Current and Recent Projects

The following projects have recently been undertaken by members of EPICentre

• Registry of Electronic Licences (RELI)
  This two year project, which commneced in April 2007 aims to develop a registry for maintinaing machine readbale electronic expressions of licences (e.g. between a publisher/aggregator and a library). The project partners are Loughborough University (in the form of members of the Legal and Policy Research Group and EPICentre), RightsCom, EDItEUR and Naomi Korn Associates. The work builds on the Electronic Expression of Licensing terms project below) and will provide a pilot system to enable end-users to be associated with ONIX-based licence expressions. A key part of the project inolves repertoire management (establishing the relationship between licences and resources). The Loughborough team will be responsible for requirements analysis and evaluating the prototype while RightsCom will be responisble for technical development.
  For more information email Charles Oppenheim or Steve Probets
• Embed
  The two-year Embed project (http://cclibweb-1.dmz.cranfield.ac.uk/embed/index.php/Embed_Wiki) involves three Cranfield University partners - the School of Management, the School of Applied Sciences and the Library and Information Service - and promises to provide new and innovative means of showcasing Cranfield research. Cranfield is the lead institution on this project working with two external partners, Key Perspectives Limited and The Robert Gordon University. The project aims to embed the existing Cranfield CERES repository (http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/eresearch) firmly within the research community and build a framework within which academics are supported throughout the process of writing and publishing research. The Library will investigate how it can play a full role, from helping authors to check references for papers and reports, to hosting published output. Once in the public domain, research will be promoted by means of links to value-adding resources such as datasets and presentation slides, author biographies and multimedia-based research summaries. The Robert Gordon University will be considering similar issues relating to their repository OPENAIR@RGU (https://openair.rgu.ac.uk/) while Key Perspectives Limited will undertake study of user requirements. The project is designed to be adopted as best practice across the UK's higher education community and beyond. For further information please contact: Mary Betts-Gray (m.betts-gray@cranfield.ac.uk), Embed Project Manager.
• Web Analytics
  This small project, which runs throughout 2007, will compare and evaluate two of the major web metrics and analytics tools from the perspective of acquiring usable marketing information in a University environment.
  For more information email James Dearnley
• A survey on the use of different forms of scholarly output
  Commissioned by JISC, this was a study on the use by researchers and teachers of different forms of scholarly output. Taking place between March and June 2007, the study involved surveying academic staff involved in both teaching and research to find out more about their use of scholarly output, the way in which more than one type of output may be combined in teaching or in research and any problems they encountered when using the different forms of scholarly output. The final report was published in June 2007.
  For more information email Sally Maynard
• Electronic Expression of Licencing Terms
  This project which was undertaken in 2006 in association with BIC (Book Industry Communication), investigated the requirements of a system of electronic expressions of licensing terms for serials. The applications of such a system were investigated and ONIX-based expressions were developed by BIC.
  For more information email Steve Probets
• EThOSnet
  The purpose of the original EThOS project was to deliver a prototype UK Database of Theses (UKDoT) enabling end-users to access the full text of electronic theses free at the point of use. This project was successfully completed in September 2006. Cranfield University Library is now a partner in EThOSnet, the purpose of which is to develop the EThOS prototype into a fully-fledged 'live' service. One of the project aims includes encouraging universities to move to electronic thesis submission. The project will also explore ways of making the bibliographic records of 'old' theses searchable via EThOS with a view to further improving the accessibility of research for the benefit of the UK HE community and beyond. More details are available.
• NESLi2 analysis of usage statistics
  The aim of this project was to provide the JISC Journals Working Group and its negotiating Agent with accurate and up-to-date data on national use of journals available through the NESLi2 initiative. In depth analysis was conducted on the COUNTER compliant usage data from 4 major scholarly publishers using a representative sample of 17 UK HE libraries. Based on the findings of the study a series of recommendations were made to JISC of which a high proportion have been initiated. Undertaken by EPICentre members at Cranfield University. For more information email Hazel Woodward
• Romeo Continued
  This project continued from the original Romeo project. Taking place from April 2005 - Feb 2006 and funded by JISC, the project developed an advocacy toolkit targeted at institutions to help them inform academics of the importance of managing rights information for self archiving. The project also further developed the SHERPA/RoMEO database of publishers policies on self archiving.
  For more information email Charles Oppenheim or Steve Probets
  

Related Past Projects

• Delivery, Management and Access Model for E-prints and Open Access Journals within Further and Higher Education.
  This study investigated a delivery, management and access model for e-prints and open access journal content within Further and Higher Education. Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) the project was a collaboration between EPICentre members at Loughborough and Cranfield and Key Perspectives Limited. Thew final report from the project titled Delivery, Management and Access Model for E-prints and Open Access Journals within Further and Higher Education is now available. For more information contact Fytton Rowland
• Electronic books in public libraries: a feasibility study for developing usage models for Web-based and hardware-based electronic books.
  The Laser Foundation awarded Loughborough University and Co-East (Library Co-operation and Connectivity in the East of England) £30,000 to conduct a feasibility study for introducing electronic books at a UK public library (Essex Libraries). The project starts officially at the end of March 2003, and will run through to the end of February 2004. We will trial three e-book formats: Ebrary, NetLibrary and portable ebook devices (format yet to be decided). The project will measure the success (or not) of ebooks both in relation to library patrons and library professionals.
  For more information email James Dearnley
• The RoMEO Project. Aug 2002 - Aug 2003. The RoMEO Project is investigating the rights issues relevant to the Open Archiving Initiative (OAI) with a particular goal of developing some simple rights metadata for possible adoption by the UK HE OAI Community and beyond. Charles Oppenheim and Steve Probets
• AERADE. An Aerospace and Defence internet portal, which is also part of EEVL - the internet guide to engineering, maths and computing. John Harrington and Hazel Woodward
• MAGiC. Managing Access to Grey Literature Collections. John Harrington and Hazel Woodward and
• AIM-Eu.Aerospace Information Management Europe. John Harrington
• Project ELVYN -- ELectronic Versions, whY Not. This project investigated the electronic journal scenario of a publisher providing electronic versions of a journal to academic libraries who then made it available to local readers over a LAN.
  The complete project findings are reported in:
  Rowland, F., McKnight, C. and Meadows, J. (1995) Project ELVYN: An Experiment in Electronic Journal Delivery. London: Bowker Saur.
  A conference paper on the project is also available.
• Cafe Jus -- Commercial And Free Electronic Journals: User Studies. During 1996, the number of scholarly periodicals available in electronic form increased rapidly. The Cafe Jus project took advantage of this critical mass of electronic journals to mount a major user study with taught postgraduate students, research students and staff in various disciplines at Loughborough University.
  Results of the project are published in the Journal of Digital Information.
• Author attitudes to publishing in paper and electronic journals. This project conduced a survey of authors, across a wide range of disciplines, identified as having published a journal article in the preceding year. The questionnaire was analysed in terms of author experience in the paper and electronic domain, authors' views on various aspects of electronic journals and their current skills. The results suggest a small but increasing willingness to submit articles to electronic journals, but a continuing concern about the permanence of such media.
  The results of the project are published in:
  McKnight, C. and Price, S. (1999) A survey of author attitudes and skills in relation to article publishing in paper and electronic journals. Journal of Documentation, 55(5), 556-576.
• Children and Electronic Books As part of a PhD programme, a study was undertaken of children's comprehension when reading from an electronic book and two different printed versions of the same text. Although not statistically significant, the results suggested a possible comprehension benefit for the electronic book.
  The results of the study are published in
  Maynard, S. and McKnight, C. (2001) Children's comprehension of electronic books: an empirical study. The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, 7, 29-54.
  This study was the precursor to the current major study of children's comprehension in reading from different media (Web site available soon).
• ACORN (Access to Course Materials via Networks). 1996-1998. For more information contact Hazel Woodward
• PELICAN: JISC-funded project on pricing strategies for digitising teaching materials in Higher Education (Charles Oppenheim, Rachel Hardy, Iris Rubbert). For more information contact Charles Oppenheim