that enable us to achieve our vision of academic excellence, sustain our position as one of the top ten universities in the world and create an environment in which our staff can personally develop and fulfill their potential.

The TOPS programme has been set an initial list of priorities to start work on in 2018, which were outlined by the Provost in December. These include:

• Research and innovation support services

• Improving the student experience

• Relieving the pressures on the Bloomsbury estate

• Improving procurement practices to enable more investment in the academic mission

• Making better use of our estate

• More fulfilling and rewarding careers

Thankfully, more detail is emerging from the TOPS programme following consultations conducted 2017 with over 1,700 staff and students at UCL. The ideas are developing into more practical objectives, from the high-level aspirations listed above.

These ideas are described on the TOPS webpages: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/transforming-our-professional-services/tops-emerging-ideas. There are few references to Library Services specifically, except to note our enabling and supporting role within “UCL Research Support” (under the Research Support Services tab).  Library Services is not one of the areas which TOPS is looking to transform, as I have mentioned in previous posts this recognises the high quality of our services and the levels of satisfaction with the Library from our diverse user groups. Nonetheless, many of the strands of TOPS are pertinent to Library Services, as a department and as members of UCL staff. For each of the areas which TOPS is focusing on, there is a PDF file which provides some detail about the emerging ideas. Within these documents, a brief summary sets out what the TOPS team heard from a large number of colleagues regarding the issues they are facing, for example around Estates, IT, Finance or People services – these are challenges which are shared across UCL (you may recognise these from your own experience) and which TOPS aims to address.

There have been some changes in the Programme Team and Tom Rowson has taken on the role of Programme Director, in addition to his role as Director of Planning. Tom will work with his team and the TOPS Executive Group to take forward the TOPS programme in 2018.

Feedback from the latest round of consultation is due to be published on 19/01. I will send an update once this is made available. 

PRES survey results (2017)

PRES, the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey, is the national survey co-ordinated by the national body for improving teaching and learning in Universities, the Higher Education Academy. The survey is a chance for our research student community to provide us with feedback on their experience and allows UCL to benchmark against the wider HE sector.

Spooky and one hopes eminently informative goings-on will be taking place at History Day on Halloween this year.  Starting at 10:00 and finishing at 16:00 on Tuesday 31^st October, the event is based at Senate House.  Along with research clinics and panel sessions on digital history, public history and discovery in libraries and archives, we will have an expanded open history fair showcasing a veritable plethora of libraries, archives and organisations.  Naturally, UCL Library Services will be represented, with colleagues from Special Collections, the Institute of Education, Huguenot and SSEES libraries staffing our stands, with the latter certainly getting into the swing of celebrating “all that is scary, eerie and magical in libraries and archives”.

Please alert anyone you feel may benefit from attending.  The intended audience is really postgraduate students and early career researchers, however, undergraduates and many others with a general interest in history should certainly find the day illuminating and may make some useful contacts.  Registration is necessary via book my free ticket.

Participating organisations: Archives Hub, Jisc; Archives Portal Europe; Black Cultural Archives; US History collections at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford; British Library; British Records Association; Brunel University Special Collections; Business Archives Council; CILIP Library & Information History Group; CILIP Local Studies Group; Caird Library and Archive, National Maritime Museum; Conway Hall; Dana Research Centre and Library, Science Museum; Engineering Institutions’ Librarians Group; The Feminist Library; FLA: the Feminist and Women’s Libraries and Archives Network; Geological Society Library; German Historical Institute Library; Gladstone’s Library; Goldsmiths University of London (Special Collections); Guildhall Library; Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery; Historic England Archive & Library; History of Parliament; History UK; Institute of Historical Research Library; King’s College London Library Services; The King’s Fund, Information & Knowledge Services; Lambeth Palace Library; Library of the Society of Friends; Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society; The Linnean Society of London; London Metropolitan Archives; LSE Library; The National Archives; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Royal Astronomical Society Library & Archives; Royal College of Nursing Library and Archives; Royal College of Physicians Library and Archives; Royal Holloway, University of London; The Royal Society, Collections; Senate House Library; SOAS Library; Society of Antiquaries Library and Collections; St Peter’s House Library, University of Brighton; The Stationers’ Company Archive; TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University; UCL Library Services; UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) Library; University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) – Archive Collections; University of Westminster Archives; The Warburg Institute Library; Wellcome Library

Last summer 29 members of library staff undertook an online 30 day Research Support Challenge as part of the UCL Library Services Biomedical and Health Information Summer School. This summer the Challenge faced its own challenge, as an entry for the 2017 Sally Hernando Awards for Innovation. We are delighted to announce that this initiative achieved third place in this national contest for innovation in NHS Libraries. Congratulations go to Angela Young, who conceived and authored the Challenge.

The 30 Day Research Support Challenge, which was delivered via the Summer School Moodle course, was inspired by a current trend for 30 day fitness challenges. Participants were challenged to watch a short video on an aspect of research support, and then undertake a short quiz to test their understanding, for 30 consecutive working days. To succeed in the challenge participants did not necessarily need to complete each day’s activities on the day they appeared as long as they completed all 30 days within the six week timeframe. This was designed to accommodate differing working patterns of library staff.

The Challenge was designed to better inform library staff who may be required to deliver advocacy or support for research activities. Most topics were relevant across the service and included citing, reference management software, open access, the Research Excellence Framework, UCL’s Research Publications Service (RPS), research data management and bibliometrics. There were also biomedical-specific topics, such as systematic review methodology and critical appraisal of clinical studies. Engagement with the Challenge was really encouraging, with 9 participants awarded the virtual winners’ cup for completing it within the 30 day timeframe.

Comments from the judges of the Sally Hernando awards included:

“A lot of thought had obviously gone into planning and delivering the course, and it included innovative elements of fitness-type challenges, quizzes and gamification, with just a little bit of new content each day, helping to make it suitable for part-time library staff. The needs of researchers are something that many library staff across all sectors needs to be aware of, and support. I also feel it is a good example of partnership working between higher-education libraries and the NHS, and an example of providing library staff with the right skills to support personalised delivery of library services.”

“[Angela] highlights the continued availability of resources beyond the initial 30 days of training module and presents learning points for future developments.”

The full details all the winning entries, together with the other innovation entries submitted in 2017 and from previous years, can be found on the NHS Library and Knowledge Services (England) website. Angela also had a winning innovation in 2011 for another online element of the Summer School, 11½ Things.

Angela’s award includes funding to present this innovation at the Health Libraries Group or an equivalent conference to help disseminate the work. Angela will now look to update the Challenge and investigate other channels for wider dissemination. The Challenge remains available as a training and development tool for UCL library staff via the Summer School Moodle course. Contact Angela for more information or for an enrolment key for the course.