Under starter's orders: your 2011 UKSG blogging team

LiveSerials is once again emerging from hibernation to bring you reports and opinions from UKSG's 34th Annual Conference and Exhibition. The event kicks off in Harrogate on Monday, with an incredible 834 delegates (think what a great event UKSG must be, for us to have our two highest attendance figures in the anni pauperi of 2010 and 2011*). We've got another stellar line-up of speakers, an all-new quiz and a rash of ways to engage via social media:

• Follow us here on LiveSerials. Obviously.
• Set up a Twitter search for #uksg to see what everyone else is saying.
• Get a daily round up over on paper.li
• See who's going or add yourself on Lanyrd

This year's crack blogging team comprises:

• Charlie Rapple, TBI Communications
• Ginny Hendricks, Ardent Marketing
• Kirsty Meddings, CrossRef
• Mark O'Loughlin, SAGE
• Nicole Harris, JISC

It's a tough job - honestly - so please show us lots of love and appreciation, so that we know our boggled brains, aching necks, roasted knees and broken nails are all worth it.

See you in Harrogate!

*Thought I'd warm you up with a bit of Latin there. Feel free to comment and tell me that my adjective doesn't agree with my noun. It's been a long time.

Call for bloggers: 34th UKSG conference needs you!

It's that time again! I'm after volunteers to help blog the UKSG's 2011 annual conference here on LiveSerials. It's a very widely appreciated bit of community service that also means you get a little bit of personal / professional kudos, and access to Seats with Power Sockets - surely that's worth sharing a few of the notes you're going to be taking anyway?

What you need:

• A Google account - these are easy to obtain if you don't yet have one and are willing to register.
• A willingness to take notes during sessions and to write these up either in realtime in later.

What you don't need:

• A laptop. It is fine for reports to be posted after the event.
• Previous blogging experience. LiveSerials is based on the Blogger software which is simple and intuitive to use; other members of the blogging team will be available to provide support if necessary.

If you would like to volunteer, please contact me with your Gmail address. I look forward to welcoming you to Team LiveSerials!

To review previous UKSG conference blogs, see:

• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006

N.B. We'll also be Tweeting at @uksg and The Twitter / Blogger hash tag for this year's conference will be simply #UKSG. And do check us out on Lanyrd - feel free to add yourself and any sessions you're speaking at / attending!

And so it begins ...

Welcome back to LiveSerials where another year of UKSG conference blogging is about to begin. This year's team consists of:

• Bernie Folan, SAGE
• Bev Acreman, BioMedCentral
  
• Charlie Rapple, TBI Communications
• Frances Machell, University of Wolverhampton
  
• Ginny Hendricks, Ardent Marketing
• Kirsty Meddings, CrossRef
• Mark O'Loughlin, SAGE
• Nadine Edwards, University of Greenwich
• Nicole Harris, JISC
• Todd Carpenter, NISO

We hope there'll also be lots of useful Tweeting via @uksg (for the pseudo-official view) and #uksg (for the wider view, including occasional thoughts about the UK School Games). There'll be an experiment with taking questions via Twitter during Tuesday afternoon's plenary session on researcher behaviour. No doubt we'll be reporting back right here about how well that goes.

Blogging the UKSG conference can be rewarding in many ways but it's also a lot of hard work. If you're reading this, or any of our forthcoming posts, please do share your thoughts and appreciation with comments to keep us all going!

See you (really or virtually) in Edinburgh!

Call for bloggers!

We are seeking volunteers to help blog the UKSG's 2010 annual conference here on LiveSerials.

What you need:

• A Google account - these are easy to obtain if you don't yet have one and are willing to register.
• A willingness to take notes during sessions and to write these up either in realtime in later.

What you don't need:

• A laptop. It is fine for reports to be posted after the event.
• Previous blogging experience. The LiveSerials blog is based on the Blogger software which is simple and intuitive to use; other members of the blogging team will be available to provide support if necessary.

If you would like to volunteer, please contact me with your Gmail address and details of the plenary and breakout sessions that you plan to attend.

To review previous UKSG conference blogs, see:

• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006

N.B. We'll also be Tweeting at @uksg and The Twitter / Blogger hash tag for this year's conference will be simply #UKSG.

Twitter: waste of time or worth it?

Back in March, at the start of UKSG's annual conference, Todd Carpenter of NISO wrote this interesting LiveSerials posting about Twitter and how it is used during conferences.

Today this subject is raised again by CrossRef's Kirsty Meddings, writing the editorial in the latest edition of Serials-eNews, UKSG's news bulletin. (Note that access to Serials-eNews is usually an exclusive benefit for UKSG members but all being well you should get access to this article by following this link - let us know if you have any problems!).

Both pieces are useful in helping to explain why Twitter is gaining such traction in our community, and both are generally in favour of Twitter as a channel for sharing resources and building relationships during conferences. Do you agree? what about using Twitter outside of the conference centre - are publishers, libraries and others in our sector putting it to good use, or wasting their time?

UKSG has set up its own Twitter channel, @uksg, and encouraged usage of the #uksg09 hashtag during the conference. Are we right to be exploring this medium? What more could or should we be doing? We're interested to know your thoughts so please do discuss via comments or trackbacks (or on Twitter! - #uksg).

The Quiz

Settling in to the annual UKSG quiz
(more photos)

If you west-country it, will they come?

As Paul Harwood, UKSG chair, welcomed a record 750 delegates to the association's 31st conference, it seemed the answer is a resounding "yes" - and that's in spite of yesterday's unseasonal snowfall across the UK. Paul encouraged delegates to make the most of the conference's 50 odd speakers and 100+ exhibition booths, and dared us to swim in the above-average-temperature (but undoubtedly still freezing) waters of Torbay.

NASIG's Char Simser followed Paul on the podium with greetings from that organisation, noting that we might like to exchange the chill of Torquay for the dry heat of Phoenix, Arizona, which will host NASIG's annual conference this year.

Let the learning begin ...

Walkie Torquay!

UKSG business manager Alison Whitehorn
in the thick of it during Sunday set-up
(more photos)

Counting down to the conference ... your blogging team

The UKSG's annual conference in Torquay is now only days away. Once again, the event is completely sold out! But if you didn't manage to get a place, don't worry: you're in the right place for the next best thing - real time coverage of the conference here on LiveSerials.

A crack team of bloggers will be reporting back on all the conference sessions, the exhibition and, of course, the social activities. My thanks in advance to all the following who will be joining me to drive nearby delegates mad with our tap-tappety-tapping as we strive to capture the essence of UKSG:

• Bev Acreman, Taylor & Francis
  
• Kate Burgess, Swets
• Bernie Folan, Sage
  
• Ginny Hendricks, Ardent Marketing
• Simon Inger, Simon Inger Consulting
• Kirsty Meddings, Ingenta
  
• Mark O'Loughlin, Sage
• Nicola Osborne, SUNCAT
  
• Kate Price, University of Surrey
  
• Rita Scheman, Scheman Consulting
  

So if you aren't going to the conference, make sure LiveSerials is on your blogroll so you don't miss a thing. I think we've rustled up a nice mix of reporters from across the information community to offer a variety of perspectives - and please do add yours, via comments, as the reporting unfolds.

If you are going to the conference, we hope you'll also be sure to check our reporting later to add your thoughts (or remind yourself what it was all about once you come out of your post-UKSG daze).

July issue of Serials now published

The Editorial Board of Serials thought it would be a good exercise to alert blog readers to the new issue of Serials which has just been published and contains many of the popular presentations from the recent conference (including T Scott Plutchak's and Melinda Kenneway's highly regarded papers). We've also included some of the breakout sessions, including Paul Harwood's briefing on the UK consortia landscape with a guide for librarians, publishers and intermediaries, and Nol Verhagen's briefing on "the licensing battlefield" from a consortium perspective.

Other papers concern the scholarly community in China, e-textbooks, the usage factors project, journal collection evaluation and much more..

Read it here (subscription or members only for current three issues) - http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=issue&issn=0953-0460&volume=20&issue=2
Subscription information here: http://www.uksg.org/serials/subscribe

Let us know what you think!

Framework for Improving Link Resolver Systems

In 2006, UKSG funded a research project to explore the industry context of link resolvers and the chain of serials delivery in hopes of describing some of the issues and laying the groundwork for their future resolution. James Culling, Online Project Manager at Oxford University Press presented the report on the research conducted by Scholarly Information Strategies. (NB – The SIS consulting company led by Simon Inger and Chris Beckett recently disbanded, although they are finishing the report on this project for UKSG.)

When a user conducts a search, either in a traditional A&I database, a federated search, Google Scholar, or clicks through a reference link via the CrossRef system, the essential metadata about the object is passed via an OpenURL to a link resolver system, such as those available from ExLibris, Serials Solutions, Innovative Interfaces, and Openly Informatics. At the heart of each of these systems is a core “Knowledge Base” which provides the context to the OpenURL, comparing it to issue availability data, library holdings information and providing a variety of linking options to the content that was searched. The user is than directed to the content that is available to the content available through his/her institutional subscription.

While these systems work extremely well in the vast majority of cases, they are not without significant inefficiencies and inaccuracies. Much of this is due to the complexity of the distributed supply chain of this information. Link resolver providers (each of which has its own data system, structure, and ingest methodology) receive information from publishers and subscription agents, who provide data on publication release, collections, locations, etc. Frequently, this transfer process requires normalization and quality control review, which add to the complexity and opportunity for error. The library in turn needs to provide holdings and subscription information from their own library systems in order to customize the resolver to match their holdings.

Through a series of conversations with publishers, resolver-systems suppliers and librarians, the research has pointed to some issues and barriers that are inhibiting the deployment and use of these systems. Among the issues identified by SIS were: a lack of awareness that significant issues persist and a lack on cooperation in solving those issues; inaccurate or incomplete data; a lack of procedures for transferring titles; lack of data format and transfer standards; and a communal responsibility for data quality. While OpenURL compliance is growing rapidly, there will need to be broader understanding of the role of OpenURL and how it interacts with other necessary information transfers to facilitate the discovery and delivery of content.

Initial recommendations were suggested and may be explored by UKSG and the community. Much like Project COUNTER, a code of practice might be developed which will address Knowledge Base compliance regarding which information is provided and it what formats. Such a code of practice might certify compliance in areas of format, delivery method, timing and OpenURL compliance among the key organizations in this process, publishers, subscription agents, and resolver suppliers. There might also be areas of standards, which could be developed or expanded to improve this information exchange, such as current work led by EDItEUR on ONIX for Serials Holdings, or possibly a NISO SUSHI equivalent for holdings information.

The final report will be provided to the UKSG Board during their May meeting and the report will likely be posted to the UKSG website sometime shortly thereafter. A summary article is also being prepared for the July issue of Serials. Hopefully, as many other similar UKSG research projects have done, this work will lead to significant outcomes that will improve information exchange.

Battle of the Giants: Microsoft vs Google!

The first plenary session at UKSG 2007 provided a rare treat; a chance to see two industry giants in action. Microsoft's Cliff Guren, Director of Publishing Evangelism, and Google's Philippe Colombet, Manager, Strategic Partner Development, presented their take on the world - interesting to see Microsoft's embryonic competitor products to Google's Scholar and Book Search. Even more interesting was the fact that Google announced a powerpoint solution on the last day of our conference (that was kept very quiet!) which suggests more of a step into each other's areas.

However several speakers at the conference referred to the 'googleization' of students in academia; perhaps the move to make them 'Microsoftized' has come too late when it comes to sophisticated searching tools and digitisation solutions? Or is it simply a case of 'watch this space'?

Author Identification Project in the Netherlands

The key issue in author identification is not whether this author produced a particular work (although the problem of orphan works is a separate issue), but is this author the same author who produced work A and B and C. Disambiguation, particularly in cataloging is a significant problem. Catalog information can have abbreviations, variant spellings or have or be missing diacritics; authors might change their name, go by nicknames or pseudonyms; and translating languages like Japanese, Chinese or Russian into western Latin text can lead to spelling variations. One project aiming to address this situation is based in the Netherlands and consists of a partnership among 12 universities, SURF, UCI and OCLC Pica.

Daniel van Spanje at OCLC PICA presented a status update of the project underway. The Digital Author Identification (DAI) {NOTE: sites are in Dutch} Project grew out of the Digital Academic REpositories (DARE) a Dutch initiative to stimulate the prodcution of digital science online. The project’s goal is to uniquely identify all of the approximately 40,000 authors conducting research in the Netherlands. A successful pilot test at the University of Groningen in 2005-06, identified approximately 3,000 unique authors and researchers. The project was then rolled out to 13 additional institutions in 2006, with an expected completion date later this year. By using METIS, a registry of metadata on publications and researchers in Netherlands and the GGC, the Dutch national union catalog system, information was gathered on the authors to distinguish and de-duplicate authors for assigning IDs. The project has created a central registry of names cover a wide range of identification information, such as variant names, nationality language, date of birth, publications. After the pilot additional fields such as sex, organizational affiliation, titles and dates of employment were added to the file.

The project certainly has privacy ramifications, although according to Dutch understanding of privacy regulations, the project is justifiable as a library/bibliographic resource. It is unclear that the same methodology would be similarly acceptable in other countries.

There are some other initiatives that relate to this project on an international level, with the ISO Technical Committee 46 -- Information and Documentation that is began work on the International Standard Party Identifier (ISPI) in August 2006. ISPI is as a new international identification system for the parties (persons and corporate bodies) involved in the creation and production of content entities. As envisioned, the work already done by the DAI project would be incorporated into a broader international standard if one is agreed upon. Certainly, there will be more work on this important issue and hopefully, we can learn from the progress made by OCLC PICA, SURF and this DAI project.

Peter Shepherd reports on Usage Factor Study

The UKSG sponsored a Project COUNTER study into the feasibility of developing a new metric for assessing journal quality, which is based on the electronic traffic on a journal’s site. The “Usage Factor” is envisioned as a ratio of downloads of articles (measured by COUNTER-compliant statistics) and the number of articles available. This approach could provide an alternative quantitative measure of quality to the broadly accepted Thomson Scientific ISI Journal Impact Factor (Wikipedia). While the Impact Factor has many benefits, such as its global, independent and well-established position in the community, its difficulty to be manipulated, and its broadly reflective of consensus quality status, the Impact Factor also has its disadvantages, particularly regarding coverage, its STM focus, and the limitation of the types of usage a product might receive. Also of concern are the application of the Impact Factor by publishers and the reliance of it as a measure for performance review in the academy. Peter Shepherd, Project Director of COUNTER, conducted the research and reported on the results of the recently completed survey.

Separated into two phases, the survey explored the community’s general assessment of the relative value of a standardized comparative measure of online usage, its feasibility and the overall interest level of developing such a measure. The first phase consisted of personal interviews with 29 authors, publishers and librarians, while the second phase was a broader online survey of librarians and authors. Among the topics covered during the interviews were: Reaction, in principle, to the Usage Factor; what might be some of the practical implementations; what time windows might be appropriate for the calculation of the Usage Factor; what may be practical ways to consolidate the information and who might take on that responsibility; and what might be implications for participants and non-COUNTER-compliant titles.

Peter reported that there was broad support for a usage-based quality measure, particularly among authors and librarians. Despite moderate dissatisfaction with the Impact Factor and their desire for new quantitative quality measures, authors appeared to be more reticent about changing their behavior based on a new quality measure. Publishers were more mixed in their support, although concerns tended to focus around policy and approach rather than on the principle. Particularly of interest for the library community is developing a broader standard by which titles can be qualitatively measured. One large university-based librarian reported being queried by their dean of Research how they measure the quality of the 22,000 journal titles not covered by ISI. Interestingly, a Usage Factor would rank highly on librarian’s purchase decision matrix if it existed.

COUNTER is seen a an increasingly accepted basis for usage statistics and while it’s application isn’t universal among publishers, it is rapidly being adopted as an accurate representation of online usage. Much of the open questions remain in the detail areas of what precisely will be measured, over what time frame, and who would manage the process. The devil, as they say, is in the details. For example, difficult questions exist of what exactly should be measured – full text only, articles versus other content, and usage of multiple versions (or versions in multiple locations). Also, because people can see the value of a high ranking and the possibility of misuse or abuse, the need for a trusted third party to establish the criteria, calculate, audit disseminate this information to the community will be key to the project’s acceptance.

The meeting ended with a straw poll of the attendees and the vast majority indicated that they supported moving forward to a more specific test development phase. A full report of the research is being provided to UKSG and an article on the results will be released later this year.

UKSG Annual Conference 2007: read all about it ... right here!

With this year's UKSG Annual Conference fast approaching (it will be held 16-18 April in Warwick, UK), I am delighted to announce the members of the blogging team who will be providing realtime coverage of the Conference here on LiveSerials:

• Anna Gasking is Acting Product Manager at Taylor & Francis
• Bev Acreman, the UKSG's Marketing Officer, is Global Marketing & Customer Services Director at Taylor & Francis
• Charlie Rapple, also on the UKSG's Marketing Committee and blogger-in-chief at LiveSerials, is Group Marketing Manager at Publishing Technology plc
• Dan Tonkery, a member of the main UKSG committee, is Director of Business Development at EBSCO Information Services
  
• Emily Gillingham, another member of the UKSG's Marketing Committee, is Library Marketing and Communications Manager at Blackwell Publishing
• Helen Cooke, a member of the UKSG's main committee, is Head of Journals Sales at SAGE Publications
  
• Kate Price, also on the UKSG's main committee, is E-Strategy and Resources Manager at the University of Surrey Library
• Kirsty Meddings is Product Developer Manager at Ingenta
  
• Leigh Dodds is CTO at Ingenta
• Lesley Crawshaw, a member of UKSG's marketing committee and co-moderator of lis-e-journals, is Faculty Information Consultant at the University of Hertfordshire Learning and Information Services
  
• Louise Cole, also a member of UKSG's marketing committee and co-moderator of lis-e-journals, is Electronic Resources Team Leader at Leeds University Library
• Simon Inger heads up Simon Inger Consulting
  
• Todd Carpenter is Managing Director of NISO
  

As you can see, we've aimed for a mix of bloggers representing all shades of the serials community spectrum. The team will post reports of the daily conference sessions and hopefully some of the after-hours activities as well.

For all those who were unsuccessful in booking a place at this year's conference, make sure you have LiveSerials on your blogroll to be kept up-to-date with what's hot and happening in the information industry.