1. Update on the UK Shared Academic
Knowledge Base
December 2011
2. Introduction
• Objectives
• Deliverables of Phase 1
• Governance
• Technical development strategy
• Supplier engagement
• Progress
• Licensing
• Next steps
3. Objectives
Provide an accurate and relevant knowledge base
Support data sharing between library systems
Minimise the duplication of staff effort
Improve return on investment from systems
Increase productivity through shared activity
4. Key Deliverables of Phase 1
• KB+ platform with user interface to allow academic
institutions, suppliers, publishers and others to navigate, manage and
manipulate data, supported by access management and permission tools.
• Verified, accurate and up-to-date publication information for NESLi2, JISC
eCollections, SHEDL and WHEEL agreements in KBART format, suitable for use
by link-resolvers
• Subscription management information – such as post-cancellation access
entitlement information, contact information, access management records.
• Licences in machine readable formats for NESLi2, major JISC Collections and
major non-JISC Collections agreements
• Usage statistics in machine readable format for NESLi2 publishers and other
publishers stored within the Journals Usage Statistics Portal.
• Alerting services covering renewals, opt outs, service availability and
disruption.
• Workflow management tools related to the selection, review, renewal and
cancellation of publications.
5. Principles Phase One Deliverables
Participants
Data
JISC Services
Standards Title lists
Publishers
Workflow Holdings
Interoperability Quality
KB+ Systems
Vendors
Verification
Shared Activity Alerts Licences
Subscription
Usage Agents
statistics
Business Model
Registration
Agencies
Legal Model
Academic
Institutions
6. Governance
• Project Board
– Dr Richard Parsons, University of Dundee (Chair)
– Anne Bell, SCONUL and University of Warwick
– Rachel Bruce, JISC Executive
– Peter Burnhill, EDINA
– Lorraine Estelle, JISC Collections
– Nicholas Lewis, Chair of Community Advisory Group and
University of East Anglia
– Ross MacIntyre, MIMAS
– Fiona Parsons, SCONUL and University of Wolverhampton
– Mark Toole, Chair of Technical Advisory Group and
University of Stirling
7. Technical Advisory Group
• Mark Toole, University of Stirling, (Chair)
• Chris Awre, University of Hull
• Chris Keene, University of Sussex
• Paul Needham, Cranfield University
• Paul Stainthorpe, University of Lincoln
• Dave Pattern, University of Huddersfield
• Paul Walk, UKOLN
• Amy Warner, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Michael Winkler, University of Pennsylvania and OLE
8. Community Advisory Group
• Nick Lewis, University of East Anglia (Chair)
• Angela Conyers, Birmingham City University and Evidence
Base (JUSP)
• Nick Woolley, KCL
• Tracey Randall, Bangor University
• Sarah Pearson, University of Birmingham/KBART
• Kristin Antellman, UNSU and KUALI
• Kate Price, University of Surrey
• Alison Brock, Open University
• Suzanne Enright, University of Westminster
9. Supplier engagement
• Supplier Event – October 2011 • Follow up meetings have been
– Ex Libris held, or organised with all of
– EBSCO the suppliers and to date all of
– Innovative Interfaces them have signalled that they
– OCLC would like to be involved
– Swets
– Capita (Talis) • Issues around conceptualistion
– UKSG/KBART of journal agreements
– EDItEUR
– Ringgold • All 44 NESLi2 publishers
– LAC Group approached for KBART
– COUNTER compliant title lists
– Sirsi Dynix
– Serials Solutions
10. Recommendations
• Hosted and Mediated Knowledge Base Plus
– Community centric ‘above campus’ knowledge
base
– Mediation and validation by a trusted third party
– Integrated management tools
– Linked to UK licensing initiatives
– Works in conjunction with existing market
offerings
Knowledge Base Plus – a shared service for subscription resources.
http://sconulerm.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
David Kay and Owen Stephens 2011
11. Three Layers of Licensing
Licence
Comparison Tool
?
JISC Model Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
12. Next steps
• Employment of technical lead and
commencement of development
• IPR framework
– Commercial confidentiality
– Data Protection
– Licensing
• Business models
• Data sources
These are the original recommendations from the work sponsored by JISC and SCONUL upon which KB+ is based.There are two that I would like to pick up on in particular.The mediation and validation by a trusted 3rd party and the link to UK licensing initiatives.One of the things that I have been struck by as we have reviewed the information about JISC Collections agreements that is contained within some of the knowledge bases is how confused it seems to be.I recently saw how one of our journal archive agreements was represented in a knowledge base.The best thing was that atleast there was a record for the agreement, however that was where the similarity ended, one fifth of the titles weren’t referenced.In addition there were two other references for this particular journal archive and institutions were indicating that they weren’t signed up to the JISC Collections version of the agreement even though they were.So all of this incorrect information was driving ERMs, link resolvers and discovery tools, and no one had ever thought to approach us for the information – and it even had to be suggested that we might be well placed to provide them with information on the content of the licences we’ve negotiated.On the licensing side, it is worth noting how much difference there can be between a publishers global title list and the lists for nesli2 agreements.We now find ourselves in the position of publishers saying to us would you like us to do the lists in KBART format for the Nesli2 options, something that wasn’t previously available.
I want to pursue the discussion around licensing because this is another area where KB+ can help.Via a colleague in JISC, Amber Thomas, I discovered this representation from Creative Commons of the 3 layers of licensing:Now for my purposes in JISC Collections we have the legal code in the JISC Model licence – the validated legalistic expression of the agreement between a publisher and the community.We have now through our work with in ONIX PL started to create a large number of machine readable expressions of these licence agreements, that we’ll be making available and can be shared with other systems.The area where we have had the most trouble though is that middle layer – the human readable expression of the licence. At the start of this year JISC Collections had it’s licences re-drafted by the campaign for plain english in an attempt to overcome the problems of understanding so many of our members contact us about.Unfortunately, both our legal counsel and a leading legal counsel agreed that no publisher would ever accept it because it didn’t include appropriate legal language – so one is thrown back on developing guidance documents.In a similar vein some of the core licensing issues facing institutions today – such as access for partner institutions – are rarely covered or dealt with in a licence, which simply states that an authorised institution has access to a resource without defining the exact parameters of that institution – something that becomes even more difficult when institutions themselves struggle to define the nature of their relations with partners.I see KB+ providing some assistance here in a variety of respects:1. Presentation of only the salient features of a licence in a human readable form – drawing on the creative commons approach.2. There is an opportunity to aggregate within a licensing module documentation and guidance on the meaning of licence terms.3. Pull together information on publisher policies regarding partnerships in one place in the same way that SHERPA/Romeo has done for archiving policies.