We last blogged here about DepositMO on 14 February. At that time we had submitted a bid to a JISC call for proposals – Deposit Projects: Benefits Realisation – to build on the work through a new project, already identified in the bid as DepositMOre. The aim of that call was to offer some direct continuation for projects in the original JISC Repository Deposit programme strand, for successful bids. For that reason there would be a fast-track presentation and evaluation of bids, with a view to new projects starting in March 2012, and finishing within 6 months.

While we heard positive feedback from the evaluation committee, we didn’t get the green light to begin in March. Instead the light turned green in July. Bigger wheels than this decision have been turning at JISC, so some indecision was understandable, even if we were left in a period of uncertainty, not sure when or if the new project would get approval. Despite the delay, it says a great deal about the commitment of JISC and programme manager Balviar Notay to this area of work, and we are grateful that she persisted and delivered the project to us.

Projects emerge from calls, and are directed by those calls. The requirement of this call was to show deposit of more content in real repositories, using the tools developed in the first phase of the work, in our case DepositMO. In other words, a focus on deposit rather than development. A consequent requirement was that we partner with some institutional repositories: in DepositMO we had partnered with technical developers. These would not be the same partners, although the small core project  team at Southampton would be the same.

This, then, is what the project looks like, as described in the project proposal. This was the final version to be submitted to JISC and includes changes responding to feedback from the evaluation committee. Although this was the version that was finally accepted, and forms the basis of the project, the outcome remained uncertain at this stage. It can be seen from the cover page that this version was anticipating a schedule starting in June 2012.

So with repository partners on board and the bid submitted, we waited to report the formal outcome to them, believing throughout that the outcome was imminent. When that decision arrived some months after the original submission and presentation we realised we would have a job to keep all the partners with us on a revised schedule, and that we would have to be flexible on a that schedule. It was unlikely we would be able to start immediately.

Does anyone remember the summer of 2012? In the UK it was essentially the Olympics, then everyone went away to recover. I’m pleased to say, however, that we were able to use that time to work with the respective repository partners to put together a revised project timescale that they could work with. As a result the project will run for 6 months to end March 2013.

There has been one significant change. I was fortunate to work with Dave Tarrant as the axis of DepositMO at Southampton. Dave motivated the shape and development profile of both projects, but in the intervening period has committed to representing Southampton in other big projects. In his place we are delighted to welcome Tim Brody to DepositMOre. Tim is known for his distinguished work in the repository field, most recently as lead developer for EPrints but also for related repository services such as ROAR, Citebase, and others.

Given the time that elapsed since the bid, the subsequent space that created for discussion and thinking about the work, and surrounding developments, not everything about the project will be exactly as envisaged. We will explore what has changed in terms of technical development, and introduce each of our repository partners, in the next posts.

Deliverables

The following software deliverables are proposed:

D0. Interaction Specification: At the core of the project as required by all subsequent development, this deliverable will define the method for interaction between the client and server components required to build deposit directly into authors’ everyday workflows. Here clients are those defined by D1 (MS Office) and D4 (Operating Systems) and the servers are those consuming the content defined in D2 (EPrints and DSpace). A common and extensible specification is required to allow all of these softwares to interoperate. The development of this specification will be a beta after 4 months followed by an enhanced specification towards the end of the project.

D1. Office – Repository Conversation Addin: Allowing extended metadata, document components and multiple formats to be packaged into a single SWORD deposit. This is the desktop client side of the protocol. Three phases consist of scoping, developing and enhancing. See deliverable D2 for the matching repository server component.

D2(a/b). Repository Conversation Plugin: the repository software components that allow additional metadata and file formats to be requested for a SWORD package to interface with D1.

D3. Office Media Licensing Addin: similar to “Insert Picture”, except it takes CC images from Flickr / Google or purchased images directly from iStockPhoto. Also annotates all media (e.g. images pasted from Web Browser) with explicit provenance/rights management metadata.

D4. Desktop integration. This deliverable is similar to D1 except that the interaction is done directly with the operating system rather than office. Full interactivity should be available without the limitation of the office platform. Windows, MAC and Linux (Ubuntu) operating systems are in scope

D5. Repository Virtual File System: this deliverable has been dropped from the workplan.

The following training deliverables are proposed:

D6. Deskside coaching kit (DSC) consisting of technical training resources, academic how‐to materials and support and problem-solving documentation.

D7. Virtual kit (VDSC) consisting of web tutorials, short video walkthroughs, wiki supported by project team.

The following community activities are proposed:

D8. Researcher community workshops for archaeology, chemistry, materials science and educators.

D9. OfficeSWORD community building via Codeplex and DepositMO websites, and dev8D Code Dojo and Developer Challenge (2011).

The following reports are proposed, that include evaluation results:

D10. Analysis of culture change at Southampton / Edinburgh

D11. Analysis of culture change for discipline researchers

Deliverables D1, D3 and D4 are independent of the repository platform and will assume a primarily Windows/Office desktop environment due to the time restrictions of the project. Deliverable D2 is dependent on repository platform, and will be coded for both DSpace and EPrints.

Deliverable D9 will focus on building sustainable community of OfficeSWORD developers, in collaboration with Microsoft.

Engagement with the Researcher Community: Effecting Culture Change

The aim of DepositMO is to effect culture change among researchers to use repositories in their everyday workflows. The key to the success of the DepositMO project will be the negotiation of a new relationship between researchers and the repository, including using the developed technology solutions. This project will seek to form deep engagements with researchers from a number of disciplines, a number of existing repository projects and a number of institutions.

The DepositMO user community will initially be drawn from researchers from across the Universities of Southampton and Edinburgh, with focus on disciplines which have investments in current JISC repository activities and multi‐institutional research user communities - in the areas of archaeology, chemistry, materials science – and that are principal users of Microsoft Office. We are working with these user communities already as part of the JISC Institutional Data Management Blueprint (IDMB) project.

Teaching activities, across the disciplines, will be represented by the team responsible for the Southampton EdShare repository,  and the Humbox project.

Edinburgh University will represent a different repository infrastructure (DSpace).

The principal stakeholders are researchers and lecturers, and this project will aim at trainee and early‐career researchers, such as postgraduate students, postdoctoral research assistants and junior lecturers, who by definition have more time for engagement and who offer a greater chance of developing new practice. Our secondary stakeholders are librarians and repository staff (repository liaison officers and repository managers) who mediate, manage and offer leadership on repository engagement.

The major mechanism of researcher engagement undertaken by this project will be deskside coaching, i.e. face to face, one‐on‐one training and consultation. This is the recently established mechanism of the University of Southampton’s Library Repository Team and has also been adopted by the University of Edinburgh’s Research Publications Service.

Engagement methodology

i. Develop training resources (presentations, videos, web resources) in conjunction with the initial set of focus communities (Archaelogy, Chemistry, Materials Science, EdShare)

a. The resources will comprise a Deskside Coaching Kit (DSC) for use in one‐to‐one training and a Virtual DSC (VDSC) as a supplementary support resource that can be used by trainees and end users after their deskside sessions, that can be shared with colleagues, and that will be used in Graduate School research training modules.
b. The resources will focus on the extended repository capabilities developed by this project, and on those capabilities developed by other projects in the Deposit programme.

ii. Train the trainers (Southampton and Edinburgh library liaison officers)
iii. Run an in‐depth program of deskside training to whole University staff
iv. Monitor the effects of the training program, both qualitatively in terms of change of attitudes and behaviour and quantitatively in terms of the use of the repository
v. Roll out the program to the disciplinary research and teaching users.
vi. The developer community will be targeted through JISC mechanisms (e.g. dev8D), Microsoft Research, EPrints, and the researcher communities. We will take leadership of the OfficeSWORD open source project.

Close working relationships should exist between the 3 layers of the team (shown in the figure) with quarterly (or more) meetings involving all partners. The core investigators and project manager will interface discussion between developers and training/user team.

Foreground IP emerging from the project will be identified and the ownership of the IP agreed. Typically, foreground IP is freely available to all parties to the project and for a predetermined period from the conclusion of the project.

The project will also publish guidelines on the commercial exploitation of the IP generated by the project and the benefactors thereof.

Software produced as part of the project will be based on open standards and released as open source. All software components will be distributed under the open source licenses favoured by their respective communities.

Office addins will be distributed through the Microsoft Research site for Scholarly Communications.

Software from the project will be added to the EPrints Services portfolio and maintained and developed by them.

Since it is open source, software will also be offered to other repository developers (e.g. DuraSpace and @mire) via an end‐of‐project workshop.

Licences

• Code: multiple licences, GPL v3 where possible
• Presentations and documentation: Creative Commons Attribution UK 2.0: England and Wales
• Project content: Open Data Commons Attribution License

Evaluation

The project will employ a number of quantitative and qualitative evaluation metrics to ensure that we can judge the outcomes of the project:

i. Downloads and deployment of Office add‐ins.
ii. Number of deposits in repositories at Southampton University and Edinburgh University
iii. Number of deskside coaching sessions held.
iv. Downloads/views of virtual deskside coaching kits.
v. Pre‐ and post‐ DepositMO project interviews. In‐depth qualitative analysis of project impact amongst focus discipline researchers.
vi. Embedding of training in Graduate School (post‐Roberts funding), number of participants.
vii. DepositMO workshop for all stakeholders – participants and workshop feedback.

Sustainability will be supported through building developer community around the open source software outputs to this project. Microsoft Research has committed to working with us to ensure that the Office components continue to be disseminated through their channels. Server‐side functionality will be rolled into EPrints and DSpace as standard functionality. Deskside coaching will be embedded within our library service, and training material delivered through our Graduate School as part of compulsory courses. By working with key researcher communities directly we aim to drive culture change so that widespread usage will drive forwards further development and deployment.

Expansion: It is anticipated that a successful project should see an update similar to that of SWORD with a similar community wanting to get involved. All specifications with accompanying examples for the protocol developed will be published in an easy-to-read form such that others (both producers and consumers) can adopt the emerging technologies. Many relationships with others in a similar area (such as Peter Sefton), are already in place for the consideration and implementation of appropriate technologies from the start of the project to allow interested parties an easier implementation route from day one.

Stakeholder analysis

A range of stakeholders in the research, repository and developer communities will be positively impacted by this project.

i. Researchers. By bringing the repository on to the desktop we can bridge the gap between everyday tools and web‐based services. By using deskside coaching we will try to effect culture change one person at a time, and providing Web‐based virtual coaching support will enable wider rollout.
ii. Repository support staff. Librarians and information workers will be involved in developing training materials, and deploying them at Southampton University and Edinburgh University. By collaborating across institutions we aim to make these training materials generic for widespread adoption across the higher education sector.
iii. Developers. Our software outputs will be open source, and we expect to increase usage by explicitly supporting the developer community around OfficeSWORD. Microsoft Research will actively disseminate our work. Will work with JISC, at events such as dev8D Code Dojo and Challenges, and within the EPrints and DSpace communities to raise awareness.
iv. IT Services. University of Southampton IT service, iSolutions, has committed to deploy DepositMO add‐ins campus‐wide as part of its standard software deployment on all University workstations.

Aim and objectiv

The aim of this proposal is to develop an effective culture change mechanism that will succeed in embedding a deposit culture into the everyday work of researchers and lecturers. To make this possible, our objective is to extend the capabilities of repositories to exploit desktop and authoring environments and to turn the repository into an invaluable extension to the researcher’s desktop to address apparent repository weaknesses.

The universal model of repository engagement serves the research community poorly. Emerging from post‐publication library acquisition models (e.g. OAIS), all the work, research and creative effort happens beyond the borders of the repository. It is the finalized research outputs that are currently accommodated in our systems. Only when the research and writing have finished can an individual item be individually uploaded and tagged. To address this situation, the repository needs to provide services that are relevant for researchers.

The typical researcher uses ‘office’ applications to create and edit papers, reports, presentations, posters and teaching materials on their computer desktop. Consequently, the repository must provide better services for the desktop and for office documents. These services should not just be inward looking to make the repository better accommodate office documents, but make the repository a useful source of novel functionality that assists researchers in their daily tasks, including collaboration.

Outputs

A new high‐bandwidth bridge that connects the users’ desktop environment to the repository will be constructed to overcome the specific deficiencies described above that are seen as key barriers to repository deposit, consisting of three parts:

i. a set of components for the Microsoft Office authoring environments and the underlying operating system, such as the Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder
ii. a suite of enhanced services provided by the repository that work with the desktop/office enhancements and an enhanced SWORD interaction
iii. a bulk upload utility that matches material on the desktop with records in the repository to support away‐from‐office scenarios (e.g. extended archaeological digs) and end‐of-project deposit.

Technology is only part of the solution: An equally important part of this proposal is to help to change the Modus Operandi of the researcher using the following approaches:

i. coaching them to make use of (and hopefully to depend on) the repository for their daily activities. This will be achieved by an expert team, working closely with groups of researchers and library/repository staff to introduce new software and negotiate new working practices.
ii. raising awareness of what is possible in target user communities in archaeology, chemistry, materials science and humanities through existing researcher networks with whom the project team is already working closely.