edinburgh research explorer€¦ · pose is to describe edina and what it does. edina is a centre...

Edinburgh Research Explorer

What EDINA Does Ensuring Ease and Continuity of Access

Citation for published versionBurnhill P 2015 What EDINA Does Ensuring Ease and Continuity of Access Paper presented at 10thInternational CALIBER 2015 Shimla India 120315 - 140515

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Download date 30 Apr 2020

- 553 -

What EDINA Does Ensuring Ease amp Continuity 10th International CABLIBER 2015

What EDINA Does Ensuring Ease amp Continuity of Access

Peter Burnhill

1 Introduction

11 This paper has two parts The first pur-pose is to describe EDINA and what it does EDINAis a centre of digital expertise and service delivery Playing a designated role for Jisc in providing onlineservices and expertise to benefit research and edu-cation in the UK EDINA forms part of the Infor-mation Services Group of the University ofEdinburgh Brief description of Jisc and the Univer-sity of Edinburgh are included in order to providethe context in which EDINA operates nationally inthe UK and internationally There is also an expla-nation of how EDINA came about as it approachesits twentieth anniversary

111 This is all addressed in Part A of thepaper

12 The second purpose of the paper is to high-light threats to the integrity and continuing access tothe scholarly record and to describe actions beingtaken The challenge to the integrity of the scholarlyrecord is one to be shared across research universi-ties It is an international matter recognizing thatresearch literature is not limited to what is publishedin onersquos own country Together we need to devisesustainable infrastructure and to prompt action thatresults in successful sufficient and timely archivingof all that constitutes the record of scholarship

13 Many of the issues raised in this paper werediscussed at the Coalition for Networked Informa

10th International CALIBER-2015HP University and IIAS Shimla Himachal Pradesh IndiaMarch 12-14 2015copy INFLIBNET Centre Gandhinagar Gujarat India

tion (CNI) Membership Meeting in December 2014That included a summary presentation that coveredthe activities reported here

131 This is addressed in Part B of the paper

PART A

2 EDINA Jisc and The University of Edinburgh

21 EDINA

211 EDINA develops and delivers world-class online services and expertise that benefit re-search and education in the UK and beyond Weseek ways to enhance research and education in theUK For researchers students and their teachersthis means enhancing their productivity with ser-vices that both inspire and save time helping to makethe imagined possible For universities colleges andother learning and skills organizations this meanshelping them succeed more effectively in their mis-sion improving outcome and increasing impactwithin limited budgets

212 Following designation as a nationaldata centre in 1995 as part of an open competitionacross all universities EDINA was launched with aUK remit twenty years ago on 25th January 1996This drew upon competence gained through theUniversityrsquos Data Library which was established in19834 and the role played by the University in pro-viding computing infrastructure across ScotlandThis experience provided a connection into networksof university libraries both in the UK and interna-tionally

- 554 -

10th International CABLIBER 2015 What EDINA Does Ensuring Ease amp Continuity

213 What is written here complements thesummaries to be found on the EDINA website1That includes the online version of the EDINA An-nual Review which forms part of our formal account-ability to Jisc and its stakeholders EDINA providesa significant part of the contribution that Jisc makesas a champion for the use of digital technologies inUK university and further education and skills sec-tor

214 A more detailed account of what EDINAdoes is set out in section 24 below

22 Jisc

221 Jisc is a membership body owned by UKuniversities and colleges having previously been theJoint Information Systems Committee of the UKhigher education funding bodies As indicated onthe Jisc website it has the remit to be the UKrsquos ex-pert body for digital technology and digital resourceson behalf of higher education further education andresearch Since its foundation in the early1990s ithas played a pivotal role in the adoption of informa-tion technology to improve research teaching andthe student experience as well as institutional effi-ciency in the following ways

2211 Network and IT services ndash with ac-cess to the SuperJanet Internet backbone computersecurity protection and ubiquitous lsquoeduroamrsquo wi-fiaccess

2212 Digital resources ndash with a licensingconsortium (Jisc Collections through which institu-tions procure electronic journals and other infor-mation resources used for research and teaching)shared services to support libraries and institutionalrepositories resource discovery tools and access todigital archives geospatial data multimedia andopen educational resources

2213 Advisory services - enabling uni-versities to get the most out of using technology forteaching research and administration along withadvising the sector on how to respond to new chal-lenges and opportunities

2214 Selective research and develop-ment activity to help keep the UK apply leading-edge technology uncovering promising ideas andtranslating new digital solutions from other sectorsand contexts into products and services that benefiteducation and research communities and add realvalue

23 The University of Edinburgh

231 The University of Edinburgh is one ofthe worlds leading universities and one of the larg-est universities in the UK It was founded in 1583 byRoyal Decree shortly after the lsquoToun Councilrsquo ofEdinburgh established its first library around whichthe lsquoTounis Collegersquo and then the University wasformed Today the University employs over 12000members of staff in academic and supporting roles

232 The University of Edinburgh was proudto honour its first Indian graduate in 1876 With aliaison office in Mumbai today there are 279 stu-dents from India studying at the University ofEdinburgh The University is also home to the Cen-tre for South Asian Studies the principal academicunit in Scotland dedicated to study of the Indiansubcontinent the new Edinburgh India Institute wasestablished in 2014 In February 2011 the Universitysigned a Memorandum of Understanding withJawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi to col-laborate together There is now a long list of othercollaborations

- 555 -


233 The University offers more than 500undergraduate and 160 postgraduate courses to over35000 students each year There are about 14000international students from more than 140 coun-tries representing over 40 of the total who under-take postgraduate and undergraduate study Two-thirds of the worlds nationalities study at EdinburghMore recently the University has launched signifi-cant online teaching initiatives with approaching2000 students currently studying its online distancelearning postgraduate programmes and a total todate of one million enrolments for EdinburghMOOCs

234 The latest UK Research Assessment Ex-ercise highlighted the Universityrsquos place at the fore-front of international research Research income ispound200m representing 27 per cent of total income Itregards its professional services as critical to its suc-cess as well as its world-class teaching research andstudent facilities The many achievements of staffand graduates include activities that have exploredspace revolutionised surgery published era-defin-ing books paved the way for life-saving medicalbreakthroughs and introduced to the world manyinventions discoveries and ideas from penicillin tocloning Dolly the sheep

235 Having a broad subject base the Uni-versity of Edinburgh has 22 Schools spread over threeColleges

2351 Humanities and Social Sciencerated 12th in the world (The Times Higher Educa-tion 201415 Ranking) It comprises the former fac-ulties of Arts Divinity Law Music and Social Sci-ence the Moray House College of Education andEdinburgh Art College and so has a very broadrange of research activity A leading role is providedby the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Hu-

manities More than 1000 scholars from 66 coun-tries have held Institute fellowships since its foun-dation in 1969 up to 25 Fellows are in residence atany one time

2352 Medicine and Veterinary Medi-cine rated 1st in the UK for medical research (bythe Hospital-based Clinical Subjects Panel) with along history as one of the best medical institutionsin the world Veterinary Medicine came 1st in theUK having made a joint submission with the RoslinInstitute and Scotlandrsquos Rural College (SRUC)

2353 Science and Engineering one ofthe highest-ranked science and engineering group-ings in the UK and a key player in many Europeanand international research collaborations For ex-ample the School of Informatics has consistentlybeen assessed to have more internationally excel-lent and world-class research than any other UKsubmission in Computer Science and Informaticsconfirmed again in the latest REF 2014 results Itholds the Silver Athena SWAN award in recogni-tion of commitment to advance the representationof women in science mathematics engineering andtechnology

236 The support that the University gives toEDINA and also to the Digital Curation Centrewhich also has a national and international remitand funding from Jisc reflects the national and in-ternational role played by the University ofEdinburgh

24 What EDINA Does

241 One way to review the services deliveredat EDINA is presented on the EDINA website or-ganized in categories of services geared for use byresearchers and students (Reference amp Multimedia

- 556 -


Maps amp Data) and those geared for use by librar-ians other academic support staff and by develop-ers A good summary is also set out in the EDINACommunity Report which can be downloaded fromthe Web

242 Flagship services include

2421 Digimap launched in 2000 toprovide access to the lsquoBig Datarsquo of geospatial map-ping data from Ordnance Survey and other nationalagencies for geological hydrographic and environ-mental map data There are associated geo-portaland geo-tagging services and support for the UKLocation Council and Scottish Government as partof the spatial infrastructure

2422 SUNCAT the Serials Union Cata-logue for the research community launched in 2006aggregating holdings information for 100 researchlibraries across the UK There are associated ser-vices supporting the use of OpenURLinteroperability and long term access for the schol-arly record The latter include a global monitor onarchiving activity for e-journal content (KeepersRegistry) and a key lsquoOpen Accessrsquo deposit facility forresearchers worldwide without an institutional re-pository (OpenDepotorg) which is also capable ofrouting researchers to the webpage for their institu-tional repository

2423 Jisc MediaHub brings togetherhigh-quality video image and audio online re-sources that have been copyright-cleared for use ineducation This includes multimedia collections fromChannel 4 ITN Films of Scotland Reuters GettyImages Imperial War Museum Royal Mail FilmClassics Wellcome Collection and many moreSome of these collections are hosted at EDINA oth-ers held on other web sites whose metadata and

lsquothumb nail imagesrsquo have been aggregated Some ofthese are licensed for educational use in the UK byJisc some are made available by other providerssome allow access to UK research and educationonly others on lsquoopen accessrsquo

243 All of these services are lsquofree at the pointof usersquo given the right credentials some requiringlicences and restricted for use within the UK someare openly available The uptake and use of servicesat EDINA continues to grow as it has done consis-tently since 199596 when EDINA first began its partleveraging value from the University of Edinburghin which we are based for the wider UK academiccommunity As of September 2014 130 universitieswithin the UK (nearly 85) and 235 colleges (nearly60) use at least one of the services delivered byEDINA the large proportion of which are on behalfof Jisc

244 The primary goal for EDINA is to enhancethe productivity and quality of research learningand teaching in the UK and beyond EDINA doesthis through the development and delivery of ser-vices digital infrastructure and tools This meansthat EDINA is also engaged actively in project activ-ity and in working collaboratively with others na-tionally and internationally

25 History of EDINA 199596 -

251 Origins in Edinburgh University Data Li-brary

2511 The Data Library was set up in19834 Researchers were looking to the Universityto acquire data resources they needed for their schol-arship This included small area statistics from the1981 Population Census and a range of governmentsurvey datasets In response the Data Library was

- 557 -


formed Geographic information was a focus fromthe beginning not only for the population censusbut conversion of area-based agricultural census datato grid square estimates with detailed visualisationof land use across the UK Collaboration with theDepartment of Geography saw the establishmentof the Regional Research Laboratory for Scotlandfocusing on quantitative techniques in the Social Sci-ences

2512 Then followed support for the li-braries in Scotlandrsquos universities the National Li-brary of Scotland and the two major civic libraries ofEdinburgh and Glasgow through SALSER whichcould claim to be the worldrsquos first web-based unioncatalogue of serials in 19945 SALSER remainsheavily used to this day providing public access toimportant specialist serials collections

2513 Links to the research communitywere cemented by the RAPID project which linkedresearch activity to the output of other work fundedby the Economic and Social Research CouncilUniquely RAPID included not only conventionalmonograph and journal publications but also newtypes of research output such as software datasetsand learning materials

2514 Such projects built up a wealth ofknowledge within the Data Library and a breadthof expertise which was to serve it well for the mostimportant event in its history ndash designation as a na-tional data centre in 1995

252 The decision was taken that the nationalservice should be launched in January 1996 with anew name EDINA that began with an E to sitalongside B for BIDS (University of Bath) and M forMIDAS (University of Manchester)

253 EDINAs new services included onlineaccess to bibliographic indexes such as BIOSIS Pre-views PCI Times Index INSPEC and EiCompendex as well as UKBORDERS which filleda gap in census political and postal boundary data

254 EDINA had earlier gained knowledgeabout digital preservation from the engagement ofthe Data Library with IASSIST the internationalassociation for data librarians and data archivistsserving the needs of the social sciences Staff atEDINA also played a leading role is establishing theDigital Curation Centre That was joint activity withthe Universities of Glasgow and Bath and the Sci-ence and Technology Facilities Council on the basisof collaboration across this University with theSchool of Informatics and the National eScenceCentre (NeSC)

255 EDINA has represented the Universityof Edinburgh as a partner in Controlled LOCKSS(CLOCKSS) and continued to support the DataLibrary both delivering data services into the Uni-versity and advancing research data managementas part of the University of Edinburgh

PART B

3 Ensuring Continuity amp Integrity of the Schol-arly Record

31 Our Essential Task

311 A key task and perhaps the essentialtask for research libraries is to ensure that research-ers and students now and into the future have bothease and continuity of access to the record of schol-arship There is an associated responsibility to en-sure the integrity of the scholarly record

312 Ease of access has been radically im-proved as so much of that has become available

- 558 -


online However as unforeseen consequence thefirst important lsquotake home messagersquo for all librar-ians is that very little of the scholarly record in digi-tal format is now in the direct custody of academiclibraries What was once on-shelf locally is now onlinesomewhere without the assurance that it will beavailable thereafter Moreover what may be citedas a resource on the Web at the time of writing mayhave changed at the time of reading by another orsimply have disappeared without trace

313 The second lsquotake home messagersquo is thatthere are several more threats to the existence ofsignificant parts of the scholarly record These arebeing quantified with evidence presented here

314 Fortunately as a third take home messageis that there are actions that are being carried out toprovide remedy Jisc and EDINA are involved insome of these activities on behalf of UK researchlibraries but necessarily with colleagues in other coun-tries and with the publishing sector The fourth takehome message is that this is a lsquotrans-nationalrsquo chal-lenge researchers and students in any one countryare dependent on what is written and published in acountry other than their own

315 The main focus of the actions thus far hasbeen on research literature that is published in e-journals and in related serials This is partly becausethis literature is significant but also because there iseconomy in thinking about lsquostreams of issued con-tentrsquo noting that ISSN is now assigned to some up-dating websites (as lsquointegrating resourcesrsquo) wherecontent changes over time as well as those continu-ing resources where content is issued in parts

316 This has included the Keepers Registry aglobal monitor of digital archiving It is very impor-tant that we can all know who is looking after what

and what might remain at risk of loss That can beused as the source of statistics on the progress beingmade and the evidence-base for assisting librariansfocus attention on what should be prioritized forarchiving Information on the background and onmany of the issues involved are included in a reviewarticle and a presentation given to the Library ofCongress available in the Universityrsquos institutionalrepository

317 More recent work in a project calledHiberlink has been on what is termed lsquoreferencerotrsquo for the web-based content increasingly referredto in citations made in scholarly statement in e-theses as well as in research articles

32 The Keepers Registry

321 The purpose of the Keepers Registry is torecord and report what is known of archival activityfor online serials across the world It was the mainoutcome of a Jisc-funded project carried out byEDINA and the ISSN International Centre (ISSNIC) The ISSN IC forms the hub of the ISSN Net-work of national centres in individual member coun-tries around the world The ISSN IC publishes theISSN Register which records all issued ISSN includ-ing over 132000 assigned to online continuing re-sources

322 Now operated and funded at EDINA as aJisc Core Service the Keepers Registry acts as a glo-bal monitor with three main purposes

3221 To enable librarians and policymakers to find out who is looking after which e-journal how and with what terms of access

3222 To highlight the e-journals whichare still at risk of loss

- 559 -


3223 To act as a showcase for theorganisations (the keepers) which operate as digitalshelves for access over the long term

323 In practice this means the aggregationand combination of metadata on serials (from theISSN Register) and of metadata on archiving organi-zations including not only the extent of their archi-val activity with respect to serial content but alsotheir policies Provision is made for archiving orga-nizations to state the outcome of third-party auditand certification the Registry reports what eacharchiving organization asserts without itself carry-ing out audit or certification

324 There are divergent views about the ex-tent to which digital preservation requires more thanarchiving of the digital bits and other matters whichhave not been discussed here However if there isno archiving there can be no prospect of long termpreservation

325 The ten lsquokeepersrsquo that currently reportinto the Registry are of three types

3251 International web-scaleorganisations CLOCKSS Archive amp Portico

3252 National libraries British Librarye-Depot (Netherlands) Library of Congress Na-tional Science Library Chinese Academy of Sciences

3253 Consortia of research librariesGlobal LOCKSS Network HathiTrust Scholars Por-tal Archaeology Data Service

326 A summary description of the approachto ingest and to digital preservation for each keeperis available on the Registry together with informa-tion on access conditions for the journal content thatthey hold There is a wide variety of business modeland approach across the archiving organisations

CLOCKSS and Portico derive income from the pub-lishers who pay to have their content ingested andpreserved for the long term there is also incomereceived from libraries CLOCKSS maintain an openaccess policy for triggered content Portico limit ben-efit to libraries that subscribe The economics fornational libraries is based upon national missionsometimes underpinned by legal deposit legislationfor voluntary or compulsory deposit of content ofwhat is published in that country

327 As noted the Registry aggregatesmetadata to record the journal titles being preservedby each archiving organisation using the ISSN Reg-ister as a common data source and identifier forjournal titles This enables search on title and ISSNto discover archival status including information onwhich volumes and issues are held by each archivingorganisation

328 There is also a Members Area in which afile of the ISSN may be uploaded for matchingagainst information held in the Registry This can beused by libraries to check the archival status of e-journals that they regard as important

329 There is additional mechanism to enablearchival status to be displayed in union cataloguesand the like via machine-to-machine interface

33 Evidence on what is archived and what is not

331 One role for the Keepers Registry is toprovide some statistics on the progress that is beingmade to make sure that what is issued online (withan ISSN) is being kept safe The good news is that asat January 2015 over 26700 serials are recorded ashaving volumes reported as ingested and archivedby at least one keeper of digital content

- 560 -


332 That good news needs to be qualified In-spection of information about individual titles willreveal that there are many lsquomissingrsquo volumes More-over over 132000 ISSN that have been assigned toonline serials and so that 27000 represents only 20success even allowing that many are not for lsquoschol-arly journalsrsquo but for other online continuing re-sources

333 The serial lists from three large US uni-versity libraries were cross-checked against the in-formation held in the Registry in 2011 in order tonarrow the focus upon the scholarly record Theoutcome of that exercise is presented in Table 1 (takenfrom the Serials Review article previously cited)

334 A broad picture emerges about one quar-ter of the titles of each (with ISSN) were being pre-served by one or more of the archival organizationsreporting into the Keepers Registry There is greaterassurance of long term preservation indicated for asmaller number (and percentage) of titles that arebeing preserved by three or more archives (Recallalso that this analysis is limited to those serials forwhich the ISSN was known about half the serialtitles listed by each library There is no knowledge ofthose without an ISSN)

335 Opportunity was also taken to examine theproblem from the reader point of view using the

logs of usage of the UK OpenURL Router which ismiddleware operated by EDINA for the UKrsquos digi-tal library routing some 8 to 10 million requests foronline resources from discovery facilities to pub-lisher web sites (via what are called OpenURL re-solvers) Of the 53000 online titles requested by re-searchers and students from 108 UK universities in2012 only 15 were being kept safe by three ormore lsquokeepersrsquo over two-thirds were being held bynone Over 36300 online titles appear to be at riskof loss

336 Plans are being drawn up to repeat thisanalysis for usage data relating to 2013 and 2014with a view to publishing this routinely on the Keep-ers Registry homepage

3 4 The summary conclusion is that much re-mains to be done in order to ensure that the onlineresources needed by researchers and students arebeing kept safe There is growing belief which re-quires some systematic confirmation that the titlesthat are being archived are those from the largerpublishers and that (smaller) publishers of one ortwo online titles are not being engaged by archivingorganizations The long tail of very many journalsissued by the many small publishers are at risk ofloss New strategies need to be devised to tackle thisproblem of the lsquolong tailrsquo This is not confined toOpen Access journals rather it is the lack of finan-cial ability required to engage with the businessmodels of CLOCKSS and Portico

35 There may be an enhanced role for na-tional libraries with the support and encouragementfrom consortia of research universities and their li-brarians in the absence of action from a nationallibrary universities may have to act on their own

- 561 -


especially as their interests extend beyond nationalboundaries

36 Reference Rot

361 The scholarly record is under threat in an-other way that is being investigated in joint activitybetween the University of Edinburgh (EDINA andthe Language Technology Group in the School ofInformatics) and the Los Alamos National Labora-tory Research Library The Hiberlink project beganin March 2013 funded by the Andrew W MellonFoundation to examine a vast corpus of scholarlypublication in order to assess and quantify the scaleof the threat of lsquoReference Rotrsquo

362 Reference Rot is the combined effect for aURL of lsquolink rotrsquo (404 - Page Not Found) and lsquocon-tent driftrsquo (when what is rendered in a browser isdynamic and changes over time or has changed com-pletely as the URL now directs to a completely dif-ferent website)

363 This recognises that resources on the Webthat are cited as a supporting reference at the timeof writing (or even when note-taking) are liable tohave changed or even to have disappeared by thetime the scholarly statement is read later by otherresearchers or acted upon for some policy or prac-tical purpose

364 Citations to material on the Web are nowcommonly found side by side with traditional refer-ences back into the scholarly literature Citations arealso made to software datasets websites ontolo-gies presentations blogs videos etc

365 The initial focus of the project has been onlsquoshort lengthrsquo scholarly statement with research ac-tivity resulting recently in the publication of a jour-nal article There is parallel work reported by re-

searchers at Harvard Law School who note refer-ence rot in legal citations

366 Opportunity has also been taken to ex-amine the much longer form e-thesis that is pre-pared for award of a doctorate The results of thishave yet to be written up but is available as a pre-sentation (Arguably the e-thesis has greater im-portance for its author as well as taking longer inpreparation and so giving greater opportunity forreference rot to occur)

367 The empirical evidence of the threat ofreference rot in various forms of scholarly state-ment and therefore the scholarly record is over-whelming The longer the time lapse the greater theprobability that the referenced content will no longerbe at the end of the cited URI There is less than a5050 chance that the cited content will have beenarchived by routine web archiving

4 Actions to Meet the Challenge

41 Research literature is international ndash a re-searcher in any one country is dependent upon thatwhich is written or published in another Actions arerequired at a variety of levels Jisc have made avail-able funds over the next two years to support activ-ity to facilitate cooperation between the archivalorganisations to reach out nationally (to SCONULand RLUK ) and internationally to encourage col-laboration between other consortia of research li-braries and their respective national libraries Thisis assisted by links that EDINA and the Data Libraryhave forged and by access to the ISSN Network inwhich over 80 countries participate There has beencomment that there should be outreach beyond thelibrary community to learned societies InternationalScientific Unions and associations of research-inten-sive universities

- 562 -


42 An example of international web-scalearchiving CLOCKSS

421 The University of Edinburgh plays a lead-ing role in supporting the CLOCKSS Archive Net-work This is a globally distributed lsquodark archiversquowith replicated copies of e-journal content held forthe long term EDINA plays a support role for therelease of lsquotriggeredrsquo open access content

422 The University was involved from theproject stage in 2006 Vice Principal Helen Hayeswas approached to join other leading research uni-versities to engage with several of the worlds larg-est scholarly publishers to build a global archive forthe very long term This was recognition of mutualresponsibility to preserve digital scholarly assets forthe good of the entire community

423 The Universityrsquos Information Services sub-sequently took on a role to act as one of twelve (12)geographically-distributed archival nodes in theCLOCKSS Archive on behalf of the wider interna-tional community This is carried out by EDINA andIT Infrastructure incurring minimum costs of host-ing a closed server in secure conditions and contrib-uting a subscription of $15000 per year As a found-ing participant the University is represented on theCLOCKSS Board of Directors compromising twelveresearch libraries of long standing and twelve of theworldrsquos leading academic publishers which overseesthe not-for-profit company

424 In the CLOCKSS business model (as withPortico) publishers pay to have their content ingestedinto a lsquodark archive networkrsquo signing over rights thattheir content may be triggered for access in the eventthat they can no longer supply In the case ofCLOCKSS the triggered content is made availablefor free under a creative commons license on one

or both of lsquoopen accessrsquo platforms maintained byStanford University Library and EDINA A formalsuper majority vote by the CLOCKSS Board is re-quired before such triggered release

425 CLOCKSS deploys the lsquoLots of CopiesKeeps Stuff Safersquo (LOCKSS) technology that auto-matically checks and repairs any detected lsquobit rotrsquowhich inevitably will occur over the long term Ear-lier this academic year the CLOCKSS Archive wascertified according to the Trusted Repository AuditCriteria (TRAC) using a finding aid structured ac-cording to ISO16363 CLOCKSS reached the previ-ous highest score and gained the first-ever perfectscore for Technology

43 An Example of National Archiving SafeNet(UK)

431 This is a two-year lsquoservice-in-developmentrsquoproject at EDINA commissioned by Jisc Futures Itis being carried out in collaboration with Jisc Collec-tions and RLUK The aim is two-fold to clarify con-tinuing access rights through use of an entitlementregistry that will record subscription history and todevelop the foundations of national archive infra-structure to host a UK collection of archived e-jour-nals This builds upon prior work One is supportfor the UK LOCKSS Alliance in which libraries (in-cluding the Universityrsquos Library amp Collections) col-laborate to host copies of some e-journals the otherwas a project to scope what would occur with re-spect to digital back copy should a library decide tocancel a subscription

432 The project involves both consultationwith the UK research library community in order toidentify priorities with respect to content and viaJisc Collections negotiation with selected publish-ers to ensure clarity about terms of licence The in-

- 563 -


tended outcome is to be a Jisc shared service for theUK research community which will provide themeans for permanent and trustworthy access tosubscribed journal articles post-cancelation Theobjective is simplicity for the end user underpinnedby the ease of interoperation should there be a can-celation or some other trigger relating to lack of ac-cess at the publisher site with related tools and ser-vices in the digital library environment To someextent this has already been achieved with triggerevents by CLOCKSS in which EDINA provides anopen access platform Here the challenge is to re-strict access according to a given libraryrsquos lsquoentitle-mentrsquo

44 Finding Remedy for Reference Rot

441 The Hiberlink project has also given at-tention to devising remedy for reference rot to pre-vent or to minimize its occurrence This has involvedidentifying opportunities for productive interven-tion in three basic workflows for the author whennote-taking and writing prior to submission for theorganization typically an editor working for a pub-lisher overseeing review and issue for the library inreceipt of publishedissued work Thus far using de-velopment work on annotating URIs software en-gineering at EDINA has resulted in prototypes oftools which proactively archive lsquoDateTime-stampedrsquosnapshots of webpages which are in one or morearchives returning an annotated URI for inclusionin citations Thereby what was cited at the time ofwriting (or at the moment of issue) both exists andcan be read at some later time

442 The Hiberlink project is due to completeat the end of June 2015 with focus now on dissemi-nation of results and plans for moving from proto-type to production quality tools to help avoid refer-ence rot

443 Reference rot features in an article in TheNew Yorker first sub-titled lsquoWhat the Web SaidYesterdayrsquo amusingly its content (and date) changedfrom first moment of issue

444 As practical example of the remedy for ref-erence rot being proposed by the Hiberlink projecthere are three augmented references that includelsquoDateTime-stampedrsquo snapshots of webpages

lta href=httpedinaacuk data-versionurl=httpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094431httpedinaacuk data-versiondate=2015-02-19T094432rdquogt

lta href=httpwwwnewyorkercommagazine20150126cobweb data-versionurl=httpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094636httpwwwnewyorkercommagazine20150126cobwebdata-versiondate=2015-02-19T094636rdquogt

lta href=httpblogdshrorg201412talk-at-fall-cnihtml data-versionurl=httpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094645httpblogdshrorg201412talk-at-fall-cnihtml data-versiondate=2015-02-19T094645rdquogt

These augmented lsquoRobust Linksrsquo can be representedas

Original URI httpedinaacuk lthttpedinaacukgt

Archive URI httpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094431httpedinaacuk lthttpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094431httpedinaacukgt

Archive timestamp 2015-02-19T094432

OriginalURI httpwwwnewyorkercommagazine20150126cobweb

ArchiveURI httpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094636httpwwwnewyorkercommaga-

- 564 -


zine20150126cobwebArchive timestamp 2015-02-19T094636

OriginalURI httpblogdshrorg201412talk-at-fall-cnihtmlArchiveURI httpwebarchiveorgweb20150219094645httpblogdshrorg201412talk-at-fall-cnihtmlArchive timestamp 2015-02-19T094645

5 Concluding Remarks

51 The challenge is to devise sustainable in-frastructure and to prompt action that results in suc-cessful sufficient and timely archiving of all that con-stitutes the record of scholarship

52 This challenge of digital preservation ex-tends beyond serials to include ongoing lsquointegratingresourcesrsquo such as databases and web sites Therecord of scholarship has a fuzzy edge This begs thequestion on the extent to which data generated bythe research process are themselves part of therecord of scholarship It also involves considerationsof what constitutes the copy (or copies) of recordsand notions of digital fixity

53 Fortunately a start has been made overthe past fifteen years with a growing number of or-ganizations stepping forward to act as our digitalshelves EDINA is playing its part in developing anddelivering technical infrastructure and online ser-vices There has been benefit as illustrated in theactivities described in the paper in working with aninternational agency for assigning identifiers for se-rial content and in successful collaboration with someof the leaders in the field including the architects ofLOCKSS and of Memento

References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk

4 httpwwwcniorgeventsmembership-meet-ingspast-meetingsfall-2014project-briefings-breakout-sessions

5 h t t p w w w s l i d e s h a r e n e t edinadocumentationofficerlong-cni2014-burnhill20

6 These are equivalent to the earlier UniversityGrants Council and its Computer Board

7 httpwwwjiscacukcontent

8 The University of Edinburgh is ranked 17th inthe world by the 201314 and 201415 QSrankings

9 The list of formal partners in India is growingand includes University of Calcutta Common-wealth Veterinary Association Department ofBiotechnology Ministry of Science and Technol-ogy University of Delhi Indian Institute of Tech-nology Madras Indian Council for CulturalRelations Indian Institute of Technology DelhiIndian Institute for Science BangaloreJawaharlal Nehru University Kerala Veterinaryand Animal Sciences University Maulana AzadMedical College Tata Institute for Fundamen-tal Research United Theological College Na-tional Centre for Biological Sciences

10 A massive open online course (MOOC) is anonline course aimed at unlimited participationand open access via the web

11 httpwwwnutshell-videosedacukcategorycollegescollege-of-humanities-social-science

12 httpwwwdccacuk

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13 httpedinaacukaboutcommrep

14 The author was appointed to take over full-timeresponsibility in 1984

15 httpedinaacuksalser

16 The name EDINA comes from a poem by Rob-ert Burns whose birthday is celebrated on 25thJanuary each year lsquoAddress to Edinburghrsquo be-gins lsquoEdina Scotiarsquos darling seat rsquo TheUniversityrsquos Library Collection includes a copyin his fair hand httpedinaacukaboutaddresstoedinburghhtml

17 BIDS subsequently became ingenta in1998

18 MIDAS subsequently changed its name toMimas allegedly due to a trademark disputeand has now been merged into Jisc

19 httpiassistdataorg

20 httpwwwdccacuk The author was its firstdirector in 2004

21 httpwwwclockssorgclockss Home

22 httpwwwedacukschools-departmentsin-formation-servicesresearch-supportdata-li-brary

23 httpdatalibedinaacukmantra

24 httpwwwissnorgunderstanding-the-issnas-signment-rulesthe-issn-for-electronic-mediaAn ongoing integrating resource must meet cer-tain inclusion and exclusion criteria to be eli-gible for ISSN assignment (ISSN Manual 032)

25 httpthekeepersorg

26 Burnhill P (2013) Tales from The Keepers Reg-istry Serial Issues About Archiving amp the WebSerials Review 39 httpswwweralibedacukhandle18426682

27 httphiberlinkorg

28 httpedinaacukprojectspeprs

29 httpthekeepersblogsedinaacuk20131028generating-actionable-evidence-on-e-journal-archiving

30 httpdxdoiorg101371journalpone0115253

31 httpharvardlawrevieworg201403perma-scoping-and-addressing-the-problem-of-link-and-reference-rot-in-legal-citations

32 httpedinaacukpresentations_publicationsreference-rot-and-e-thesespptx

33 Society of College National and University Li-braries httpwwwsconulacuk

34 Research Libraries UK httpwwwrlukacuk

35 httpclockssorg

36 Klein M Van de Sompel H Sanderson RShankar H Balakireva L et al (2014) ScholarlyContext Not Found One in Five Articles Suf-fers from Reference Rot PLoS ONE 9(12)e115253 doi101371journalpone0115253

37 httpwwwnewyorkercommagazine20150126cobweb

38 httpwwwmikejonesonlinecomcontextjunky20150121rotters

39 httpswwweralibedacukhandle18429394

40 httpblogdshrorg201412talk-at-fall-cnihtml

41 httpwwwslidesharenethvdsompmemento-101

About Author

Mr Peter Burnhill Director EDINA JiscUK cen-tre for digital expertise and service delivery at theUniversity of Edinburgh (Scotland UK)Email peterburnhillgmailcom

- 553 -


What EDINA Does Ensuring Ease amp Continuity of Access

Peter Burnhill

1 Introduction

11 This paper has two parts The first pur-pose is to describe EDINA and what it does EDINAis a centre of digital expertise and service delivery Playing a designated role for Jisc in providing onlineservices and expertise to benefit research and edu-cation in the UK EDINA forms part of the Infor-mation Services Group of the University ofEdinburgh Brief description of Jisc and the Univer-sity of Edinburgh are included in order to providethe context in which EDINA operates nationally inthe UK and internationally There is also an expla-nation of how EDINA came about as it approachesits twentieth anniversary

111 This is all addressed in Part A of thepaper

12 The second purpose of the paper is to high-light threats to the integrity and continuing access tothe scholarly record and to describe actions beingtaken The challenge to the integrity of the scholarlyrecord is one to be shared across research universi-ties It is an international matter recognizing thatresearch literature is not limited to what is publishedin onersquos own country Together we need to devisesustainable infrastructure and to prompt action thatresults in successful sufficient and timely archivingof all that constitutes the record of scholarship

13 Many of the issues raised in this paper werediscussed at the Coalition for Networked Informa

10th International CALIBER-2015HP University and IIAS Shimla Himachal Pradesh IndiaMarch 12-14 2015copy INFLIBNET Centre Gandhinagar Gujarat India

tion (CNI) Membership Meeting in December 2014That included a summary presentation that coveredthe activities reported here

131 This is addressed in Part B of the paper

PART A

2 EDINA Jisc and The University of Edinburgh

21 EDINA

211 EDINA develops and delivers world-class online services and expertise that benefit re-search and education in the UK and beyond Weseek ways to enhance research and education in theUK For researchers students and their teachersthis means enhancing their productivity with ser-vices that both inspire and save time helping to makethe imagined possible For universities colleges andother learning and skills organizations this meanshelping them succeed more effectively in their mis-sion improving outcome and increasing impactwithin limited budgets

212 Following designation as a nationaldata centre in 1995 as part of an open competitionacross all universities EDINA was launched with aUK remit twenty years ago on 25th January 1996This drew upon competence gained through theUniversityrsquos Data Library which was established in19834 and the role played by the University in pro-viding computing infrastructure across ScotlandThis experience provided a connection into networksof university libraries both in the UK and interna-tionally

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22 Jisc









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24 What EDINA Does


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PART B





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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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22 Jisc









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24 What EDINA Does


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PART B





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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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24 What EDINA Does


- 556 -













- 557 -










PART B





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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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PART B





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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


- 557 -










PART B





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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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- 559 -
















- 560 -










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36 Reference Rot











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- 563 -

















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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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- 560 -










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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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36 Reference Rot











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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

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27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


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References

1 httpedinaacuk

2 httpwwwjiscacuk

3 httpwwwedacuk









12 httpwwwdccacuk

- 565 -
















27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


- 565 -
















27 httphiberlinkorg








35 httpclockssorg







About Author


edinburgh research explorer€¦ · pose is to describe edina and what it does. edina is a centre...

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