KAPTUR one year on – (2/3)

Posted: October 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This is our update for the end of the twelfth month of KAPTUR; we are just past the two-thirds mark! For an overview of the past year, please visit the KAPTUR Prezi.

WP1: Project Management

  • The Project team have been in contact by telephone and email; four colleagues will be attending the JISCMRD Programme meeting this week in Nottingham.

WP3: Technical Infrastructure

WP4: Modelling

  • The four policies are going through several rounds of committees and are to schedule; this has been the focus of the past month.
  • In addition the University of the Arts London’s draft policy is available online: http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/data-management/

WP5: Training and Support

  • The KAPTUR training plan is now publicly available.
  • The Pinterest links have been linked to via UAL’s RDM pages and DCC’s Marieke Guy’s excellent blog post on The value of video in getting the RDM message across
  • The GSA Project Officer taught MRes students about research terminology covering research data and promoting the KAPTUR project; this will feed into our training materials. Blog post about this: Getting to grips with research terminology
  • The Project Officers have been in contact with their Research Offices to arrange a half-day training session for Research Office staff and Librarians in order to pilot the KAPTUR training materials.

WP6: Evaluation and Sustainability

  • The Project Officers have received a short Word document and model costings template (Excel) and will be piloting this within their own institutions.
  • Detailed case study templates have been created and shared with the Project Officers. The case studies will be presented at the end-of-project conference on Wednesday 6th March 2013.

WP7: Dissemination

Working in Stages with DataStage and Figshare

Posted: October 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: technical | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

With thanks to Carlos Silva, Technical Manager, for the following blog post:

The KAPTUR Technical Analysis report (PDF) recommended the piloting and further investigation of two different systems: DataStage to EPrints; and Figshare to EPrints.

Figshare to Eprints

Some of the advantages of integrating Figshare with EPrints are:

  • The upload tool to Figshare allows multiple uploads using WebDAV and javascript.
  • The Figshare team is currently working on a desktop uploading tool to allow users a streamlined process of submission.
  • Feedback from the Steering Group was that the user interface of Figshare was attractive and clear; it is already being used by researchers to store and manage research data and therefore the integration with EPrints would enable many institutions (as EPrints is the major repository platform in the UK) to encourage researchers to better manage their research data and then upload selectively to an institutional repository for publication.

Following telephone and Skype chats with the Figshare team a requirements document was created and shared with project partners and Simon Hodson. The idea was to create an API which would be free for use by any institution who wanted to link Figshare with an EPrints repository using the SWORD 2 protocol.  Additional features included the development of the desktop uploader; a custom user interface design; back-end application development; and custom user accounts for the KAPTUR project partners to test the system.

Currently, negotiations are still in progress and further thought has been given to the infrastructure and pricing models that will eventually have an impact when adopting a commercial approach with technologies such as Figshare and that if not considered could lead to an unsustainable solution for the sector.

DataStage to EPrints

The second pilot recommended by the report was to link DataStage (from the JISC funded DataFlow project* with EPrints.  The technical implementation of this pilot started in June 2012 when the Technical Manager set-up DataStage and DataBank on a local machine; demonstrated this to the Project Officers (in June) and the Steering Group (in July) and started collecting feedback on this.  After testing the DataFlow software internally, the team started to explore the best way of linking DataStage with EPrints directly.

The advantages of integrating DataStage with EPrints are:

  • DataStage offers the potential of being institutionally based, and therefore tighter control.
  • It provides a structured metadata collection interface.
  • It also provides flexibility when uploading, for example with the integration of a shared drive which uses a popular storage approach similar to Dropbox but with the advantages that the data is held on the institution’s servers.

Proposed integration of DataStage with EPrints, July 2012 (SlideShare)

The Technical Manager through VADS’  host institution – the University for the Creative Arts – set-up a test environment for the KAPTUR project (http://kaptur.ucreative.ac.uk).  Test accounts have been given to project partners and an online feedback form set-up to capture this information.

To test the DataStage connection with EPrints, a test repository with the latest EPrints version (3.3.10) was needed in order to use the SWORD 2 protocol; this was created (http://kaptur_repo.ucreative.ac.uk).

Both systems have been tested separately, and both systems have performed well.

The DataStage software should allow users to submit entire folders as ‘packages’ to a repository using the SWORD2 protocol, however currently there is an issue** with the default version of DataStage and no transfers can be done on any other repository other than into Databank (the DataFlow project’s repository).

As well as contacting DataFlow and EPrints, the Technical Manager has been in contact with various colleagues across the sector, from the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London (see blog post about connecting DataStage with DSpace) to other colleagues who have also looked into connecting DataStage with EPrints such as the UK Data Archive, University of Essex and the RoaDMaP project, University of Leeds.

At this point there are the following conclusions:

  1. EPrints 3.3 is required in order to have SWORD 2 fully enabled [completed].
  2. EPrints have tested the SWORD 2 protocol successfully with other EPrints repositories, however connectivity with other types of repositories hasn’t been tested by EPrints yet.
  3. The DataFlow project manager replied saying that there were issues with the SWORD submission on the DataStage side, however they were expecting to come up with a workaround for their V 1.0 release [It is noted that Richard Jones will be presenting about DataFlow at the JISCMRD Nottingham programme event so this is hopeful!!].
  4. The lead DataStage developer mentioned that SWORD2 was envisioned to fully work with DataStage and EPrints when it becomes available and that previous versions of DataStage managed to work okay with EPrints, however due to new developments and enhancements at either end some changes in the DataStage side need to happen before it fully complies and can connect with EPrints.

*DataFlow was funded by JISC, under the University Modernisation Fund, from June 2011 – May 2012 to further develop a prototype out of the JISC-funded ADMIRAL project (2009-11).

**A blog post at the end of August noted the action “Review Sword access problems, isolate and fix (getting external help if needed).”

KAPTUR Steering Group meeting, HEFCE, 18th July

Posted: July 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: meetings, technical, training | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

View from HEFCE, 12th Floor,
Centre Point, London. Photo: MTG

Key points from the meeting:

  • It was noted that there was diversity among the four institutions in terms of drafting the RDM policies – we can still collaborate and learn from each other – but the approach is necessarily different at each institution.
  • University of the Arts London are really benefiting from their participation in the DCC University Engagement programme; the UAL Project Officer is working an extra day per week on this and as a result has been able to revisit and extend the KAPTUR Environmental Assessment through 20 x 5 minute telephone calls which will be followed up with 1 hour in-depth interviews with visual arts researchers.
  • There was discussion about a definition for visual arts research data and how this might be constraining, but was needed at the same time in order to be able to move forward with the RDM policies. A working definition was presented to the KAPTUR Steering Group 3 months ago in response to questions raised by the UAL working group: http://www.slideshare.net/kaptur_mrd/kaptur-news06
  • Feedback on training/support and the KAPTUR toolkits: recommendation to create KAPTUR videos about visual arts research data instead of hosting workshops at each institution (we already had plans to re-use content from the previous JISCMRD programme e.g. http://www.youtube.com/user/GUdatamanagement). I still think the face-to-face aspect of the workshops would be useful, but maybe there is a way to incorporate shorter sessions and use the videos as part of these? We will discuss at our next project team meeting in September.
  • The Steering Group liked the Figshare interface and thought it would be appealing to visual arts researchers as well as easy to use; there were lots of questions about both DataStage and Figshare.
  • Feedback on Sustainability: recommendation to get an idea of costs of the proposed technical infrastructure to include estimates of staff time required for ongoing support of the systems.

The presentations are available from SlideShare.

The Triumphal Quadriga or Horses of St Mark, facade of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

It was great to welcome Laura Molloy, Researcher at the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), to the Steering Group meeting. After the meeting Leigh, Laura and I met to discuss the project from the perspective of her role as JISCMRD Evidence Gatherer. As well as discussing impact and gathering evidence about benefits, Laura also came up with the concept of the chariot (KAPTUR project) being pulled by four horses (our four institutions). I really liked this idea of the race and also the need for collaboration to be well-matched in order to make the project successful.

Meeting at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, 2nd July

Posted: July 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: meetings | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

This, our 9th project team meeting, was a bit of an adventure from the start, as the building is so new its postcode has not been picked up by Google Maps yet! However the venue is easy to find with clear markings from King’s Cross to the King’s Boulevard. Once on the 5th floor, there were spectacular views both inside and outside of the building:

CSM Granary Building, London. Photo: MTG

Key points from the meeting:

  • The Technical Manager provided a demonstration of DataFlow’s DataStage, which has now been installed on a local machine for testing purposes. There was also discussion about Figshare.
  • The UAL Project Officer spoke about DCC’s Institutional Engagement work with UAL.
  • Each Project Officer presented about two externally funded visual arts research projects (forthcoming blog post).
  • Everything appears to be on course for draft RDM policies to be approved at the Autumn Research Committee meetings; Project Officers will give short presentations about their RDM policy work at the Steering Group meeting on 18th July.
  • The Project Manager and Project Officers have collaborated on an A-Z of visual arts research data based on quotes from researchers in the KAPTUR Environmental Assessment report (forthcoming publicity and/or blog post).
  • The Project Manager is working with Angus Whyte from DCC to put together a programme for an event on ‘Selecting and Appraising Research Data’, to take place in September.
  • We discussed the timescales for producing the toolkits and institutional workshops; November was scheduled for the workshops. The Project Manager has been in conversation with Joy Davidson of DCC to find out more about the DCC training materials.

Technical development update

Posted: June 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: technical | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Since the beginning of the KAPTUR project, the Technical Manager has maintained contact with the UCA IT department to ensure they are aware of the project and its requirements. Work requests to IT have established precise deadlines, however for the purposes of this blog post the following tasks are represented in a month-by-month format for easy viewing:

Who What When (2012)
June July August September October
KAPTUR Technical Manager Download and install DataFlow on a local environment (not server).  X
KAPTUR Technical Manager Once DataFlow is stable, setup EPrints in the same local environment.  X
KAPTUR Technical Manager Development work to link DataFlow with EPrints.  X
KAPTUR project team and partner institutions First round of feedback and tests.  X
UCA IT Department Create Virtual Machine (VM) on servers hosted by UCA.  X
UCA IT Department Assign the URL kaptur.ucreative.ac.uk to the VM.  X
UCA IT Department Create back-up mechanisms in line with usual procedures for the VM.  X
KAPTUR Technical Manager Transfer local development environment to the new VM.  X
KAPTUR Technical Manager Test and debug.  X
KAPTUR project team and partner institutions Further feedback and tests of the system via the VM.  X
KAPTUR Technical Manager Further tests and debugging leading to initial pilot system.  X

The above table is based upon the original KAPTUR workpackages, additional investigations undertaken as part of the Technical Analysis report, and ongoing consultation with the project team.

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