Future events

UKCORR Members Day – Monday 13th November 2023 – CANCELLED

The Knowledge Centre, The British Library, London

9:30 – 10:00 Registration
10:00 – 10:05 Welcome and housekeeping – Nicola Dowson, Chair of UKCORR
10:05 – 10:50 The COAR Notify Initiative – Paul WalkThe Confederation of Open Access Repositories launched the COAR Notify Initiative in 2021, securing a $4M grant from Arcadia (a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge) in 2022. This initiative is working to establish broad interoperability between repositories and third-party “value-adding” systems, such that the content in repositories is exposed to and enhanced by those systems. Notify is initially focussed on peer-review and endorsement services (e.g. overlay journals), but other use-case have already been identified for evaluation.

At the heart of the initiative is the Notify Protocol, the “technical glue” which enables standards-based interoperability between repositories and services. Notify is primarily concerned with sending and receiving simple, lightweight machine-readable “messages” which convey links from one system to another. A repository, for example, may send a link for one of its pre-prints to a peer-review service, then the peer-review service in turn may send the repository a link to a review of that pre-print.

The initiative has just completed the first of four years in the funded project. The majority of the work is to support implementation of the Notify protocol in real-world use-cases. The most advanced implementation of COAR Notify to date is between Peer Community In, Episcience & HAL. These three services are now exchanging Notify messages related to peer review of manuscripts in Peer Community In (PCI) and Episcience that have deposited into HAL, the French national repository. All three platforms have implemented a Notify inbox/outbox and are undertaking the development required to support Notify in their existing workflows. Other implementations in progress involve eLife, PREreview & several preprint archives, Harvard University, and the University of Minho (& RCAAP).

In addition to these use-cases, several commonly-used repository platforms are being actively “Notify-enabled” to allow others to begin using this technology for their own use-cases. To date, these include DSpace, Dataverse & Invenio, with more to come in year two.

This presentation will:

·         describe the Notify Protocol, and how it is implemented

·         explain the benefits that it provides

·         describe some use-cases which are being actively implemented

·         outline other use-cases which are being evaluated

·         suggest how people in the audience may get involved!

10:50 – 11:10  Update from Jisc – Azhar Hussain
11:15 – 12:15 Breakout groups (with tea/coffee)Accessibility (Kelly Hetherington, Durham)

This workshop will consider the relationship between open access repositories and accessibility.  The session will begin with institutions sharing their experiences in relation to accessibility.  Participants will be given the opportunity to work collaboratively to identify positive strategies, barriers faced and what the ‘ideal’ repository should look like.  We will consider how the UKCORR community could support each other in relation to accessibility.  Kelly Hetherington will close the session by sharing the conclusions of her recent Masters research on this topic.

Changing repositories (Alison Sutton, Reading)

Have you changed your repository/CRIS system for a different one, wish that you could or regret that you did? Or perhaps you are involved in that process right now. This workshop will look at key points to consider, procurement pitfalls and what to do differently next time. It will be an interactive session for asking questions and sharing experiences.

Theses (Jenny Basford, The British Library)

EThOS, the UK’s database for doctoral theses dating back from the 1600s to the present day, has been running for over ten years. It holds over 650,000 records (50% with full text) and is the most popular online service that the British Library operates. We are seeing an increased demand for access to theses, year on year. In this workshop, we would like to discuss all things EThOS, from access to preservation. We would like to gather preliminary feedback from repository managers about what you value most about EThOS and what you are less worried about keeping from the current platform, as well as ways in which we can help improve access to your doctoral theses.

12:15 – 13:45 Lunch
13:45 – 14:30 Supporting repositories with CORE – Petr Knoth, David Pride, Michael Upshall

This panel session will report on several use cases which demonstrate how some of the latest CORE developments can be used to assist the repositories community in:

  • Finding versions and near duplicate content in repositories
  • Getting repositories ready for UKRI OA compliance by:
    • Improving repository metadata with the Rioxx v3 validator
    • Uniquely identifying repository research outputs with OAI identifiers
    • Undertaking a repository health check and aligning with FAIR

This session will contain a few short presentations and a panel discussion. It will finally wrap up with a brief rundown of what’s in the pipeline for CORE in the next few months.

14:30 –  15:00 Break
15:00 – 16:00 Lightning presentations – hosted by Annette Ramsden, UKCORR Secretary

  1. The bucket list: lessons from a repository migration at the University of Sussex, Sam Nesbit, Open Access Librarian, University of Sussex Library
  2. Development and integrations with Figshare, Clare Liggins, Research Services Co-ordinator University of Manchester
  3. The immortal Hydra: maintaining a repository collection without a repository platform, Kirstyn Radford, Research Outputs Specialist, University of Hull
  4. Request a copy’ functionality and the retention of personal data. Nicola Siminson, Institutional Repository and Records Manager, Glasgow School of Art
  5. From Basement to Platform: Thesis Digitisation Challenges & Opportunities, Fred Flagg, Open Research Specialist, Aston University
  6. Exploring challenges in UKRI Open Access publishing: seeking researcher opinions at the University of Southampton, Andrea Onder, Principal Library Assistant (UKRI repository & publishing reporting), University of Southampton
  7. Looking to a more equitable future: the institutional repository as digital monograph archive for the small and scholar-led press, Miranda Barnes, Research Associate in Archiving & Preserving Open Access Books, Loughborough University
16:00 – 16:05 Wrap up – Nicola Dowson, Chair of UKCORR

THE Campus Live 

THE Campus Live is being held in Liverpool on the 6th and 7th December 2023.  UKCORR members will receive a 20% discount when they use the code UKCORR20 on the booking page.

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