Twelve Themes and a few more

All 17 projects funded by JISC in Phase 2 of the Discovery programme met in Birmingham today to share updates and ideas as they wind down their efforts. It was a very stimulating meeting, not least because the shared Discovery dialogue seems to have developed significantly since during 2012. The Phase 1 projects undertook some very useful experiments, but the Phase 2 projects have taken things up a notch.

Here, in very raw form are the recurrent themes that I recorded as takeaways from the session

A – Data and access points

• Time and Place are priority access points
• URIs offer an effective base level linking strategy
• Collection level descriptions have potential as finding aids across domains
• User generated content, such as annotations, has a place at the table

B – People

• Community is a vital driver – open communities maintain momentum; specialist enthusiasms and ways of working provide strong use cases
• For embedding new metadata practice, start where the workers are – add-ins to Calm and MODS demonstrate that
• More IT experience / skills are required on the ground

C – The way the web works

• Aggregators crawl don’t query … OAI-PMH, Robots, etc
• Google’s strength shouts ‘Do it my way’ – and we should take heed (but we do need both/and)
• Currency of data is important – there may be a tension with time lags associated with crawling
• Aggregators need to know what is where to build or add value  so … we don’t need a registry?
• No man is an island – It’s a collaborative world with requirements to interact with complementary services such as Dbpedia, Europeana, Google Historypin, Pleiades, UKAT, VIAF

D – Tools and technology

• There is opportunity / obligation to leverage expert authority data and vocabularies – examples as above and more, such as Victoria County History, …
• Commonly used software tools include Drupal, Solr/Lucene, Elastic Search, Javascript, Twitter bootstrap
• JSON and RDF are strong format choices amongst the developers
• Beware SPARQL end points and Triple Stores, especially in terms of performance
• APIs are essential – but little use without both documentation and example code
• OSS tools have been built by several projects … but how do we leverage them (e.g. Bibsoup, Alicat)

Remember the licence!

Go for open, no banana skins

Following what might be regarded as the game-changing Harvard release of open bibliographic metadata with a CC0 licence in April 2012, OCLC has taken considerable steps to recognise the importance of open metadata to library services and wider resource discovery practice.

On 6^th August, the Library Journal headlined the OCLC recommendation that member institutions that would like to release their catalogue data on the Web should do so with the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY). For more details, see: http://bit.ly/MP63Dc.

However, the Discovery programme has consistently emphasised that attribution is a big banana skin in terms of practical implementation and on account of the associated Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (the FUD factor), whilst ironically carrying little likelihood of practical enforcement under the law. This position is at the heart of the Discovery principles and is very well articulated in a subsequent Creative Commons blog post – see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/33768

So we propose that open metadata is increasingly mission critical as libraries reach out to new services and that public domain licensing is the best (perhaps only?) way to engender widespread community confidence in this journey.

Don’t forget the licence

On the downside, Cloud of Data’s Paul Miller recently posted his analysis of the use of open licenses associated with data releases registered at the OKFN Data Hub. Paul’s headline findings were that:

• Half of the 4,000 registered open data sets have no license at all
• Only 12% of licensed data sets use either CC0 or ODC-PDDL

These stats do not reflect badly on libraries, archives and museums as the Data Hub has attracted open data releases from a wide variety of sources. However, it would be good to see more public references to the UK institutions and Discovery projects that have released open metadata explicitly linked to a public domain licence – i.e. CC0 or ODC-PDDL

So why not consider the following options:

The Data Hub

The Data Hub is maintained by CKAN and was the source of information for Paul Miller’s blogpost. There is a simple slideshow tutorial about registering releases (whether uploads or links) at http://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/publishing-datasets.html

The web upload form is at http://thedatahub.org/dataset/new. As well as being linked to the submitter’s details, it is limited to just

• title
• license
• free text description

It would be good to see UK open metadata releases registered there, with a clear link to CC0, ODC-PDL or whatever other licence has been selected. Given the limited data entry form, why not include reference to the Discovery principles and / or your project in the free text description description.

The Creative Commons CC0 exemplars webpage

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_use_for_data

Clearly this applies only to those of you that have opted for the CCO license. As you can see, you’ll be in good company. My assumption is that you should simply email info@creativecommons.org (perhaps marked FAO Timothy Volmer) with your request to be on the page, providing a simple statement in line with the style of the page plus a logo.

Postscript – On recommending choice

Without doubt, Attribution has its place in the scheme of things digital – but not ideally in relation to the assertion of uncertain ‘rights’ amidst the mosaic of public domain information and distinct intellectual endeavour that constitutes the world’s bibliographic records.

Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from elsewhere about offering choice to contributors – for example from Flickr, which presents contributors with choices including the various variants of Attribution – see http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/.

Similarly, the University of California at Santa Cruz recommends CC attribution options for public contributions to its Grateful Dead Online Archive (http://www.gdao.org/contribution). This seeks to encourage contribution of digital objects by guaranteeing credit to members of the public, which seems appropriate for the particular GDAO community context. Their options are set out below.

PS – I wonder if the description of the GDAO target community as one of ‘shared inspiration and adaptation’ has some equivalence to the global community of cataloguers, bibliographers, archivists and curators that have built up our scholarly metadata.

Views from the SCONUL Fringe

14 June, 2012

It’s a year and a few days since the JISC-funded Discovery initiative launched the Discovery principles. Since then Discovery has been working closely with membership organisations, such as M25, RLUK and SCONUL in the academic library space, to understand how those principles fit with the realities of service management and delivery.

Through two recent workshops involving library leaders from the SCONUL community, we have been able to capture real voices on where we are with Discovery services in academic libraries and the perceived direction of travel. We’ve tried to draw these opinions and insights together in a short paper that is faithful to the opinions of the participants, ‘Making resources more discoverable – a business imperative?’, which was published for the SCONUL conference in Liverpool (June 2012).

This post highlights headlines from that paper that were discussed at the SCONUL Fringe event.

Our thanks go to the library leaders from 31 universities listed here who attended the workshops and to others who we met at the SCONUL Fringe: Anglia Ruskin, Birkbeck, Bournemouth, Bradford, Brunel, Buckingham, City, East Anglia, East London, Edinburgh, Hertfordshire, Kent, Kings College London, Leeds Met, Leicester, Lincoln, LSE, Manchester, Open University, Portsmouth, Royal Holloway, SOAS, Southampton, Stirling, Sussex, Swansea, University of the Creative Arts, West of England, Warwick, Westminster, and Wolverhampton.

The Discovery Problem Space

• The student and researcher experience is a crucial business focus.
• Academic libraries have therefore invested recently in ‘Discovery Layer’ products to lift resource discovery beyond the bounds of the local OPAC and to cohere access to resources within and beyond the institution.
• The Discovery initiative looks ahead of that point. It highlights the imperative for highly flexible services based on open data and cost-effective aggregation, not limited by traditional boundaries between libraries, archives, museums and repositories and potentially extending to domains such as teaching and learning resources and research data.
• Discovery thinking is very much aligned with a significant “dot gov” response to the data and service challenge at the National Digital conference (May 2012): “ Do Less – Government should only do what government can do. If someone else is doing it – link to it. If we can provide resources (like APIs) that will help other people build things – do that. We should concentrate on the irreducible core.”

So … what is the ‘irreducible core’, not just for the academic library as currently defined but for the institution and the breadth of its scholarly resources?

Discovery is core business, underscored by student facing imperatives

• User satisfaction is the major driver, so tracking and analysis will be crucial
• Students and researchers display different discovery patterns and entry points (e.g. Google, reading lists, VLE for students) and what they expect to ‘discover’ varies across levels and subjects, raising the challenge of personalisation
• Being in sync with global search engines is crucial; Google brings in most traffic to those who have exposed their records
• However, there is tension between comprehensiveness and the specificity required to enable learning and research and therefore between one stop shop and niche interfaces
• Our strategy should therefore be that there is “no wrong door”, ensuring that resources are discoverable through the prevalent range of channels; e.g. the local discovery layer, the VLE, Google search and relevant aggregations
• Consequently current ‘first generation’ discovery layer services need to be placed in perspective – as stepping stones or holding points as we seek more complete solutions, genuinely independent of the vendor LMS and perhaps involving such as full text mining

Possible Game Changers … Surf’s up or Tsunami warning?

• The large scale take-on of e-books and associated acquisition models present a key opportunity to review discovery services and how they support user workflows
• The bigger scholarly picture covering repositories and research data management is institutionally challenging and cannot be ignored by libraries
• Increasing pressures to support cross-institutional collaboration and inter-disciplinary requirements have a bearing on resource discovery and delivery
• Open access and user generated content have their parts to play – but where does co-creation sit with reputational and quality focus
• The potential of aggregations (perhaps revisiting such as the National Union Catalogue and the National Digital Library) and other forms of collaboration should be reviewed in the context of emerging discovery models
• Analytics is expected to grow as an institutional requirement driven by both Effectiveness and Economy – and analysis limited to ‘bought’ resources may fail
• Linked data or some such tidal wave could change everything, but not so quickly as to negate the former priorities

Strategic Institutional Challenges … Opportunity or Threat?

There are without doubt serious questions to be answered about the curation, discoverability and preservation of a wide range of content of interest to teaching, learning and research, which is often subject special systems and requirements; for example:

• VLE content – resources are often hidden inside proprietary VLEs
• Lecture recordings – need to be discoverable, notwithstanding strict controls in some cases
• Research Data – whether metadata or the data itself, this a hot topic
• External resources – it may be time for new technological approaches to such challenges

However, whilst we should, like Google, be aspiring to a boundless service, there are significant cultural, professional and operational challenges:

• Who should define the scope of a library? A question facing any move to redraw service boundaries (e.g. to encompass learning and research content)
• Do you value your life? The big institutional resource discovery picture is potentially a minefield, apples & oranges, raising both territorial and user perception issues
• Where should you dedicate available effort to get most return? We operate in a time of austerity
• Where do you develop and locate the skills to operate in a wider landscape, involving such as research data? Libraries have unique expertise but new skills are crucial – do they fit in the library or elsewhere, such as IT services?
• How can we benchmark plans and services in this volatile space? There is a dynamic and iterative requirement to develop use cases and associated metrics
• What about reputation? New boundaries raise the uncontrollable nature of innovation with its potential to tarnish the institutional or library brand

Postscript – There was general agreement that these issues are too ‘big’ to resolve institution by institution … and therefore the community needs to work together (almost certainly with vendors), to identify critical use cases and associated services and skills, to define impact measures and promote analysis methods. Cue RLUK, SCONUL, the JISC Library programme and Discovery partnership …

Warwick workshop prioritises resource discovery

In January 2012, JISC and SCONUL convened a workshop for Library Directors and Senior Managers to review the evolving requirements for institutional Library Management Systems (LMS), referenced as Domain 3 in the 2009 SCONUL report to HEFCE.  Entitled ‘The Squeezed Middle’, the workshop focused on the key service developments impacting the LMS footprint, given evolving approaches in Resource Discovery (Domain 2) and shared service developments in the management of subscription resources (Domain 1).

After considering a business modeling framework presented by Lorcan Dempsey and a number of future scenarios set in the year 2020, the workshop reviewed a catalogue of over 60 potential library service and institutional knowledge management objectives. The group evaluated them in terms of desirability, feasibility and their potential to act as drivers of mission critical change.

It was striking that the Discovery agenda represented a very high proportion of the items ranked as high priority looking to 2020. It was also noted that above campus initiatives (such as shared cataloguing and records improvement) and services (such as resource discovery aggregations) can act as catalysts for reviewing workflows (both user and librarian) and reappraising library team skills.

The highest ranked Discovery related targets were as follows:

• 31 – Provide 1-stop search across all asset types
• 32 – Publish open linked catalogue metadata
• 33 – Expose the collection to other search mechanisms
• 34 – Emphasise exposure of special collections
• 35 – Integrate LMS & VLE resources, including reading lists
• 43 – Curate local learning resources, including OERs
• 44 – Drive the value of reading lists

Medium priority Discovery related targets were:

• 36 – Provide recommender and associated ‘social’ services
• 45 – Curate institutional research data
• 46 – Expose the institutional repository
• 47 – Expose the university archives

The headline priorities included

• Provide 1-stop search across the range of Teaching, Learning and Research asset types that are authored and collected within institutions
• Integrate reading lists effectively with the discovery of and access to library, VLE and repository resources
• Establish sustainable curation, workflow management and exposure for all digital scholarly assets – including local learning resources, OERs and research data
• Not on the original list, delegates added the potential for a persistent personal interface to assets, typically through bookmarking; the metaphor of a personal e-shelf was regarded as attractive.

Other challenges such as re-thinking the user access points for resource discovery or collaboration on adoption of widely used authorities and vocabularies were regarded as less critical, though not unimportant. The abandonment of the traditional LMS OPAC received a low vote on the basis that this will be an outcome of success in these broader ambitions. Whilst enhancing the discoverability of university museum assets received a low average vote, it was highly scored by those institutions with their own museum collection.

So Discovery featured highly for library management both as an end in itself and as a catalyst for changing processes and practice, relationships and responsibilities. However, we must also reflect on whether this professional and user-centred aspiration relates to a destination at which we will one day arrive or perhaps may be better viewed as an essential element in the continuous evolution of the academy.

Five Reasons To Be Cheerful

Five reasons to be cheerful about the Discovery Service Projects

David Kay, working with the Mimas Discovery team

So, what’s new? Another year, another round of  projects – the second phase of the Discovery initiative.

Whilst it would be naïve to trumpet progress or to estimate distance travelled at this stage, I confess to being enthused by the discussions taking place at the kick off workshop in Birmingham on 11 January. You’ll find initial introductions to all the projects mentioned in this post here.

The meeting brought together 10 of the 11 projects linked to the JISC 13/11 call for Discovery Services, the Cambridge / Lincoln CLOCK project being the only absentees. So let’s start right there for the first of five observations in this post …

The CLOCK collaboration emerged directly from a fruitful dialogue about the practical value open catalogue data in Phase 1 (check out the COMET and JEROME precursors). Likewise the Open Bibliography project, championed by the inventive Mark MacGillivray, continues powerful work started in the JISC Expo programme with 30m openly licensed records already in the bag – check out their demonstrator.

Observation 1 – Thinking shared and experience gained within the Discovery initiative is maturing in to a powerful community tool.

And lest anyone should suggest that all the running is being made by libraries, up steps the AIM25 archival consortium with ‘Step Change’, working to apply the linked data based indexing productivity endorsed by archivists in Phase 1 to the widely used CALM cataloguing application. Meanwhile, in the world of museums, Contextual Wrappers 2 (led by the Cambridge Fitzwilliam museum and Collections Trust, working with Knowledge Integration) plans to extend its collection descriptions model across the HE Museums sector, informed by a grounded ‘market’ survey.  We should also highlight the efforts of Search25 (the M25 library consortium) and ServiceCore (the OU project harvesting dozens of Open Access repositories) to ensure their services address community needs.

Observation 2 – Responding to practitioner and community opinion is at the heart of Discovery aggregator thinking.

Discovery is not about a single model that fits all. However, the growing interest in Linked Open Data as an approach with a future is significant. This ranges from the Bodleian recognizing it as a vehicle for breaking down the silos that divide their own collections (the Digital.Bodleian project) to museums across the North East using linked data and supporting vocabularies in the Cutting Edge project to enable cross-searching of collections to meet the needs of very different types of users from schools to researchers. AIM25 Step Change shares the same confidence.

Observation 3 – There is a measured expectation that linked data can yield practical value for highly focused local services, as well as delivering in grand ‘web scale’ settings.

It is particularly interesting how the value of place and other geographic information is becoming leveraged in a variety of ways within the linked data model. Pelagios 2, involving Southampton and the OU with a range of international partners, is linking data to place to assist in cataloguing, annotation, search and visualization of ancient objects. Fast forward a couple of millennia and the DiscoverEDINA project is using an automated Geotagger to expose place metadata embedded in digital media files. The links of AIM25 Step Change to Historypin address the same theme.

Observation 4 – The adoption of common vocabularies seems key to making the most of key access points across the ‘web of data’ – and place looks like the early candidate for generating critical mass.

The afternoon sessions focused on the objectives of the Discovery initiative under the themes ‘Terms of Use’, ‘Data’ and ‘Interfaces’ and the underlying quest for service sustainability. On behalf of the Mimas-led Discovery team, Owen Stephens set out 12 practical measures of quality implementation, whilst recognizing that no single project will address every measure.

Terms of Use

1 – Adopting open licensing

2 – Requiring clear reasonable terms and conditions

Data

3 – Using easily understood data models

4 – Deploying persistent identifiers

5 – Establishing data relationships by re-using authoritative identifiers

Interfaces

6 – Providing clear mechanisms for accessing APIs

7 – Documenting APIs

8 – Adopting widely understood data formats

Service

9 – Ensuring data is sustainable

10 – Ensuring services are supported

11 – Using your own APIs

12 – Collecting data to measure use

Observation 5 – Whilst there is still much work to be done, Discovery is moving from abstract principles to tangible measures of practical implementation.

As you can tell, I think the plans and ambitions of these Phase 2 projects are indicative of healthy developments and increasing maturity in the wider Discovery initiative. And this is where the Discovery team led by Mimas has a vital role in supporting practical implementation beyond these institutions through case studies, guidance materials and targeted workshops … watch this space!

The Case for Discovery – reflections on a presentation to RLUK members

David Kay – david.kay@sero.co.uk – 27 November 2011

I was pleased to have the opportunity to talk about the Discovery initiative at the RLUK members meeting last week (#rlukmm11). This blog post picks up key points raised in the Twitter stream (thanks especially to Simon Bains, Mike Mertens, Tracey Stanley and Owen Stephens) and links them to my concluding suggestions.

The presentation mixed an update on progress to date (because a lot has happened in the six months since Discovery was ‘named’) with a focus on emerging business cases for further investment of valuable institutional and collective effort in this space, leading to some collective considerations for RLUK.

My suggestion is that the ‘business case’ for investment in resource description and discovery hinges on opportunities for gains in economy (back of house), efficiency (relating to both library and patron workflows) and effectiveness (better supporting 21^st century modes of research and learning). I’ve set out 10 benefit cases drawn from recent institutional and consortium projects in a recent Discovery blogpost. However, as pointed out in questions, these ‘business arguments’ need to be sharpened to identify ROI and how it will be measured – member suggestions will be most welcome!

In addition, I proposed ‘expression’ as an essential part of the top line business case. However good the service offered by local discovery layers and globally by such as Google, there is a gap between the way records are currently discovered and the style of connected navigation that could be offered though more complete, consistent and connected classification geared to academic enquiry. This is about taking the value we already provide in ‘cataloguing’ and making that work for us in the web of scholarly data within and beyond our institutional controls – across libraries, archives and museums, plus such as learning assets, OERs and research data.

Making relevant ‘stuff’ (the library catalogue and the rest, within and beyond the academy) discoverable as linked open data is an obvious way to support this approach – but my key point is about a business requirement (truly joined up expression of scholarly data and metadata) rather than a technology. I suggested that, of all the things to be done to enact that transformation, senior managers should concentrate on the key enablers – metadata licensing, use of common identifiers and authorities across all types of records, service sustainability and measurement – whilst ensuring appropriate staff are skilled in the mechanics.

Comments on the Twitter stream, suggested that there is very little distance between this Discovery proposition and what Paul Ayris set out in the recommendations emerging from the shared cataloguing working group. Owen Stephens tweeted that perhaps this represents the major Discovery use case from an RLUK perspective – though we definitely need the Discovery programme to exemplify more cases. Both these presentations indicated a long term objective geared to serving teaching, learning and research, whilst offering economies and efficiencies along the way. However the 5 years horizon is very distant – and therefore I would emphasise the complementary short term opportunities and stepping stones listed at the end of my presentation.

1. Liberate Copac – publish Copac as open data and potentially as Linked Open Data; the first cut may only involve limited authorities but would still enable the potential to be tested alongside such as the Archives Hub
2. Animate Knowledge Base Plus – play a leading role in the collective population of this shared subscription and licence dataset, which may be of significant assistance in future licensing work with JISC Collections
3. Review scope of other RLUK initiatives – establish whether such as common authorities and open licensing may be priority components in such as the shared cataloguing and special collections work
4. Assess the wider curatorial landscape – identify where RLUK could be taking collective steps of this type in areas such as learning assets and research data
5. ‘Understand’ e-books in this context – whilst the metadata supply chain and workflows remain extremely uncertain, alignment with this direction of travel will be essential (and in 5 years may be a lost opportunity)
6. Consider action on identifiers, authorities and access points – all of the above raise the challenge of collectively adopting key reference points, presumably including name, place and subject; a working group specifically focused on this and looking beyond libraries may be of value

My personal observation is that these represent immediate and low cost collective opportunities to assess and develop metadata infrastructure in anticipation of the roles that RLUK might play in a changing knowledge and service environment, both within the academy and in the wider UK context.

And last but not least, thanks again to RLUK for the chance to attend a very stimulating event.

Making resources discoverable … is there a business case?

David Kay – @serodavid – david.kay@sero.co.uk – 4 November 2011

> Crying ‘Wolf’

It seems obvious that there would be a self-evident business case for making learning, teaching and research resources discoverable.

However, it is arguable that this is a ‘crying wolf’ scenario. Library, archive and museum services have been at this for time immemorial and therefore the idea of a further push (better indexing, open licensing) for a special reason (the evolving information ecosystem) may be somewhat unappealing – especially in a period of austerity.

> So … what makes a business case?

In these times it may no longer be sufficient to argue a case on the grounds of service improvement and fulfilment of approved mission (e.g. the university’s library strategic plan).

It is arguable that if the library (or archive or museum) has a signed off plan, then changes in the mode of discovery and the underlying handling of metadata are solely tactical issues within that plan and its budget envelope. In reality, that depends on how good and recent the plan is! Indeed, faced with the twin pressures of the student as customer and institutional financial priorities, the stated service mission may not necessarily be the ideal foundation for a compelling business case.

When faced with the opportunities presented by new models for resource discovery and utilisation, the enabling services (not just institutional libraries, archives and museums but also the keepers of repositories, VLEs and OERs) need to weigh the following factors:

• Institutional – Demands for step changes in efficiency and economy;
• Users – Requirements of undergraduates, researchers and BCE partners;
• Professional – Service improvement, enhancing local assets alongside wider resources;
• Global – Alignment with prevalent technologies and wider developments in the knowledge ecosystem

All these facets – not one or another – need to be considered in a compelling business case for new modes of discovery, and presumably in any tenable strategic plan.

> Did the 2011 Discovery projects find the business case grail?

The eight projects supported under the first phase of the JISC RDTF Discovery programme were experimental, exploring ways and means of developing new services based on more discoverable metadata, alternative formats (including Linked Data) and open licensing. Common technical and professional challenges had to be addressed ahead of any assessment of the business case specific to the host institution.

Nevertheless, the projects identified several benefit cases worthy of evaluation. Not all of the suggested benefits will be appealing, let alone persuasive, in every library, archive or museum setting. Indeed, they are more specific to circumstances and vision than to curatorial domain.

The synthesis of project findings, undertaken by Mimas, found that the projects had proposed around 15 business case ‘arguments’. As operational scenarios solidify and mature, we can reasonably expect there will be more where these came from, all of which might be combined to present business cases for the service, for the institution and, not least, for the user. [It should be noted that the Discovery projects did not address the business case relating to global drivers as the projects were predicated on this is a ‘given’ factor].

> Paint a business case by numbers? A personal Top Ten

Following some discussion of the list of 15 business case arguments with colleagues (thanks especially to Mike Mertens of RLUK for his feedback), here is my personal ‘Top Ten’. You can find the rest plus links to the relevant projects at http://discovery.ac.uk.

Institutional Level – Serving strategic institutional objectives, especially in support of a more effective learning and more efficient research infrastructure.

1 – Fulfilling institutional policy commitment to Open Data provides a strong basis for this work
2 – Contributing proactively to wider strategic directions such as personalization, user co-creation and integrated resource discovery
3 – Following such as Google in opening data to serendipitous development is low cost and may yield unknown benefits

Practitioner Benefits (Librarians, Archivists, Curators) – More economic and effective ways of ensuring the collection is well described.

4 – Making better use of limited professional time by embedding records improvement in core workflows and / or by automating separately
5 – Providing more efficient mechanisms to generate more effective indexing and access points, based on standard and shared authorities

General User Benefits – Making the collection being more discoverable, more accessible and linked to other relevant knowledge assets.

6 – Amplifying the impact of the collection by broadening the scope for discovery, achieving greater utilisation and enabling downstream discovery of relevant ‘linked’ resources
7 – Using open metadata to provide a richer user experience and create opportunities for a variety of interfaces

Researcher Benefits – Contributing to the research ecosystem, within and beyond the institution.

8 – Cultivating the international research ecosystem by minimising duplication of effort and avoiding knowledge silos
9 – Evolving scholarship by enabling participation of a wider community in testing, refining and building on research results
10 – Surfacing the unpredictable connections required by interdisciplinary research

> And finally…

Increasing numbers of managers and practitioners are involved in demonstrating the business case for enacting the principles endorsed by Discovery. What cuts it for you? Is it purely a cost metric or a measure of user satisfaction? Which of these arguments and what others would you put forward?