Here at Lancaster University we are very excited to be part of a group of pilot institutions taking part in Jisc’s Research data shared services project. This aims to provide a flexible range of services which suit the varied needs of institutions in the HE sector help achieve policy compliance for deposit, publication, discovery, storage and long term preservation of research data. It’s an ambitious project but one that there is an undoubted need for and we are trying to work with Jisc to help them achieve this goal.
Last week we were invited down to Jisc London HQ to learn about the progress of the project and – just as importantly – share our own thoughts and experiences on the process.
Daniela Duca has written a comprehensive overview of the meeting and the way forward for Jisc from the meeting.
Our table represented a microcosm of the project: Cambridge University (large institution), ourselves at Lancaster (medium) and the Royal College of Music (small). We all have extremely different needs and resources and how one institution tackles a problem will not work at another. However we have a common purpose in supporting our academics and students in their research, ensuring compliance with funders and enabling our institutions to support first class research outputs to share with the wider world.
We had been asked to do some preparatory work around costing models for the meeting – I think it would be fair to say we all found this challenging – probably because it is! My previous knowledge of costings comes from having looked at the excellent Curation Costs Exchange which is an excellent staring point for anyone considering approaching the very difficult task of costing curation services.
My main interest in the day lay in the preservation aspects of the project especially in exploring wider use cases. It’s clear that many institutions have a number of digital preservation scenarios for which the Shared Service solution might also be applicable. What is also clear is that there are so many possible use cases that it would be very easy to accidentally create a whole new project without even trying! I think it’s fair to say that all of us in the room – whether we are actively involved in digital preservation or not – are very interested in this part of the project. There is no sense in Jisc replicating work which has already been done elsewhere or is being developed by other parties so it presents an ideal opportunity for collaborative working and building on the strengths of the existing digital preservation community.
Overall there was much food for thought and I look forward to the next development in the shared services project.
